The officer shrugged. “He said his guys packed it up around four p.m. on Friday, and not much else. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to say any more with Mrs. Jensen around.”

Murray glanced at his watch. “I’ll try to swing by and follow up with him tomorrow. I’ve got one more stop to make before I call it quits for the day. I want to catch up with William O’Connor before he has a chance to talk with his brother.”

Jake Tillman was already waiting outside the courthouse when Detective Murray pulled up in an unmarked car. “Don’t want to alert the kids,” Murray explained as Jake slid into the front seat. Talking to Will O’Connor at school wasn’t Murray’s first choice, but he wanted to get ahold of him before he got home.

While he drove, Murray filled Jake in on his meeting Maja Jensen and the bullshit story that Trip O’Connor had given him. “I guess it’s possible that the brothers already worked out a story, but that wasn’t the impression that I got. Seemed to me like Trip was making it up as he went along. My best guess is that they decided to keep quiet about it, but Trip got nervous when I pressed him on his suspended sentence. He mentioned that his brother had track practice after school. We might be able to find him there.”

“We need to be careful here,” Jake said. “If we end up getting anything useful out of these kids, it needs to be by the book.”

“Hey,” Murray grinned at him, “we’re just asking questions. We’re going to follow up with the contractor’s crew as well, but my money’s still on the high school kids. Let’s just see who knows what. When we know who we’re looking for, we’ll bring them in to the station, call the parents in, and make it official. Honestly, it’s usually pretty easy with these kids. They all think they’re hard. Who knows where they got that idea. Too many gangster movies, maybe, and too much money. But they hold up under questioning for about three seconds. In my experience, they turn tail the minute they sense real trouble. They want to convince you that they really are good kids, and they’ll tell you almost anything while they’re at it.”

They pulled into the lot in front of New Falls High School, a sprawling, colonial-style brick building surrounded by sports fields.

Jake started toward the front door, but Detective Murray gestured for him to follow as he headed around the back of the school.

“You don’t want to stop in at the office?” Jake asked.

“Not yet,” Murray replied. “Let’s keep it casual. Once we show up at the office, we’ll show our hand. Right now we’re just gathering information.”