Doug felt sick to his stomach, but he could not look away. A note was pinned onto Bernie’s chest, the pins shoved deep into his skin, dried blood dripping down the page in a jagged wave, obscuring whatever words had been written. The boy had obviously put the noose around his neck and leapt from the top of the closed bleachers, and Doug found himself staring into the rafters high above, wondering how Bernie could have possibly tied the end of the rope up there without the aid of a ladder. Two policemen, a photographer, and a medical examiner stood off to the side of the gently swinging body in a tight group, talking among themselves. Two ambulance attendants stood next to the far wall, waiting. Another policeman kept the crowd from getting too close.

“Jesus,” Hobie breathed. The usual bravado, aggressiveness, was gone from his voice, and his face was bleached, pale. He stepped aside as two other policemen, one carrying long-handled shears, the other a retractable stepladder, pressed through the gym door behind him. “I knew Bernie,” he said. “He was a good kid.”

Doug nodded. He watched silently as the policemen set up the ladder and cut down the body. Apparently, the photographer had taken his pictures before they’d gotten there. Bernie’s form was stiff, unmoving, legs and arms still frozen in the position in which they’d been hanging, but the men laid him down as carefully as they could on the floor, on top of a white plastic tarp spread by one of the ambulance attendants. The medical examiner moved forward to have a look, crouching down on one knee and opening his black bag.

“I was just talking to him last week,” a man said. “After school got out.”

Doug looked to his right, to the source of the voice. It was Ed Montgomery, the coach. The portly man’s natural hangdog expression had been intensified and cemented with shock. He shook his head slowly back and forth, talking to no one in particular. “He was saying how he was going to get a part-time job at the post office this summer to help pay for his schooling in the fall. His scholarship didn’t cover books and rent, only tuition.”

Doug’s ears pricked up at this, and he felt a familiar chill creeping down his back. He moved next to the coach. “He was going to get a job where?”

Ed looked at him blankly. “At the post office. He’d already okayed it with Howard.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand why he’d do such a thing. He had everything going for him.” The coach stopped shaking his head and looked into Doug’s eyes, his troubled gaze focused, as if he’d just thought of an idea. “You think maybe he was murdered?”