“I’m no cop.” Maxime shrugged. “But with DNA and dental records, I’d say a week, tops. Problem is they’ll have found my knife and your crowbar long before then. And probably a bunch of other things. We were too fucking sloppy! Given today’s technology, they’ll probably find our DNA, maybe even fingerprints. And even if they don’t, my fucking name is on the murder weapon.”

“A present from your dad,” I said.

“Yeah, a Swiss army knife.” Maxime nervously tugged at the skin on his neck. “I’ve got to get in front of this,” he muttered. “I’ll resign this afternoon. The party will be able to select another candidate. I don’t want to be the first scandal of Macron’s presidency.”

“Take your time. I’m not saying we can sort things out this weekend, but we’ve got to at least try and work out exactly what’s happening to us.”

“What’s happening to us? We killed a guy, for fuck’s sake, we killed a man and we walled him up in the fucking gym.”

4

The Door of My Undoing

1.

Saturday, December 19, 1992

It had been snowing since early morning. The weather, as exceptional as it was unexpected—and coming during the Christmas vacation—was causing chaos. “Complete pandemonium,” as people said around here. On the Côte d’Azur, a light dusting of snow is usually enough to bring everything grinding to a halt. But this was not a few snowflakes; it was a bona fide blizzard, something no one here had seen since the storms of January ’85 and February ’86. The forecast was for fifteen centimeters of snow in Ajaccio, ten in Antibes, eight in Nice. Only a handful of flights were taking off, most trains had been canceled, and the roads were almost impassable, and in addition to all that, random power outages were disrupting local life.

From my bedroom window, I looked out at the campus glazed with frost. It was surreal. Snow had shrouded the scrubland, transforming it into a vast white expanse. The olives and the citrus trees were bowed by the weight of the snow, and the stone pines looked as though they had been transplanted into a scene from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

Fortunately, most boarders had left the night before. Christmas vacation was the one time of year when Saint-Ex was deserted. The only people still on campus were a few students who had requested permission to stay for the holidays and study because they were applying to the Grandes Écoles and had difficult exams ahead and three or four teachers who had missed their flights or their morning trains.