“It’s not sexy. Not every costume is sexy.”

  “Of course they are; play to your strengths.”

  “I’m not some himbo who—what the fuck are you doing?”

  Shaw was undoing the buttons of North’s henley. Then he fluffed the blond hair visible where the collar parted. “Voila: sexy crime scene tech.”

  “Can we please do our jobs? Can we please be grown-ass men who just do our jobs?”

  “Sure,” Shaw said with a shrug. He gestured at North’s shirt. “Do you want me to de-sex you—”

  “No. We’re not wasting any more time.”

  “It won’t take any time. If you’re uncomfortable being objectified, I want to make things right.”

  “It’s fine. It looks fine, right?”

  “You look fantastic. But I could have already done it with all the time we’ve spent—”

  “Just leave it,” North growled as he set off across campus. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the half-light of the Adams front door, though, he had to admit that the buttons had been a nice touch.

  The access card that Celia had given them still worked, and in less than a minute they were inside. Red, white, and green streamers hung across the entry hall; a pudgy girl on a ladder was stringing red, white, and green letters onto a length of fishing line. HAPPY DRINKO DE MAYO. The air smelled like overheated hair dryers, wet fabric, and teeny bopper perfume.

  “Could you point us to Hiwet’s room?” North tapped his sleeve again. “Couple of follow-ups.”

  The girl pointed to the righthand hallway off the second-floor landing.

  After a moment, when it seemed nothing more was forthcoming, North took the steps two at a time.

  “Maybe I should have a windbreaker too,” Shaw whispered.

  “Be quiet.”

  “I’d go shirtless though. I think people like my nips.”

  “Dear baby Jesus, in your infinite manger, please deliver me to a shrimping boat.”

  “Wait, what?”

  The hallway that the girl had directed them to held four doors: two on the left, and two on the right. It was obvious which belonged to Hiwet. Police caution tape formed an X across the door, which was closed. When North tested the handle, it was locked.

  “Do your trick,” he told Shaw.

  “Oh, no, it actually takes some time to get all the beads up in there and I haven’t prepped—”

  In a strangled whisper, North managed to say, “Open this goddamn door.”

  “Oh. That’s what you should have said then.”

  North couldn’t be sure, but he thought the little shit was smiling as he flipped through the universal keys on his ring. The first one he tried worked, and to North’s questioning look, Shaw said, “That’s the same one that worked on that basement door in Washington.”

  “Good to know.”

  North nudged the door open and took in Hiwet’s room. It was a disaster zone, but he guessed that was only because of the police search. Fingerprint powder covered almost every surface. Drawers hung open, clothes hanging out or dumped onto the floor. The mattress had been propped against one wall, and slivers of broken glass suggested that at some point, the people processing the scene hadn’t been nearly as careful as they ought to have been.

  Passing over a pair of disposable gloves, he asked, “Ready?”

  Shaw nodded, and they began to search. The search was hampered by the fact that other people had already gone through the room, which meant that nothing was where Hiwet would have originally put it, which meant that details that might have been important had been erased. They worked in silence until someone cleared her throat at the door.

  He didn’t recognize the woman, but he put her age in the easy forties or the hard thirties, and that combined with the robe and slippers made him guess that this woman was the head of residence for Adams. She was white, carrying extra weight, with hair color that had come out of a box some industrious clerk had probably clearanced out.

  “No one told me that you’d be working here again today,” was her opening salvo.

  “I’m sorry, Miss…”

  “Oglevie. Layla Oglevie. I was very clear when I spoke to the detectives: the girls are already dealing with a lot, and I don’t need strangers tramping through the residence. You scared poor Marnie to death.”

  North stood from where he’d been removing drawers from a built-in dresser and crossed to the doorway. He stood close but not too close, and he added a smile. “I’m sorry about that. Miscommunication. The liaison was supposed to call and let you know we were coming, but you know how bureaucracies are.”

  Layla Oglevie actually sniffed like the matron in a Dickensian boarding school. “I really wish you’d cleared this with me. The girls have planned a cultural celebration—”

  Drinko de Mayo, North wanted to say.

  “—and they’re trying their hardest to put this horrible situation behind them.”

  “I want to apologize again. I’m really sorry.” He leaned closer, inspecting an enamel pendant. “Is that a Dalmatian necklace?”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t see—”

  “Tell me you’ve got one of those big lugs around here, please? Those were my favorite dogs growing up; I’m saving up for a house so I can get one of my own.”

  “Well, no. We’re not allowed to have pets, which is something of a relief because I’m still in counseling about Pongo’s death.”

  “Pongo like, 101 Dalmatians?” North set his smile to endearingly sad. “God, break my heart, why don’t you?”

  “Hey,” Shaw barked. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Sorry,” North said quietly. “My boss is a real hard-ass.”

  Layla offered a sniff in Shaw’s direction. “Please have one of those detectives contact me about any future disturbances. We really have to think about the girls, you know.”

  “I know. And I’m really sorry.”

  But Layla hesitated in the doorway. “If you’d like,” she drew the words out, “I could tell you a bit more about what to look for in a Dalmatian. I have some books in my apartment I could—”

  “Nordyke,” Shaw snapped. “Get your ass back to work.”

  “Well, really.”

  “Sorry,” North mouthed, and then, before he got abducted into a Dalmatian date, he smiled and closed the door.

  Shaw had the good grace to wait until the woman’s footsteps had faded before repeating North’s words: “God, break my heart, why don’t you?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You should have twirled your hair.”

  “Someone had to handle her, and you were too busy picking lint out of your crack.”

  “You should have giggled.”

  North decided ignoring him was the best policy and returned to the built-in dresser.

  Undeterred, Shaw came across the room. “You should have—” He humped the air. “—you know, really given her the business.”

  “You’re going to be lucky if you ever get the business again if you don’t cut the shit,” North said, and when Shaw tried to hump him, he laughed and shoved him away.

  Shaw had to ham it up, of course, which meant he ended up crashing into the mattress, which immediately fell on top of him.

  “Serves you right,” North said. “Stay there.”

  But when Shaw crawled out from under the mattress, he said, “We’re missing something.”

  “You’re missing some critical brain cells. That’s what you’re missing.”

  Shaw didn’t rise to the bait, though. He was looking around the room. “She found out about the apartment Flip was renting. She had his travel plans. She went there. And she was enough of a threat that someone had to kill her.”

  “She said she was good at digging up people’s secrets,” North said. “Maybe that makes sense. She spent her life with her parents on the run, hopping from school to school. She must have known from a young age that secrets could be very powerful. I don’t understand, though; why kill her?”

  “Because she was a threat or an obstacle. Or both.”

  “She showed up at that apartment. She had his travel info. But if Flip was just running away, why add a murder charge to it? Why not change your travel plans? Why not do anything except shoot someone twice?”

  “That’s assuming Flip ran away.”

  “You think he’s dead?”

  Righting the mattress, Shaw said, “I think he could be. Or he could have been abducted, and the kidnappers didn’t expect this much public attention. In either case, someone would have a reason for getting rid of Hiwet, and the travel papers might have been a misdirect.”

  After several moments, North finally said, “Maybe. So we’ve got a girl who’s always on the move and who likes secrets. So where does she keep those secrets? On her phone? If so, we’re screwed; the police must have it by now.”

  “She’d definitely have them on her phone. But I think she’d have them somewhere else too. Backup. This is a girl who’s had her life change drastically with little warning—getting uprooted every time her parents have to run again. She’s probably had to ditch her phone before. More than once, I’d guess. That means she’s got something else.”

  “I don’t see a computer.”

  “Police probably took her laptop too.”

  “She liked secrets,” North said, glancing at the closet. “Maybe she hid stuff in the secret passage.”

  “Secret passage is a tad dramatic.”

  “This from the guy who put on an eight-minute pom-pom routine to celebrate the first time I bought him hot chocolate.”

  “The anniversary of the first time you bought me hot chocolate,” Shaw corrected, opening the closet door. “It was a very important date.”

  The clothes had been pulled from the hangers, and the top shelf was empty, but Shaw didn’t see any sign that the search had extended to the removable panel. When Shaw got his fingers under the edges and pulled, the false back came loose easily, which suggested regular use. He passed the panel to North, turned on the flashlight on his phone, and played it back and forth. The cavity between the rooms was about ten inches—deeper than the thickness of a modern wall, but too small for most teenagers or adults. Shaw pressed lightly on the panel on the other side of the cavity, but it seemed stuck; Hiwet must not have used the passage to sneak between rooms. Or perhaps her neighbor had decided to block the false back of her own closet.

  Running the light up and down, Shaw inspected the rest of the cavity. Mouse droppings and dust formed the major elements of the scene.

  “Well?” North said.

  “Oh, she’s got a whole evil genius’s lair set up back here. Computers, ICBMs, sharks with lasers on their heads—ow!”

  The kick caught Shaw right in the ass, and he rocked forward, knocking his head against the opposite panel.

  “Sorry,” North said in a syrupy voice. “Tripped.”

  Shaw ran his hand along the studs, searching by feel, and on his way back, he slid his fingers along the header. Dust furred up under his touch, but he got nothing.

  Until plastic crinkled under his fingers.

  He pulled out the bag, extricated himself from the closet, and held his discovery up to the light.

  “Molly,” North said.

  “She liked to party. That’s what everyone told us. I guess this is proof.”

  “Fuck. Another dead end.”

  “Asking for a friend,” Shaw said, “but do you have to tell the police if you find—”

  “Give me that.” North shoved the bag into his back pocket. “That is the last fucking thing I need. Jesus Christ. All right. We’ll have to try another angle. We talk to the students again. We check out her social media feed. We still haven’t caught up with that sketch-as-shit teacher, and we probably need to run down the head of school and figure out what game she’s playing.”

  While North continued to ramble through their options, Shaw studied the room again. He was trying to figure out what he’d missed. Hiwet was a girl who’d been on the move. Hiwet was a girl who hadn’t trusted easily. She must have learned early on not to feel too comfortable anywhere. Never get too settled. She needed to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Shaw’s pulse quickened. Yes, that seemed right. She needed to be ready to run whenever trouble—whatever the trouble was—caught up with her family again. So she’d be ready. She’d have a plan. She’d have—

  “What do they call those bags? The survival guys have them. Like a 72-hour kit, only extreme?”

  “Bug-out bags. I’m surprised you have to ask; your best friend,” the scorn in the words was audible, “Emery Hazard sent you a fourteen-page list of what you need to pack in yours.”

  “Like my HMS Pinafore still-in-the-original-packaging action figures.”

  “They’re called dolls when they’re designed for little Victorian girls. Also, no, not like that at all.”

  Shaw sensed a fun argument, the kind that he could spend all day using to push North’s buttons, but he decided to let it slip because his brain was caught on something else. A bug-out bag. Hiwet would have had something like that, although not the way most people imagined it. Something she could grab if trouble came and she had to flee in the night. Something with everything that was most important to her.

  But the only bag in the room was the backpack Shaw had seen her carrying the night they’d met above the tennis courts. He studied it again. It was simple, although clearly high quality, and designed not to draw too much attention. He dropped into a squat. On the outside, the only thing of note was the three-pack of tennis balls, still secured in the elastic pouch intended for a water bottle. Shaw worked the zipper open. Notebooks. He flipped through them, saw nothing of interest, and shut them again before North decided Shaw’s life really wouldn’t be complete until he understood the joys of logarithms. Loose scraps of paper, something with scribbles that might have passed as class notes. Crumpled foil wrappers that still smelled like Big Red gum. A hairbrush. The laptop compartment was empty, and Shaw’s heart fell; if there had been anything valuable in this bag, it was gone. Someone had beaten him to it.

  “—start with that teacher,” North was saying. “Come on; I bet we can catch him at home.”

  “She didn’t play tennis.”

  “What?”

  Shaw hadn’t understood why his gaze was fixed on the tennis balls until he said the words again, more slowly. “She told us she didn’t play tennis. I asked her because of the tennis balls and because they were sitting on the hill overlooking the courts, but she told us no, she didn’t play.”

  “So why does she have tennis balls?” North asked.

  Working the tube free from the pouch, Shaw popped the lid off. Then he dumped the balls out. He heard something rattle, and he picked the balls up one by one. He heard the same noise again and squeezed the tennis ball in his hand. A slit appeared in the green felt. When Shaw turned the ball over his cupped hand, a flash drive tumbled out.

  “Shit,” North whispered. In a slightly stronger voice, he said, “I knew I liked you for some reason.”

  Grinning, Shaw wagged the flash drive at him. “Want to see what Hiwet was hiding?”

  Their own computers had been back at the office, and the office was now a pile of charred timbers, so they stopped at the head of residence’s apartment. Layla Oglevie answered the door, clutching the neck of her robe. A smile started on her face and then stopped when she noticed Shaw.

  “May I help you?”

  “We need to borrow your computer,” North said with an apologetic look. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to go back to the station.”

  “I suppose—”

  But North was already pressing his way into the room, and Shaw tagged after him. In only took a matter of minutes to get settled in Layla’s kitchen, which was crammed with Dalmatian-themed paraphernalia: a Dalmatian clock ticking softly on the wall; Dalmatian salt and pepper shakers (a little on the nose, Shaw thought); a Dalmatian table runner; a drooping silk floral arrangement in a massive ceramic dish patterned with Dalmatians, and which looked like it might originally have been intended as a water bowl for dogs. Layla made a few matronly noises at being ejected from her own home, but by then North had booted up the computer.

  As soon as they had privacy, North inserted the flash drive. He whistled as he scanned the contents. “There are hundreds of files here.”

  Some were images, and from the thumbnail previews, Shaw could tell that they were scanned documents. Others were clearly compromising photographs. Each file was named with a string of letters and numbers that made no sense to Shaw.

  “She’s got them encoded. Damn it, I have no idea how long this is going to take.”

  “She’s got the names encoded,” North said, “but the files aren’t encrypted. All we have to do is sort by date and, boom. Let’s see what Hiwet has been working on recently.”

  The file was from the Saturday before Flip had disappeared. It was a video file, and when North clicked it, Shaw couldn’t help himself: he let out a gasp.

  On screen, two young men were having a hard, furious fuck. They were in a bland room: a bed, a window with the blinds down, nothing distinctive that might help someone identify where the video had been filmed. Shaw recognized it as Flip’s secret apartment, where Hiwet had been killed. One of the young men was Flip Chittenden. He lay on his back, his ankles hooked over the other young man’s shoulders. His face was red. His eyes were glazed. Baked, Shaw guessed, and that guess was confirmed a moment later when the other young man took a long toke, bent, and shotgunned the smoke into Flip’s mouth, all without altering the breakneck pace of his thrusts.

  The first problem was that the second young man, the top, wore a Spider-Man mask. Shaw looked for identifying marks, but he came up empty. The man must have been close to Flip’s age, although it was hard to tell exactly without seeing his face. He was muscular, with skin that was either a light brown or a dark tan. Dark pubes. Pits shaved. And, although Shaw couldn’t have explained exactly why, something about the way he fucked suggested an immense fury—a rage whose only outlet existed in punishing Flip through sex. Stoned out of his gourd, Flip just moaned and bounced and sucked in more of the shotgunned weed.