It started off as a plinky-plonky guitar song with a flute, gradually morphing into something more hard rocking. It had cryptic lyrics about magic staircases and laughing forests. This seemed like music for people who thought they might be wizards.

What were the seventies even about? Was it all smoking and listening to this kind of stuff and riding around in huge cars without wearing seat belts? This was the song everyone liked?

The song ground on:

And as we wind on down the road

Our shadows taller than our soul

There walks a lady we all know

But there was something, something, something in what Susan had said. The music summoned it out of hiding and Stevie saw its shadow flit across her thoughts. What the hell was it? Stevie ran down her list of notes again, reading them under her breath, letting them sink into her subconscious. Paul, Shawn, Magda, Patty, Patty . . .

Only one person’s name came up twice: Patty Horne. But Patty had the most ironclad of all alibis—someone literally had seen her all night long. Plus, she had absolutely no reason to kill her friends. Todd, Eric, and Diane were her people, like Nate and Vi and Janelle were Stevie’s people. But what about Greg Dempsey, who died later that week in a bright flash of light and a wall of rock and trees?

Another dead bike rider in Barlow Corners.

An idea took shape.

As Patty had said, if they hadn’t been busted in a makeup nookie session, they most likely would have been victims as well. Or perhaps the killer (or killers) wouldn’t have been able to attack a group of that size. Four people—that would have been hard enough. But six? What if you had wanted to kill someone in that group? And you knew that instead of six people, there would only have been four out there that night because Patty and Greg were under lock and key. Maybe you saw an opportunity.

But again, why? Why Sabrina, Diane, Todd, and Eric?

She flicked through the photos again, landing on Todd’s. She put her earbuds in and listened to the part of the recording where Susan talked about Todd:

“I never like to say kids are rotten, but . . . Todd Cooper, he was a rotten kid. Charming. Polite to your face, always. . . . He was guilty as sin, and everyone knew it. That was the shame of our town. . . .”

Todd Cooper had killed Michael Penhale, and everyone in town knew it. Out of the four of them, he was the only one who really made any sense as a target. The Penhale family was in the clear, and Paul Penhale had been seen in the lake house with Shawn. Susan had confirmed it. Even if Shawn and Paul wanted to team up to murder people they thought had wronged them, there seemed little chance that the woman she’d just met would have had any part in that.