“I don’t know. It was right after class; he teaches history. I forgot I needed to ask him for an extension because I was going to be out of town for a meet, but when I walked in, Flip was there. And—” He drew in a deep breath. “Man, Kish was pissed. I mean, scary, and he’s normally so chill about everything. Flip was pissed too, and that was weird because he’s usually cool too. They both stopped talking right when I walked in, and the whole thing freaked me out, so I made up something and left. But now I think—what if Kish found out about those videos? He would have hauled Flip’s ass over the coals. Or maybe he found out who Flip was fucking.”

  Or, Shaw thought, he found out their playtime videos were being sold on MyFans to Flip’s dedicated audience of teen-porn afficionados. The same kind of guys, Shaw guessed, who would pay top dollar for their favorite porn star’s underwear—especially if he had died tragically. Which added a sinister layer to the already creepy encounter when they’d caught Kishor trying to steal Flip’s clothes.

  “We’ll run him down,” North said, and the tone of his voice suggested he’d reached the same conclusions as Shaw. “What about Hiwet? How do you think she got tangled in all this?”

  Louis had a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “What?” North asked.

  “I don’t know how Hiwet got involved in this, but I think you might be on the wrong trail. I’ve been texting with Lauren and Abigail. There have been these weird guys around campus. Scary guys, actually, although Jos called me a pussy faggot for admitting I was scared. We all think they had something to do with Flip and Hiwet. I mean, Hiwet really liked to party, and when Flip slipped a gear, he really liked to party too. Hiwet bought a lot of shit, and I don’t know if she could always pay for it. Flip used a lot of the shit she bought. I think they got caught up with some really bad people.”

  “Lauren’s people?”

  Louis rolled his eyes. “Lauren buys weed from this Somali kid she dates on and off. Brandon is fifteen, and he’s pretty much the sweetest person you’ll ever meet. He got a perfect score on the ACT last year. He didn’t do this. Trust me, if I could get him to turn, I wouldn’t let him go. He’s perfect.”

  “Most people usually have some degree of homosexual—”

  “Nope,” North said.

  “The Kinsey scale—”

  “Do not encourage him to trawl for straight boys.” Before Shaw could answer, North turned back to Louis. “Do you know something about these guys? So far, all people have been able to tell us is that they’re scary or shady or sketchy.”

  “Not exactly. But—” Frowning, Louis worked his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. A video began to play; North moved to loom over Shaw’s shoulder so he could watch it as well. In a small voice, Flip explained, “I wanted to prove to Jos that I wasn’t a pussy faggot, so I followed them.”

  On screen, at the back door to The Gouverneur Morris School’s administration building, Dr. Trinity Latese was talking to two men—one shorter and balding, one taller and balding, both of them shady as fuck in Easter-egg-colored track suits. And then, with what looked like resignation on her face, she stepped aside and waved them inside.

  Chapter 24

  WHEN NORTH AND SHAW stepped out of Washington, the sun dazzled North momentarily, and he took a long, deep breath of air that smelled like wet grass and teeny-bopper body sprays and something cool and dank, like freshly turned earth. Then his eyes cleared, and the day, blue and bright, came into focus. On the far side of the quad, Kishor was talking to a young man. Kishor, in his pretty boy shorts and his pretty boy jersey. Kishor, with his pretty boy hair. And North remembered the hate fucks he’d seen in those videos, Flip bent in half while this dickwad piledrove him.

  Shaw must have sensed some of it because he caught North’s arm.

  “I’m just going to murder him,” North said, trying to shake off Shaw. “Really quickly.”

  Shaw grabbed him tighter.

  “Fine. I’ll settle for sodomizing him with that fire hydrant.”

  Laughing softly, Shaw squeezed his arm. “What do you think that’s all about?”

  The question made North pull back, and now he saw what he’d missed: the sharp, cutting gestures of hands; the stiffly held bodies; the faces tight with attempts to moderate strong emotions in public. This wasn’t the pretty young teacher soaking up adolescent praise; this was Kishor furious, and the young man—Jos, North recognized him now, his blond hair and fair skin in stark contrast to Kishor—was equally angry.

  “I don’t know,” North said, “but let’s find out.”

  They headed across the quad. Jos stood with his back to them, and Kishor was so caught up in their argument that he hadn’t noticed them yet. Their voices were still too low for North to make out the individual words, so he picked up his pace; he wanted to hear at least a little of what they were saying before they realized he was there. Once they spotted him, they’d either split or try to snow him, and North wanted to have something for leverage first.

  Before he had a chance, though, a frisbee flew in front of him. It hit the grass, skipped once, and landed on one of the sidewalks crisscrossing the quad. As it skated across the cement, the plastic disc rattled, and Kishor glanced over.

  The change in his expression was immediate. He said something that sliced through whatever Jos was saying, and Jos glanced over his shoulder. The sudden rush of color, the wide eyes, the shoulders climbing almost to his ears—North had seen a lot of people look guilty, and Jos could give a master class. With a meep that North could hear halfway across the quad, Jos took off at a power walk.

  Kishor, on the other hand, dug out his phone and stared at North and Shaw as he spoke into it.

  “Damn it,” Shaw said.

  “We’ll give him a chance to double down on this shit,” North said with a grin. “Come on.”

  The teacher was pocketing his phone when they reached him.

  “Trouble in paradise?” North asked.

  “I called security. It’s time for you to leave—if you want to avoid the police, you’ll go now.”

  “That must have been very empowering,” Shaw said. “People look for empowerment and validation from all sorts of external sources, but the only thing that will be truly empowering is when you realize that the power to achieve your dreams was inside you all along. For example, I never thought I could cook, but then just the other day, I told myself, ‘Shaw, the power to cook has been inside you all along,’ and then I made North tuna surprise casserole, and I totally nailed it.”

  Kishor turned to North. “Is he being serious right now?”

  “You’d be surprised too,” North said, “if you took a bite of the driest, nastiest, burnt-and-raw-at-the-same-time tuna surprise casserole forced on you and bit down on a toy soldier.”

  “That was the surprise,” Shaw shouted with excitement. “Like king cake!”

  “What in the—”

  “What just happened?” North asked. “Your boy toy didn’t look too happy with you.”

  “You ought to watch what you say; people take those kinds of allegations very seriously.”

  “I know what I said.”

  Across the quad, the frisbee kids were laughing uproariously about something; North glanced over to see that two of the boys had co-opted the game and were now flinging frisbees at each other.

  “He used a homophobic slur.” Kishor shifted his weight. “I let kids slide on a lot of things, but I won’t stand for that. Jos knows I’m gay; I’m very open about it. He wanted to provoke me because that’s what a lot of teenagers do when they feel threatened: attack, attack, attack.”

  “Yeah, you’re the patron saint of gays,” North said. “Young guy like you. Good looking. You’re funny and athletic, not some campy old queen. And I bet there are a lot of boys still trying to figure themselves out. Trying to understand what they’re feeling. Is that right?”

  Kishor’s look hardened even further. “Of course. All teenagers are trying to figure themselves out.”

  “And I bet you’re willing to help those boys. I bet you’re willing to give them some private coaching so they can figure themselves out with a helping hand.”

  North couldn’t decide if the look was shock or guilt or both. The emotion, whatever it was, wiped Kishor’s expression clean. After a moment, he started up, his voice pitchy: “I never touched—”

  Before he could finish, a golf cart sped into view, motor whining. The same security guards sat in the front, with Trinity Latese in the back. The golf cart cut straight for the middle of their group; Kishor stepped back in one direction, and North and Shaw retreated in the other. The motor whined. The laughter on the quad had stopped, and when North risked a look, he saw that the frisbee duel had ended and that the kids were watching to see what happened next.

  “Mr. McKinney,” Trinity said. “Mr. Aldrich. You’re being placed under citizens’ arrest for trespassing on private property after repeated warnings. Please come with us; the police have already been called.”

  North smiled, rocking back on his heels and studied the security guys: thin, soft-faced men with windbreakers and tasers and Berettas in shiny leather holsters. Somebody had unboxed their Super Accountant action figures and mixed them up with the tough guy set.

  “It’s eighty degrees,” he said. “Drop the jackets.”

  “North,” Shaw whispered.

  “No, it’s ridiculous. These guys are playing their Nerf-gun version of cops and robbers. I’m guessing that if you unwrap those badges, and you’ll find chocolate under the foil.”

  One of the men stepped forward, hand going to the Beretta.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Trinity snapped. “Stop this. Mr. McKinney, let’s go.”

  “I didn’t know they made orthopedic shoes with soles that thick. These guys are walking on clouds.”

  “You didn’t miss the lumbar support pillow, did you?” Shaw asked.

  “Fuck, of course I didn’t miss it. I had it worked into this whole piece about how they take naps.”

  “Mr. McKinney,” Trinity said again.

  “Now it’s ruined,” North said. “I was doing the setup, Shaw. Why can’t you just hold your fucking horses?”

  “You take too long on the setup! How was I supposed to know that you were lining them up for a pillow joke?”

  “I’ve got great setups, Shaw. I like to build up to a joke. I don’t step all over myself like somebody I could name.”

  “I know you’ve been working on landing your jokes, but I really think you need to pay more attention to the setups. People don’t have the attention spans they used to. Smartphones—”

  “Mr. Aldrich!” Trinity’s voice was a teacher’s lash. “Mr. McKinney!”

  “Jesus Christ, lady,” North said. “What?”

  “You guys think you’re real funny,” one of the Super Accountants said.

  “Yes,” North said.

  “Obviously,” Shaw said.

  “Come with me right now,” Trinity said, “or—”

  “No,” Shaw said. “You come with me.”

  North looked at him. Trinity looked at him. The Super Accountants looked at him. Kishor looked at him.

  “Um,” Shaw said, “but could we use your office?”

  “What my partner is trying to say in his ass-over-tit fashion is that it’s time for us to have a nice, long chat, Dr. Latese. We’ve got a very interesting video—a few of them, actually. And we need your expert opinion.”

  Trinity’s lips parted slightly as though she’d been slapped.

  “And you should probably tell the police that you don’t need them anymore,” Shaw said with a sunny smile. “You’ve got bigger problems now.”

  To the security guards’ outrage, Trinity agreed and called the police. Worse, she left the Super Accountants behind with Kishor, driving the cart herself to the administration building, with North and Shaw along for the ride.

  “These pillows really are comfortable,” Shaw said, plumping the lumbar support and then falling back against it again. “We should get you one for your car.”

  “Don’t talk about the pillows. I’m still pissed at you about the pillows.”

  Trinity’s secretary, Leah, stared at them as they followed Trinity into her private office.

  “Hi, Leah,” Shaw said with another of those gratingly happy smiles.

  “Don’t talk to her,” North said.

  His last glimpse of Leah was her surprise transforming into wounded indignation.

  Trinity’s office was pretty much how North remembered it from the last visit: the desk, the computer, the awards and degrees framed and hung on the walls, a bookcase with what was obviously intended to be a decorative set of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Harvard Great Books collection—both sets in sober leather, with gilt-stamped letters. The windows were open, a concession to the perfect spring day, and the air smelled like the dogwoods in bloom. In the distance, someone was talking in tones that sounded like exaggerated enthusiasm, although too distant for North to make out what they were saying.

  Collapsing into her chair behind the desk, Trinity said, “If you think you can blackmail me, you’re wrong. I don’t even know why I agreed to this. The police should be arresting you.”

  “You agreed because you know what’s on these videos and because you don’t want the police to see them. That’s why you agreed.”

  Trinity’s controlled posture dissolved; slumped in her executive’s armchair, she shot rapid glances at North and then away, at Shaw and then away. Her hand played with the bail pull on a desk drawer, and every time she let the pull fall, it gave off a tinny tinking.

  “Let’s see them,” she finally said, leaning across the desk.

  North played the video Louis had given them, which showed Trinity speaking to the two track-suited thugs and then letting them into the administration building.

  “God damn it,” Trinity said, although she sounded tired more than angry.

  Without any setup—fuck Shaw and fuck his complaints about long setups—North played one of the MyFans videos.

  The effect was electric: Trinity shot upright in her seat as though galvanized, one hand jerking sideways to knock a WE LOVE OUR HEAD OF SCHOOL mug. The mug made a chinking noise against the carpet, and coffee sloshed out, filling the air with its smell.

  “Turn it off,” Trinity whispered. Then, more loudly, “That’s enough.”

  North paused the video. “Start talking.”

  Pointing one perfect nail at the phone, Trinity said, “I did not know about that. I don’t know what that is, and I don’t want to know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t!”

  “Don’t give me that. You’ve got two students at this school, one dead, and one missing who might be dead. Hiwet was murdered for something she knew, and Flip disappeared in a way that should have been impossible—and in a way that suggests someone inside had to be involved. The first time we showed up, you ran. Crawled out that fucking window right there. You’ve done everything you could to keep us off campus since. You’re neck deep in this. Why did you help those men kidnap Flip? What did they do with him?”

  “No!” The word was shrill. Trinity cut off, took a deep breath, and managed to even out her voice when she said, “The loss of our students is a terrible tragedy—one that I had nothing to do with.”

  “But you know something.” Shaw inched forward in his seat. “Dr. Latese, whatever you know about this, it’s time to come clean. A girl is dead. Flip might be dead. If you really didn’t have anything to do with those things, then tell us what you know, and help us find the people who did.”

  Trinity’s expression was vacant, her eyes dead. The stink of cold coffee was giving North a headache. Voices moved closer, carrying clearly through the windows now. “And this is the administration building, which was built in 1898. It’s the first building of the original campus of The Gouverneur Morris School, and from 1898 to 1927, this served as the home for the original head of school and our founder, Dr. Jabez Buffum. The dogwoods were planted by Mrs. Buffum the first year they lived here, and—”

  “Our Ainsley is very allergic,” a woman’s briskly self-assured voice interrupted. “She would have gotten first place in the state 5k, but her allergies got her. I asked the organizers to move the event to a day with a lower ragweed count, and this horrible woman laughed at me.”

  “An old place like that must cost a fortune to keep up,” a gruff, blustery man’s voice said. “Is that why I’m paying thirty-seven-thousand dollars a year for my daughter to go here? I went to public school, and I turned out all right.”

  A tiny silence, like a record skipping, and then: “And over here, you’ll see our library which is one of the newest buildings on campus. The original library was torn down in…”

  The voices trailed off.

  Trinity wore a grim smile. She gave the bail pull a final flip and sat up. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to come to an agreement about this.”

  “I thought you refused to be blackmailed,” North said.

  “I had a student like you my first year teaching,” Trinity said. “I let him ride me pretty hard because I was new and didn’t know better. He had a smart mouth, and he always played it safe: little sniping comments, ironic distance, wall after wall between him and the world. I’ll tell you what I wish I’d told him, Mr. McKinney: shut the fuck up.”

  Heat rushed into North’s cheeks, and he opened his mouth. Shaw’s hand on his knee stopped him.

  “I meant an arrangement where you didn’t take this to the police.” Trinity waved a hand. “I’m sure you’ll tell me that you have to hear what I have to say first, and I think in the end you’ll take it to them. But God, I love this job.” She blew out a breath, tracing her mouth with those perfect nails, pinching her lips into a bow. Then she dropped her hand and said, “I was all right until 2007. My game is craps. I’d never touched a pair of dice before 2007; my grandmother taught me games of chance were of the devil, and that stuck with me until I was a grown woman. Then, one night, one of my friends wanted to have her bachelorette party at this new casino right downtown. Lumiere Place. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was single, and although I’d done well in my career, I kept telling myself I’d missed the boat to have a family. I can’t even really tell you how it happened that first night, but I liked how it felt when I rolled the dice, and I liked even better how it felt when I won. But I didn’t win as much as I lost. It got bad last year. I took out loans. My car. Then my house. Check-cashing stores. And then I couldn’t get loans, so I took money from people who…you should not take money from. And I missed a payment.” One hand hovered above her ribs. “They made me thank them for not leaving marks where anyone could see them.”