From their smoky den at Mr. Jack’s Steaks, the members of the Chamber of Commerce saw to it that the only thing to make the papers were the obituaries. The only soul not memorialized was Garrett Mason, mass murderer and meth addict. The ladies at church folded their hands and shook their heads. Between this and his brother’s suicide, how would Garrett’s family ever bear to be seen in public again?

Offensive coach Bill Wesford was named the new athletic director, despite murmurings of inappropriate conduct from members of the girls’ softball team. The consensus at the Egg House was that you couldn’t let gossip like that slow you down. The boys still had a shot at the state championships, after all. The town still had a dream.

A naked redheaded boy named Baker Channing, delirious and seared with sunburn, stumbled onto the highway the week after all that business, raving about play-offs and blow jobs; he had apparently escaped the violence on foot and become lost in the Flats for days. Baker was loudly and insistently informed of how blessed he was to be alive, reminded of this until he stopped feeling the need to discuss what he may or may not have seen that night.

In his cursory search of the premises, Investigator Mayfield discovered the charred body of Bryan Weissman, a defensive tackle for the Perlin Stallions, propped against the orange door of HOME ON THE RANGE. The boy had taken two 9-millimeter rounds to the back. The bullets matched the shell casings of the customized Glock which had killed Garrett Mason, a murder that Officer Clark ensured was written off as self-defense on Luke Evers’s part.

In the back bedroom of the triple-wide, beneath a heavy pink bed surrounded by shattered mirrors, a trapdoor was discovered in the floor. It was determined that the door must have provided access to the cavernous crawl space that spread among the stanchions of the elevated trailer. It was never determined precisely how a skeleton had come to rest within that crawl space, though Officer Clark had a few theories she kept to herself.

The skeleton was discovered still clad in football pads. It wore a jersey with the name BROADLOCK printed across its back.

The skeleton had been preserved from the explosion overhead by the strange concrete coffin in which it had been enclosed. Beneath the skeleton’s crossed arms there was a photograph that had likely been taken on the same day as the team portrait which Joel Whitley had seen online, after leaving Ranger Mason’s house. Standing in the center of the photo was handsome Corwin Broadlock. To his left was nervous little Toby Lott. To his right was cocky Harlan Boone. And standing there with his arm over Broadlock’s shoulder was hulking, bashful Tom Parter, smiling like he couldn’t believe his luck.

The sole concession the school made to grief was to postpone the Bison Homecoming game. Instead, on the Friday night following all the trouble, a formal memorial was held in the school’s gymnasium. A line of wreaths stood beneath the basketball goals as Bethany Tanner and Luke Evers were awarded Most Valuable Player—the only honor for which the cash-strapped school had medals at hand—and smiled grimly for photographs.