She searches through the local files for Beaulieau. There are many, including other arrests. Burglary, assault, DUI. When she scrolls through the death records, there are Beaulieaus of all ages. An infant, the grandfather patriarch. And James Beaulieau, seventeen, of South Burlington. She pulls up the death certificate.

Cause of death: cerebral apoplexy, secondary, hemorrhage in brain. The death is ruled natural.

“Natural?” Kateri says aloud.

The date is five days after Bear Miller’s arrest.

Kateri covers her mouth. She wants to run down to Shannon’s cell. It took him five days to die.

After nine, it’s just her and the guards and the officers who are on duty overnight. She takes her key fob and lets herself into the wing where Shannon’s cell is. There are empty cells, ones they use mostly as drunk tanks, or when they pick up a guy on domestic and let him sweat it out in there, sappy and apologetic by the time someone finally comes to get him hours later.

Shannon is at the end. The cell has a wired, tempered-glass door. Inside, the light is on, and Shannon sits on the bed. They’ve let him have a book.

Kateri knocks on the glass and then uses the fob to let herself in.

“Hi,” she says, soft. The room, the whole corridor, is eerily quiet.

“Hello,” Shannon says. He puts the book flat on the metal bed, its spine cracked open. They’ve given him an old paper copy of Shane.

“I hate this book,” he tells her.

“I haven’t read it,” she says.

“There’s no dad, and then the guy who could be the dad just takes off.” Shannon rolls his eyes.

“How’s it going with Brewer?” she asks.

Shannon shrugs. “He wants me to plead guilty and say it was because she abused me. Self-defense.”

Kateri leans on the wall. There’s a stainless-steel toilet between them.

“I didn’t do it,” he says. He looks her in the eye.

“I know,” she says.

He shakes his head, his eyes wide. The bruises on his neck have all but faded. “I can’t say that I did it,” he says, “just to get off. I’m not saying I did that,” he repeats. “That I killed my own mother, and then, and then, and then burned her body? I was in a fire,” he says. His voice goes up, shrill, tense. “Why would I do that?”

“Well,” Kateri says, “the prosecution will likely argue that that’s exactly why you did it.”

“They won’t let me go,” he says. “They’ll never let me go, even if I say I did it in self-defense.”

“Who did?” Kateri asks.

His lips are a flat line. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Let’s look at our options,” Kateri says. “You didn’t,” she repeats.

“No,” he says.

“What about Bear Miller?”

His jaw tightens. “He didn’t,” he says. She watches him press on his teeth from behind.

“Are you sure?” she says.

“He was with me.”

“When?” Kateri asks.

“When … it happened,” he says.