Auggie sighed and dropped his hand. “For starters, about a year ago, she was driving a golf cart at the Suffolk Country Club, and she hit a girl. Hurt her pretty badly, actually. And, of course, she was drunk. Totally wasted.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Hazard asked. His thumb had frozen on the screen, pinning the scrolling text in place.

  “What—” Somers cut himself off. “Jesus, really?”

  “Miranda Carmichael doesn’t have any kids,” Hazard said, tapping her post. “What the fuck is she doing, talking about ‘save the children’?”

  “As far as I know, Keller doesn’t have any kids either.” Somers indicated the post underneath Carmichael’s.

  “Yeah, about that.” Theo’s mouth tightened. “I’m not sure how much you know, John-Henry, but there’s a lot of local law enforcement that’s sympathetic to these people, to their cause, however you want to put it.”

  “I knew about Carmichael.”

  Auggie hesitated and then said quietly, “It’s not just Carmichael.”

  Somers nodded, put his hands on his hips, and looked out at the river. He set his jaw.

  “Anyway,” Auggie said, “it’s a lot of the same stuff, over and over again. Objections to inappropriate content. Claims that teachers are grooming kids for pedophiles. Demands that people teach both sides of every issue.”

  “Both sides to the fucking Holocaust,” Hazard said. “Show me a lesson plan like that.”

  Auggie grimaced and shook his head. “It’s some stupid rhetoric when you start breaking it down.”

  “It’s not just rhetoric.” Somers’s voice was strange, and when Hazard glanced over, he was surprised to see an unfamiliar tightness in his husband’s face—around his eyes, sharpening the line of his mouth, pulling taut the muscles in his jaw. “Not for Joyce.” His gaze found Hazard’s, and after a moment, when no one spoke, he said, “Evan.”

  “Evan Pawloski?” Theo asked. “The kid who took a swing at me?”

  “The little shit you helped with every paper so he could keep his grades up for soccer, who then tried to club you across the back of the head.” Auggie’s voice was hard. “I should have kicked him in the side of the knee. How do you think he’d do in soccer then?”

  Theo pulled Auggie tighter against him. “What about Evan?”

  “He’s…” Hazard hesitated. “I suppose you’d say he’s Joyce’s proof. Or a test case. He’s her example that dangerous literature can pervert children, make them sexually receptive to advances from adults.” He told them Joyce’s story about Evan’s sexual encounter with a college student and the subsequent breakup with Kirsta.

  “Yeah, well, if Evan wanted to experiment, I don’t think it was because he read a book written in the ’90s.” Theo gestured to each of them in turn. “You’ve got four gay guys standing right here. How many of you got turned gay by a book?”

  “My TILF did seduce me with Shakespeare,” Auggie said.

  Theo shaded his eyes and shook his head.

  Hazard opened his mouth to say something else, but ragged breathing interrupted him. He glanced over to see that Somers’s color was bad. He still stood with his hands on his hips, but his head hung down, and he was sucking in air like he couldn’t get enough.

  “John?”

  “Fine.” Somers brought his head up. Something had bled the color out of him. His eyes, Caribbean blue, were the only part that seemed alive. “I’m fine. Pissed as fuck that someone would try to manipulate a kid who’s just trying to figure himself out—” He cut himself off and shook his head.

  Cobwebby silence stretched among them; Theo broke it, his voice uneasy. “I haven’t heard anything like that about Evan. Before this week, I would have said he was a normal kid. Not particularly nice or funny or engaging, but not an asshat, either.”

  “I don’t understand.” Auggie held up his hands. “He’s her test case. Ok, so what?”

  “It might give Joyce a more solid motive; if she genuinely believes that book turned Evan gay, and if she’s as fanatical as she sounds, she might have decided to take matters into her own hands.”

  “By killing Loretta? That doesn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t make the book go away.”

  “It doesn’t have to make any sense if she’s a fanatic.”

  “But Joyce suggested Evan might be behind the killing.”

  Hazard nodded. “You’ve read the book recently?”

  “Katabasis?” Theo offered a tiny smile. “Yes, Emery. I just taught it.”

  “I’m not sure there’s always a correlation. For example, it’s unclear to me that you’d actually read Midsummer when the quiz Colt brought home completely ignored the role of Mustardseed—”

  “You do realize that not all parents feel compelled to read along with their students? Why can’t you just be benignly neglectful like a good American?”

  “Ok,” Auggie murmured, patting Theo’s chest. “Emery, what’s your question?”

  “What do the words ‘Let us go down’ refer to?”

  Theo blinked. “Why?”

  “Because they’re significant to this investigation.”

  “How—ok, ok, if you don’t want to tell me.” Theo frowned. “Without more context, it’s hard to say.”

  “The paper shield of every literary scholar.”

  “Oh, for hell’s sake, Emery, that phrase shows up at least a dozen times.” Theo blew out a breath. “The premise of Katabasis is kind of overlapping, a metatextual game in some ways. The book is called Katabasis. And then, inside the book, there’s a roleplaying game kind of like Dungeons and Dragons that’s called Katabasis. The book is about a group of high school misfits who play the game together, only it’s kind of real, and they end up in this underworld fighting an actual monster.” He must have seen the expression on Hazard’s face because he hurried to add, “The point is that they say those words every time they start a session of their game. And, because they’re teenagers, they make some dumb jokes about ‘going down’ referring to oral sex. There is one scene where two of the boys decide to play a session together, just the two of them, and it culminates in their first complete sexual experience. They say the words when they begin to play, so it might be referring to that.”

  Hazard tried to think that through. “But it might be referring to the book itself.”

  “Or to a more general moral or spiritual descent,” Auggie said. “That’s what the word katabasis means, and it’s partially what the book is questioning. If someone used those words in the killing, which is what I think you’re suggesting, they might be referring to Loretta as some sort of moral deviant. Or it might be about themselves; maybe they were feeling guilty.”

  Picturing the words carved into Loretta’s chest, Hazard shook his head. “I don’t think it was guilt.” Then his gaze sharpened. “I thought you did something wasteful with your life. Something about social media.”

  “Well, yeah, Emery. I do. Thank you.” Auggie grinned. “But I didn’t get a double major in English just because I spent all those afternoons on my knees. Talk about going down.”

  “Ok, goodbye,” Theo said stiff-arming him toward the house. “You’re done.”

  Laughing, Auggie wrapped himself tighter around the older man. “If you guys are done, I have an idea about who we can ask about Evan.”

  Hazard raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

  Tilting his chin toward the house, Auggie said, “How about the local experts?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MAY 16

  SATURDAY

  1:59 PM

  SOMERS FOLLOWED THE OTHER men inside, pulling the door shut after him, and he imagined inside himself that he was doing the same thing: swinging a door shut, one of those huge vault doors, steel-reinforced concrete, swinging, swinging, swinging, and then crashing shut. So nothing—nothing—could get the fuck out.

  Or in.

  Colt and Ash were on the floor, stretched out and chatting with a girl who was playing with a sensory toy and occasionally looking up to smile at them.

  “Ash, oh my God, this video is so funny.” Gwen squirmed forward on the couch, tapping Ashley’s leg with one foot. “Ash, seriously, you’ve got to see this.”

  Ashley sat up and watched the video. He laughed when Gwen laughed. Colt, still stretched out on his belly, was helping the girl reset the toy, but his shoulders were pulled tight, and he kept hammering the toe of his sneaker into the carpet. When the video ended, Ashley dropped back down.

  “Oh my God,” Gwen said. “Ash, you have got to see what Kris just posted. That bitch’s hair.”

  “Language,” Hazard said.

  Gwen startled. Then she glared at him, coolly sullen, before going back to her phone and saying, “Ash, for real.”

  “Lana, honey,” Theo said, crossing the room to stand by the girl. “The big boys need to talk to Mr. Hazard now.” He helped the girl up, steadying her, and took her hand. “Why don’t you show me what you did with Marissa’s hair?”

  “Do not mess up those braids, Daniel Theophilus,” Auggie called after him. “It took us four hours to get them right.”

  Theo and his daughter moved down the hallway. Colt sat up. A storm-cloud wariness darkened his face, and he drew his knees to his chest, meeting Hazard’s gaze and then looking away. Ashley sat up too. When Gwen patted the couch next to her, he looked at Colt, who refused to acknowledge him. Ashley scooted closer to the sofa, but he didn’t actually get up to sit next to Gwen. Apparently, Somers thought, that was a compromise. Neither Colt nor Gwen looked impressed.

  Colt spoke first: “Pops—”

  Hazard shook his head, and Colt’s jaw snapped shut. Somers wondered, not for the first time, if either of them really understood how tied together they were, how easily they could hurt each other because they loved each other so much. Probably not, Somers thought. Probably not in words, anyway.

  “What do you know about Evan Pawloski?” Hazard asked.

  “Ugh, him?” Gwen arched her back and rolled her eyes. “Why do you want to talk about him?”

  “Colt?” Hazard said.

  “I don’t know,” Colt said with a shrug. “I don’t really know him. He was dating Kirsta, but then they broke up.”

  “Because he’s gay,” Gwen said.

  “Gwen,” Ashley said quietly.

  “What? He is. Everybody knows.” Then her eyes got wide, and she giggled. “Oh my God, you guys are gay. Um, I’m sorry.”

  “Why would you be sorry?” Hazard asked.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s for real,” Auggie said in an aside to Somers.

  “Don’t get me started,” Somers whispered back.

  “She just meant—” Ashley fumbled his words, his face filling with color.

  “Oh my God,” Colt muttered. In a louder voice, he said, “You know what she meant. Stop making them feel weird.”

  “Why do you say Evan is gay?” Hazard asked.

  “Um, because everyone knows he is. He gave that college guy a—” Her face filled with color, and she looked at Ashley for help.

  A blowie, Somers wanted to ask, but he thought that might be out of line for the chief of police.

  “Um, he had sex,” Ashley said. “Uh, with this guy who was in college. Oral sex, I mean.” Then, in a rush, his face turning scarlet: “With his mouth.”

  “Oral sex with his mouth,” Auggie murmured.

  Colt made a noise of infinite disgust.

  At the exact same moment, so did Hazard. “All right, let’s say that you’re correct and he had some sort of sexual encounter with a man. How does anyone know that?”

  If anything, Ashley’s blush got deeper, and Gwen squirreled down over her phone.

  “He’s going to find out sooner or later,” Colt said, taking out his phone.

  “Oh my God,” Gwen said. “Are you serious?”

  “Mr. Hazard would have found it anyway,” Ashley said miserably.

  “It’s secret, Ash. I thought you understood that.”

  Ashley stared at the carpet; some of his auburn hair had fallen to swing against the side of his face.

  Setting his jaw, Colt gave Gwen a look and then tapped his phone’s screen a few times. When he held it out, Hazard took it and then angled it so that Somers and Auggie could see. The screen was of an Instagram account called Wildcat Tea, and the description said, Served Hot Every Day! The images that had been posted were screenshots of short messages, often without a reply. One said, Will Daffield likes smoking mids alone. Another said, Bridge eats ass. And then there was Tay Pennington shits herself when she runs cross country, and Jania Torres likes toes, to which some unnamed person had replied, Hot. There were hundreds like that, all the usual accusations of sluts and cheaters, the standard rumors of new couples and hookups, but also cruelly—and, Somers guessed, imaginatively—specific ones like Diandra Norris is so stupid; she says she’s against abortion but she had one herself and Dozer was a virgin when we had sex, and he bit my clit.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hazard muttered as he scrolled. He stopped several months back on one from early January that said simply, Evan Pawloski sucked off a Wroxall freshman. And then, a week before that one, Evan Pawloski is a fag. “This takes bullying to a whole new level.”

  Colt and Ashley shared a look, and Somers guessed this wasn’t the worst of it—maybe not even by a long shot.

  “These are all anonymous?” Somers asked.

  Ashley nodded, and Colt said, “Yeah, but you can guess who sent in some of them.”

  “Who sent in the ones about Evan?”

  Another shared look. When Ashley shrugged, Colt said, “Kirsta. But only because they broke up.”

  “Not only because they broke up,” Gwen said. “He’s gay. Really. She had to tell people.”

  “It’s not a fucking public health crisis,” Hazard snapped, and she sank back against the couch. “Is the breakup the only reason Kirsta would have posted something like this?”

  “Uh, maybe.” Colt shifted on the carpet. “I mean, Kirsta is kind of weird.”

  “She’s such a freak,” Gwen said—the volume started off loud, but when Hazard turned his full attention on her, it shrank to a whisper.

  “What do you mean?” Somers asked.

  “Well, you’ve seen her. She dresses like she’s, like, forty.”

  Cue gasps, Somers thought. But when he went to share a look with Auggie, the younger man had a sympathetic expression on his face, like forty might indeed be the tragic end of all things that walk the world.

  “And her makeup—” Gwen continued.

  “Gwen, don’t be mean,” Ashley muttered.

  “Oh my God, stop it.” She squirmed to the edge of the cushion, sitting up straight—center stage now and in her element. “You love it when I’m mean. In middle school, she kissed Rory Michaelson, and she had blue hair, and all she wanted to talk about was manga. And now her mom thinks she’s, like, the boss bitch or something, and she’s so awful to Mr. Sturgis, and my mom said that nobody’s forgotten that Joyce Sturgis peed herself at the Rogers’s Christmas party a couple of years ago, no matter how she acts now.”

  “When did Kirsta change?”

  “A few months ago, I guess. Oh, yeah, it was after Christmas break. That’s when Evan turned gay. Did you know she wanted to go to prom with Luke? And he’s not hot, but he’s cute, and he’s friends with Paul, and we were all like, does she really think he wants to date someone who looks like his mom?”

  “Gwen,” Ashley said in that quiet protest again.

  Colt had red spots in his cheeks. His jaw was so tight it looked like he could chew through a refrigerator door.

  Pointing to the phone, Somers asked, “Aside from these messages, is there any evidence that this story is actually true?”

  The boys’ expressions were blank. Gwen launched into another monologue. “So, Evan’s, like, cute, right? And his family has money. And when they moved here, Maxie was, like, definitely going to hook up with him. But then she was like, no way, because he’s so awkward and, you know, a loser. You can tell, you know? Like one time, Brent and Ian wanted to mess with him, so they told him they were going to come to school in tanks, and the next day, he did, but they didn’t, and oh my God, he looked so gay. He made his mom bring him clothes to change, but then, like a week later, someone airdropped that photo to everybody in school when we were at an assembly, only they’d done like, Photoshop, you know, and it looked like he was sucking—” She cut off, pink tingeing her expression, and then added, “I think it was Ian.”

  “Fucking hell,” Hazard said under his breath. “Corporal punishment is still legal in Missouri. Maybe I should draft some recommendations for the school board.”

  “This is some serious bullying,” Somers said. “Why hasn’t anyone gotten involved to stop it?”

  The question was out of his mouth before he could consider it, and as soon as he heard it, he wished he could call it back. Pain flashed on Hazard’s face, and then an avalanche of nothingness whiting out his expression.

  “That’s not—” Somers bit his cheek. “I understand that it’s more complicated than that, but seriously, nobody has done anything?”

  “It’s hard, Chief Somerset,” Ashley said with a shrug, still staring at the carpet. “You can report Wildcat Tea, and Instagram closes the account, but then somebody just starts a new one with a slightly different name. And nobody could track down who did the AirDrop.”

  “Yes, I’m sure the technical difficulties of watching an entire school terrorize and humiliate a defenseless child must be insurmountable,” Hazard said.

  Somers remembered standing at the top of the stairs, his hand on Hazard’s chest—thin, back then, almost frail—and pushing. And he remembered the call to the principal’s office. The meeting with his parents. And then…nothing. Technical difficulties were the most recent layer of bullshit; the real problem was deeper. His face felt hot. His whole body felt hot, a kind of prickling flush that made him aware of his stomach churning like he might be sick.