I tried to figure out what Jay was hiding from us. Because he was definitely hiding something. He didn’t even look up at me or Darrell as we asked our questions. He sat behind the school desk and pushed around a paperback copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray with his fingers. That book was an interesting choice, the story of someone presenting an innocent face to the world while a secret portrait grows more and more horrific.

Jay was neatly put together, his red hair clean and combed. His long, lanky legs jutted out under the desk. He wore an argyle winter sweater that looked expensive; it might have been cashmere. For a teenager trying to fit in with the other kids in Black Wolf County, that was the wrong way to do it. Most of us found our clothes in a Main Street thrift shop, and advertising your money was a great way to be hated. But I got the impression that Jay didn’t really care what anyone thought of him, and that included his father.

Darrell led the interview. He wore his marine face, which was no less intimidating in his sixties than it would have been when he was a sergeant in Korea thirty years earlier.

“Jay, when we first talked to you, you said you weren’t allowed in your father’s office,” he began.

“Yeah. So?”

“So why did we find your fingerprints there?”

Jay hesitated before answering, which told me he was making up a story. He was smart, but he had the cocky arrogance of a kid who thought he was smarter than everybody else. “I was just playing games with him.”

“What kind of games?”

“Sometimes I’d swipe Gordon’s key and go down and mess around in his office.”

“Mess around?”

“Move stuff. Just enough that he wouldn’t be sure if he’d left if that way himself. Gordon was paranoid, so I liked to mess with his head.”

“How often did you do that?”

“I don’t know. Three or four times. I hadn’t done it in a while.”

“Did you look at any of your father’s private papers when you were in the office?” Darrell asked, with a glance at Norm.

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“About the lawsuit?”

“Sure.”

“Did you tell anyone what you saw?”

“No.”

Norm put a hand on the boy’s arm. “Just to reiterate what I told Rebecca and Ajax, I never asked Jay to spy for me, and I never got any privileged information from him or Will.”

“But I would have done it,” Jay added, drawing a frown from Norm.

“Did Gordon find out you’d been in his office?” Darrell asked.

“No.”

“He never confronted you about it?”

“No.”

“Did he know you’d read materials about the litigation?”

“No.”

“Then why was Gordon convinced you were spying on him?”