“I didn’t know she was dead,” he says. “I haven’t been there.”

“How long had you gone without seeing her or talking to her?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “A few days? A week maybe. I got the power back on, and then it was okay. It was fine there.”

She allows him to sit in silence, uncomfortable, waiting for him to say more. He bounces his knee, he drinks the Pepsi, he fidgets with something in his pocket. Kateri has moved from Pepsi to water and drinks from a large liter bottle. She’s about due for more Excedrin.

“Where is she?” Shannon says then.

“I might ask you,” Kateri says.

“I don’t have her,” he says.

“Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know why that matters,” he says.

Kateri shrugs, cool. “In case I have a warrant to search for a missing child or a murder weapon,” she says.

“Am I a suspect?” he asks, shrill.

She waits, quiet, while he shifts in the chair, sitting up straighter and then rocking back and forth.

“You are not not a suspect,” she says. “Of course, we start with those closest to the victim.”

“Why?” he cries.

“If there are people who have reasons to want to hurt or eliminate your mother,” Kateri says, “wouldn’t you be among them?”

“Why?” he says again.

She takes another drink and rests a minute. “Because she forced you to keep her secret,” Kateri says. “Because you wanted the girl for yourself.”

“Oh my God,” Shannon mutters.

She notices that what he toys with in his pocket is a lighter, that he flicks it just short of lighting it, the spark bright inside the fabric. He has no record for fire starting. But she wonders if it has been a habit for him, something that has brought him perverse, dangerous pleasure, a release.

She asks if he’d like a smoke break.

He pats his shirt pocket underneath the hoodie. “Can I?” he asks.

“You are not being held,” Kateri says. “Of course.”

She walks him down the hall to a side door where he can smoke in the parking lot. She notices, standing next to him, how slender he is, how narrow across the back, with willowy arms and legs that he has hidden inside clothing.

“Were you going out of town?” she asks him.

“No,” he says. “Why?”

“The firewood,” Kateri says. “I thought maybe you were going camping.”

Shannon’s lip curls in a bitter smile, showing his teeth. “I’ve pretty much been camping,” he says, “in my own house. Camping is not vacation to me.”

“I thought you weren’t staying at the house,” Kateri says.

“I was,” he snaps. “And it was without electricity or water.”

“They were both on when I was there,” she says.

“I fixed it,” he says.

“Where are you staying?”

“With friends,” he says. He opens the heavy door and lets in a blinding block of light. He steps into the parking lot with the cigarette already on his lip.