“I told you, he was paranoid. He was looking over his shoulder the whole time he was here, like he expected something to happen.” An inappropriate smirk crossed the teenager’s face. “It’s almost like he knew the Ursulina would come after him.”

Darrell stared across the desk with a stony expression. “Your stepmother says you’re planning to stay in Black Wolf County to finish out the semester.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t like it here.”

“I don’t. I mean, I’m sorry if I’m offending your little slice of paradise, but this whole county is a backwater piece of shit. The weather sucks. The food sucks. The people suck.”

“Then why stay?”

“Because I’ve already switched schools once this year, and I don’t need to have my grades messed up by switching again. I’m applying to colleges in the fall.”

“We heard your father planned to send you back to Milwaukee after Christmas,” Darrell said. “The two of you argued about it.”

“What else is new? We argued about everything.”

“Why did your father want to send you back? He’s the one who took you out of the Milwaukee schools to start with. You said he thought the schools there were putting ideas in your head.”

“That’s right.”

“So what changed?”

“Who knows? Maybe he got tired of having me around.”

“We heard you threatened him,” Darrell went on. “You said if he tried to send you back to Milwaukee, he’d be sorry. What did you mean by that?”

“I didn’t mean anything. I just said it. I was spouting off.”

“Did you threaten to reveal what you’d seen in his files?”

“No. I told you, he didn’t even know I’d been in his office.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“Nothing. It was a stupid thing to say.”

Darrell reached into his coat and removed a paper bag, and he dropped the contents in front of Jay. It was Ben Malloy’s book.

“Is this yours?” Darrell asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why did you buy it?”

“I heard stories about the beast hanging out in the woods around here. I was curious.”

“Did you read it?”

“I did. Gory stuff.”

“The circumstances in which we found your father’s body were very similar to what’s described in the book.”

“So what? You think I killed Gordon and used the book to make it look like the Ursulina did it?” When Darrell’s face didn’t move, Jay’s mouth dropped open with a shiver of fear. “Are you kidding? That’s what you think?”

“You need to be straight with us, Jay. Did you kill your father?”

“No! No way. I didn’t do that.”

“Your mother didn’t want Erica to tell us about the fight. She was afraid we’d think you murdered your father. Why would she be afraid of that?”

“Mom overreacts sometimes. She knows what Gordon was like to me.”