Chapter 13

I called the sheriff's office.

Park security came.

Deputies came.

The sheriff came.

I hung out in the men's room and waited while they talked in the lobby.

"All right, Mr. Dane," the sheriff called through the door. "We're going to remove the obstruction."

A scraping noise came, and then the door swung open. The sheriff poked her head in and gave me a considering look. I had a moment of disorientation; I'd been expecting Bobby, but—well, I wasn't sure. I mean, it wasn't like I'd heard him out with the other deputies. I'd just assumed—I mean, it was always Bobby.

"You all right?" the sheriff asked.

I nodded.

"Why don't you come out of there?"

That sounded like a great idea.

It was a push broom, I discovered. The killer had slid it between the door handle and the frame to keep the door from opening.

"Not exactly a criminal genius, eh?" Deputy Tripple said with something like glee.

"Sorry about the delay," the sheriff said as though Tripple hadn't spoken. "We didn't want park security contaminating any possible prints."

"Of course," I said. I checked the spot where I'd found Dagan. The fallen photos and broken glass lay where they'd been. So did the bloody hammer. But Dagan's body was gone, and so was the scrap of paper.

"Why don't we step over here," the sheriff said, following my gaze, "and you can make your statement?"

So, I did. I told her everything.

And she, in turn, explained what she had meant when she'd told me to stop investigating.

She described.

She clarified.

She gave extremely vivid examples.

Dagan was missing, I learned. No one had been able to find him at home, and he wasn't answering his phone.

Not exactly a big surprise, considering I'd found him with his head bashed in, but good to know nonetheless.

During my narration, Tyler came up the stairs and looked around.

I broke off my story to ask, "When did he get here?"

A little crease formed in the sheriff's forehead. "Mr. Handy? I'm not sure. Why?"

So, I told her what I'd noticed last time—how Tyler had called Jessica on her phone instead of using the walkie, how he'd arrived late after I'd found Lyndsey's body, even the strange vibe, as though he'd been faking his surprise.

"I'll take that into consideration," the sheriff said, which was a polite way of responding to someone who sounded slightly unhinged.

"What about the hammer?" I asked.

"We haven't even begun processing this area, let alone tried to match the blood or lift prints—"

"No, why is it still here? The killer made the effort to hide the body, and they took that letter, but they left the murder weapon? That doesn't make any sense either."

The sheriff nodded.

"I mean, what was Dagan even doing here anyway? Hanging photos in the middle of the night? That doesn't make any sense."

"We'll look into that."

"And we're supposed to believe, what, that he was so focused on hanging one of those photos that he didn't hear someone come up behind him, pick up the hammer he was using, and clonk him?"

"Mr. Dane," the sheriff said—kindly, but firmly—"we're working on it. I'm going to have Deputy Dahlberg follow you home. Is that all right?"

That wave of disorientation tugged at me again. I wanted to say, But Bobby always makes sure I get home .

Only Bobby wasn't here.

"Yeah," I said a beat too late. "Sure."

"Deputy Dahlberg," the sheriff called.

Dahlberg led me toward the stairs. She smelled like strawberry body spray, and she gave me a nice smile and patted my arm, the same way she would have, I suspected, if I'd won a junior deputy award.

As we were going down the steps, Tripple stuck his head out over the rail above us. He was grinning, and his forehead did that disturbing wrinkly thing that went straight up into his shiny scalp. "You know, there are easier ways to get Bobby's attention."

It took a moment for me to realize that he'd really said those words out loud, here, where everyone could hear him.

"Get back to work," Dahlberg said.

"All I'm saying is there's no need for all this. The big production, I mean. Heck, I thought you two lived together. How about this? The next time you want a big, strong deputy to rescue you while you bat your eyelashes at him, you trip on the stairs. Save the rest of us a whole lot of trouble."

The shock came first. Then the humiliation. Not because Tripple thought I was making this up—although yes, some of that. But because they knew. They all knew. Not just Tripple. I could see the secondhand embarrassment on Dahlberg's face. They knew. About—about me and Bobby. No, I thought numbly, that wasn't right. They knew about me. How obvious was it? Tripple's words— batting my eyelashes . The flush made me so dizzy that for a moment, I thought I was going to pass out.

"Hey!" Dahlberg snapped. "Knock it off!"

"Tripple," the sheriff barked from the lobby.

Still grinning, Tripple withdrew his wrinkled scalp, and Dahlberg nudged me to get me moving on the stairs again.

It all seemed to be happening a long way off. Like I'd taken a step backward inside my own body. My brain had gone offline—anxiety flaring up into panic, and panic shutting down everything but the emergency systems. Later, I'd come up with a thousand zingers I should have shot back at Tripple. Right then, though, I couldn't string together two words. A sharp, visceral pain made it difficult to walk. Psychosomatic, sure, but pain nonetheless. Anticipatory pain. Telling my body to draw tight, contract, shield itself. Stay safe.

The walk to the parking lot seemed to happen in outer space. And as I drove, I was only distantly aware of the rumble of the Jeep's engine, of the slight vibration that transmitted itself through the seat and the steering wheel, of the wind battering the glass. The world was dark and quiet. The clouds were thick and low. The headlights bent and curved along the wet pavement, and when I passed through the tunnel of spruce and pine, they gave snapshot illuminations of the rest of the world: a doe among the ferns, head raised warily, frozen in that moment of startlement; a broken branch that hung crooked against the sky; the flash of wild eyes deep in the brush.

I parked in the garage, and when I came out, Dahlberg was waiting for me, window down.

"Bobby's not on duty tonight," she said gently.

I nodded. A traitorous part of me asked: then where is he? Because he hadn't been home. I hadn't seen him once today.

Dahlberg spoke once more. "Don't let him get to you, Dash." It was meant as kindness; I understood that, even as she delivered another mortal blow. "Everybody thinks you two are so cute together."

I didn't think it could be worse, but somehow, it was. Everybody . Everybody knew.

Knew what?

That I liked Bobby. Liked liked.

From a long way off, I could recognize that my embarrassment was linked to my terror. They had a shared root in that gut-wrenching sense of vulnerability. It was an animal thing, a pre-rational thing. I'd had a secret, something I'd kept safe and hidden, and now I learned that everyone knew about it. I felt exposed—all the parts of me that could be injured so easily, where I had been hurt so badly in the past, were on public display.

Everyone knew. Everyone.

Everyone meant Bobby.

I felt like I was on autopilot—all I registered was the cold flick of the salt-breeze against my cheek, the sudden increase in volume of the waves crashing against the cliffs. Dahlberg's face was mostly shadow in the soft light from the dash. She looked tired and older and sad. And then she turned her head, and the shadows shifted, and she drove away.

I went inside.

Hemlock House was quiet. It was full of quiet, actually—packed with the familiar silence of an empty space. I stood there in the dark, smelling the scents of furniture polish and old books and the little plug-in air fresheners that gave a faintly floral hint. I thought about going upstairs and trying to go to sleep. I was still jittery from my encounter with the killer, but worse was the thought of lying in bed, listening to the house creak and groan, catastrophizing about the revelation that everyone knew. Everyone.

Hemlock House had a history of people falling (or being pushed) from the balconies. I figured if I tried to go to sleep, I'd probably become the first person to willingly throw himself out one of the windows. So instead of going to my room, I went into the den.

During my time at Hemlock House, the den had become my unofficial office-slash-writing room. It was beautiful—built-in bookshelves full of rare books, wingback chairs, a window that looked out on the lawn and the long driveway. I had my laptop and my scribbled notes, and I'd even figured out the absolute most comfortable position, which was when I worked myself into the corner of the chair, my feet up on a hassock, snuggled under the world's coziest blanket (trademark pending).

I got myself settled and tried to write.

Writing had always been an escape for me. Which was funny, considering how much effort I put into finding ways not to write. But as a child, writing had been a place for me to go where I had friends, where I went on adventures, where I could be brave. And as I grew older, writing became a place for me to go when I had a broken heart, when I was lonely, when I felt powerless.

Finishing stories wasn't my strong suit, but there had always been a magic to dropping into the words, falling through the page into the world of my imagination, where I was wiser, bolder, better. In a story, I could take as long as I needed to make a decision; in a story, no matter how fast paced the scene, the hero was never truly rushed. It didn't take a psychiatrist to see that one of the things that I loved about writing was that it made me feel safe. In control. When I was writing, there was no risk. There were no precipitous decisions, fraught moments, irreversible turning points. Because I could always hit the backspace key and do it again. Better. But that wasn't the only reason I loved writing. I loved it because it was a way to know myself better—to learn things about myself, in moments of startling discovery, that I had never expected. And I loved it because, when I was doing it right, it was fun. It was pure creation, and that carried its own kind of joy.

The less said about actually, you know, publishing said moments of pure joyous creation, though, the better.

I had been wrestling with one particular moment of pure joyous creation for the better part of the last month, trying to hammer this short story into shape so I could send it out. (The novel was currently on hiatus, and no, I don't want to talk about it.) "Second Impressions" was my take on a Chandler story—one of his best-known novels, The Big Sleep . And The Big Sleep was Chandler's take on that old mystery staple, the missing person story. Aside from the raging homophobia and misogyny, The Big Sleep was a remarkable book, with Chandler's signature lean prose and the gritty noir aesthetic he refined and stylized. One of the plot threads has to do with a husband, who, rumor has it, has run off with a mobster's wife, but it doesn't seem all that important—clearly secondary to all the blackmailing and pornography and rampant homosexuality that poor old Philip Marlowe has to deal with.

When you find out what really happened, of course, then you realize it was crucial to understanding the whole story. It turns out (spoiler alert) that the crazy nymphomaniac femme fatale who has been hounding poor old Marlowe, desperate for some male attention (see? the misogyny!), killed her sister's husband because he refused to sleep with her. (MISOGYNY!) Marlowe figured it out, obviously. But it's a great twist the first time you read it. (Unless I just spoiled it for you.)

In "Second Impressions," I was trying something different. Intrepid private investigator Will Gower has been hired to find a body—a victim of a serial killer. But the victim is very much alive. (Twist!) So, kind of an inversion of Chandler. Which was fun. And it was kind of turning into my thing—in short stories, anyway. Which was all well and good, except I still had to figure out who this guy was and why he was alive and, oh, why he'd been pretending to be someone else this whole time.

I was pecking away at the keyboard, trying to fall through the page and, more importantly, ignore those pesky questions, when headlights swept up the drive.

Do you know when you've got it bad? When you've got it really, really bad for a guy?

When you recognize his headlights.

(That's not a euphemism.)

I knew those headlights. I knew that was the Pilot, and Bobby was coming back home from wherever he'd been. Not on duty. Somewhere else. Somewhere he'd gone without telling me. Not that he had to tell me. Not that I was keeping tabs on him.

The panic, which had been lulled by the writing and mostly fallen asleep by that point, jerked awake again. A series of increasingly implausible but terrifying possibilities presented themselves to me. After dropping me off, Dahlberg had called Bobby to tell him what had happened. No, worse, Tripple had called him to rub it in—that stupid old Dash had been desperate for some male attention, and he'd called in another false alarm. (In my defense, a strident voice said inside my head, at least I didn't shoot anybody for not wanting to sleep with me.) Or, even worse, word had already spread. In a small town like Hastings Rock, it was certainly possible. Bobby had been out somewhere (where, that insistent voice in my head wanted to know—and with whom?), and someone had mentioned what had happened, and now he knew, and he was going to be furious.

Because I hadn't called him.

Because I'd embarrassed him, mooning around after him, making a joke out of him at his place of work.

I didn't even think about it. I scrambled out of the chair and across the room, found the right book, and pulled.

The house's original secret passages, from what I understood, dated back to Nathaniel Blackwood—the eccentric (and apparently lusty) timber baron who had built Hemlock House. But Vivienne hadn't been shy about adding her personal brand to things, which was why the book that opened this secret door wasn't old or rare. It was a copy of her Pulitzer-nominated true crime book, The Nightingale Murders . When I pulled on it, a section of the built-in bookcase swung open, and behind it lay a hidden passage.

I darted through the opening, pulled the secret door shut behind me, and fumbled for the light on my phone. Mr. Blackwood had been a big believer in lamps and lanterns and candlesticks, and as far as I knew, Vivienne had never had electricity run down here. (Probably because doing so would have meant revealing one of Hemlock House's secrets to the masses.) I turned on my phone's flashlight, gave my eyes a moment to adjust, and started down the stairs.

They led to the Victorian equivalent of a safe room—where Mr. Blackwood must have planned on holing up if things ever got bad. (He didn't, however, plan on his child-bride pushing him off a balcony.) A complete living room opened up at the bottom of the stairs, with a tufted chesterfield and oil paintings and, yes, a fireplace, and shelves full of books and brass telescopes and a taxidermy stoat dressed up like Ulysses S. Grant (my interpretation) under a glass cloche. I could spend the rest of my life down here, I decided, sneaking in and out through the hidden doors, eating whatever food Indira left lying around, doing a lot of moping, brooding, and—God, it's so embarrassing to write—pining. Kind of like a cross between a mole person and the Phantom of the Opera. With less dramatic organ music.

I was still fleshing out this new life plan when a figure rose up from the chesterfield.

I screamed.

Fox screamed.

I managed to cut myself off and, in a furious whisper, demand, "What are you doing?"

"I'm hiding from my problems like an adult," Fox snapped. "What are you doing? Besides scaring innocent people to death!"

I took a deep breath and got a better look at Fox. They didn't look great. The quilt-bag was gone, replaced by what I would have called a Tolstoy-era peasant's smock, and a lacy little bit underneath that was giving Bordello of Blood . As with so many things with Fox, it was confusing.

So, I explained my new plan.

"You can't even play the organ," Fox said.

"I said with less organ music!"

"We don't even have an organ." And then, a note of doubt entered their voice. "Do we?"

I clumped down the rest of the stairs and threw myself onto a velvet-upholstered chaise. If you're a fan of self-sabotage, devastating psychological tailspins, and general crisis-ing, here's a tip: a velvet-upholstered chaise really takes it all to the next level.

After a while, Fox said, "Could you go be sad somewhere else, please?"

"No." And then, in a spurt of defiance: "It's my house. I can be sad wherever I want."

"Well, you're too sad. And it's everywhere. It's making me sad, and I'm trying to feel sorry for myself." But before I could say anything, Fox said in a different voice, "What's going on?"

Maybe, another day, I wouldn't have told them. But the hurt and the humiliation and, perhaps strongest of all, my own disappointment in myself won out, and I found myself telling Fox all of it: my inability to tell if Bobby felt the same way I did; my fears that if he did have feelings for me, I'd screw it up; my fears that if he didn't, I'd screw that up too; my fears that either way, I'd lose his friendship because of how I felt about him; our disastrous close encounters over the last few days, with each one seeming to leave things worse between us; how the pressure of those moments seemed to make it impossible for me to think or act or speak rationally; and then tonight, and Tripple's nasty little jab, and the fact that everyone knew.

"Of course we know," Fox said. "You're in love with him."

That familiar, slow churn of panic started again in my gut.

"You spend pretty much every waking minute together," Fox said. "And do you have any idea how much you smile at him? One time, he was telling you about a bad traffic accident, and you had this huge grin on your face, nodding along. It would be adorable if it weren't so disgusting." As though delivering the ultimate, indisputable proof, Fox added, "Dash, you go hiking with him. You walk up hills for him. Voluntarily. You. The same person who I once heard announce that he wasn't going to have nachos because the plate was too far away."

"Okay, but that was mostly because I'd already eaten so many tacos."

Fox gave a little laugh, and somehow, even through the pain, I found myself smiling. I didn't remember the traffic accident thing, but I knew how I felt when Bobby walked into the room. It was like my whole body became lighter. And he was so handsome, it would be stupid not to smile when I saw him. And while hiking did occasionally involve hills, and almost always was conducted at a rate that could most generously be described as "vigorous," I barely even thought about it because it was time with Bobby. Time for just the two of us.

"Do you know why I'm down here?" Fox asked.

"I believe we're both hiding from our problems."

"I'm down here because, even though I'm an adult, I'm afraid. I'm afraid that if I move in with Garrett, I'm going to be giving up my autonomy. Or that I'm going to be losing the upper hand in our relationship. Or that he's going to treat me terribly, and I'm going to be trapped."

"Fox, you know you can always come here, right?"

"That's very sweet," they said, their voice thick. "You're missing my point. I'm afraid if I say no, that it'll be over, and I'll have lost my last chance at a meaningful relationship. I'm afraid that if I say no, it'll be because—because of me. Because there's something wrong with me. I'm afraid if I say no, that I'll lose something I've valued for years."

I tried to figure out what to say to that, because I knew that nothing I said would make it better. But that was the wrong way to think about it. Something my friends had been teaching me— trying to teach me—was that some things were more important than words, which was (obviously) hard for a writer to swallow. Sometimes you didn't need to make things better or fix things or—or do anything, I guess, except be a friend, and show someone you loved them. And if there was anyone who understood how hard it was to feel torn by a difficult decision, to feel swamped by indecisiveness and anxiety and fear—well, you're looking at the world champ.

It wasn't the smoothest move ever, of course. In the process of making my way to the chesterfield, I thumped an armchair, half-fell over an ottoman, caught myself on a console table (and almost took it down), and barely saved a solid brass candelabra. Finally, I dropped down next to Fox and hugged them.

They didn't say anything for what felt like a long time. They just hugged me back tightly, their body stiff. And then, in a scratchy whisper, they finally said, "That was horrifying to watch."

I chuckled and hugged them closer and said, "I love you." Why was it so easy to say it to them, I wanted to know. Because we were friends? Because I knew there wasn't any risk? "I'm sorry. That sounds awful, and I hate that you're stressed and unhappy. Is there something I can do to help? Do you want me to tell Keme to beat him up?" But the joke seemed small in the dark, and I said, "Sorry. I just meant—we all love you. We want you to be happy, and we want to do whatever we can do."

Fox gave a breathy laugh and, patting my back, released me. "No, thank you. There's nothing anyone can do. And I love you too, you know. I'm very…grateful to know you." I thought I heard a smile as they added, "Not least because you've made things quite a bit more interesting since you arrived. But this is just one of those things I'll have to get through on my own."

We were both quiet for a while. Down here, I couldn't hear the wind or the waves. The air was faintly musty with the smell of old leather, old textiles, old paper, old taxidermy stoats.

"All right," Fox said thickly. "Enough about me. Let's hear the rest of it."

I thought about how to put it into words, but what came out was "Do you think Bobby likes me?"

"Oh yeah," Fox said. "He passed a note to Keme in math class last week. He's crazy about you."

Face hot, I laughed. "Okay." It took a moment for the sting to fade. "I know that's—juvenile, I guess. But you know how I am. I mean, I can't even decide which breakfast cereal to eat."

"Cinnamon Toast Crunch."

"But it gets soggy so fast, and—" I drew in a deep breath and laughed a little more. "I don't want to make the same mistake I made with Hugo. I thought I loved Hugo. I wanted to be with Hugo. And then—and then I was wrong. And my life imploded. I don't want to be wrong with Bobby. He's so important to me. I don't think I could handle it if I'm wrong."

"In your perfect scenario, what happens?"

I laughed again.

"I'm serious," Fox said. "Let's say none of this had happened. Wipe out everything from the last few days. How did you want it to go?"

"I don't know. I guess I thought it would be the way it had been—we'd keep being friends, and we'd keep spending time together, and eventually…"

Fox's reply was the teensiest bit waspish. "Eventually what? Fade to black, and you'd wake up in bed next to him?"

"I mean, is that not an option?"

"Dashiell!"

"I don't know. I guess at some point we'd talk about how we felt. But later. Maybe after we're married, and it's an ironclad contract, and he can't run away?"

The answering silence was, to say the least, disapproving.

"I know," I said. "I know that relationships mean, you know, talking about things. I know I need to tell him. It's just—I'm not ready. Can't I wait a little bit longer?" And what I wanted to say, although I managed not to add it out loud was, until it's safe .

"You can wait as long as you want. But you can't make Bobby wait too."

I closed my eyes against their sudden stinging.

"Do you know what I've been telling myself?" Fox's voice had a bitter amusement at odds with their usual tone. "Throughout this whole mess, I mean. I keep telling myself that I'm an adult of a certain age. I don't have to put up with relationship drama. What dignity I have, I'd like to keep. I'm certainly not going to throw away my self-respect and give into Garrett's childish demands. I've seen enough people make fools of themselves over men—including you."

"Hey!"

"I'll keep my pride, thank you very much." Fox must have shifted, because the springs in the old chesterfield creaked. "And it's all such bunk. Do you know why?" They didn't wait for me to answer. "Because the bottom line is that I'm afraid. Afraid of making a fool of myself. Afraid of taking a risk. Mostly, afraid of being hurt. That's one of the things about growing older. We get so much better at protecting ourselves. We call it dignity and self-respect and pride, and those things do matter. They should be valued and protected. But too many times, those words are excuses not to do something scary." I could feel my heartbeat in my face as the moments ticked by. And then, in a strange voice, Fox said, "We're all afraid of taking risks, Dash. But if you try to play it safe forever, one day, it'll be too late. And I don't think you give yourself enough credit. You're a very brave young man. It's time to be brave again."

When I answered, I spoke into the dark. "I don't feel brave."

"That's because you're also an idiot."

A laugh escaped me, but it faded quickly.

"I guess I should be more like Bobby," I said. "All that stuff he said about dealing with things head on, trying to make things right. I'm sorry I told you to wait and see what happened with Garrett—I mean, look how well that's been working for me."

"Dash, it wasn't bad advice. Sometimes, you do need to let your partner have their space. Sometimes, it's important to wait, to give things time instead of rushing and forcing and trying to make things work. And sometimes, like Bobby said, you have to handle things more directly. The problem is that both of those approaches can become ways of protecting yourself, and then they're a problem and not a tool. Why do you think Bobby stayed with West so long? Why do you think it was so hard for him to let go, even though he didn't love West, and even though he wasn't happy? Bobby Mai is many things, but one of them is that he's terrified of feeling powerless. He wants things to be clear and definite and certain. No ambiguities, no messiness, no confusion. And so he's convinced that if he can stay in control, if he can work hard enough, he won't get hurt."

"But that's not Bobby. Bobby's so…strong."

"Bobby is strong. But, not to put too fine a point on it, he's also a mess." Fox paused and then asked, "How well is his particular approach working with you?"

I hadn't thought about it that way. I hadn't even considered the possibility that Bobby might be…what? Trying too hard? Pushing a little too fast? I'd been so focused on the fact that I was busy messing up my own end of things.

"But he's not trying to pressure me," I said. "He'd never do something like that."

"Except he is," Fox said. "With the best of intentions, I'm sure. But Bobby isn't an idiot. He's known you long enough to know how you react under pressure. He knows that you need time and space to process your feelings. He knows—believe it or not—that you don't trust your own judgment, and that you'd like a clear, unmistakable sign of his feelings for you. But consider that Bobby is coming out of a serious relationship, and underneath all those muscles, he's still hurting, and he's disoriented, and like all of us, he doesn't want to make himself any more vulnerable than he has to. And that's why he keeps coming at this whole thing sideways: because he's terrified, and he can't help himself from trying to get everything safely under control."

I lay there, breathing in the chill, stale air. It probably doesn't sound pleasant, but it was strangely comforting. It reminded me of air-conditioned libraries, the way dry paper crackled. Libraries, like stories, had been a refuge for me. I'd been doing a bit of storytelling myself lately, I recognized. It was easy to make Bobby into something he wasn't—to make him into a storybook hero, to idealize him, to assume he always felt confident and secure, that any misunderstanding or failure in communication was on my part. But that wasn't fair to Bobby. And it certainly wasn't true. One of the first deeply personal things that Bobby had told me was that it was difficult for him to talk about his feelings. At the time, our friendship had made me an exception, but I was aware that since then, our relationship had become more fraught. Now, I suspected, Bobby struggled with talking to me about anything significant because our relationship had deepened, become more meaningful—and charged—for both of us. My problem, on the other hand, was just plain old paralyzing self-doubt. Oh, and I was a certified nutcase.

The idealist in me wanted to believe that if I held on a little longer, things would work themselves out. Maybe not in the fade-to-black scenario Fox had described (rather ungenerously, if I'm being honest). But Bobby could have his rebound. And I could keep being his friend. We'd trust each other more. Our feelings—if there were feelings on both sides—would grow deeper, more profound. And eventually, it would be the right time.

But that was a fantasy—more of that storybook world I'd inhabited for so long. The future, like a book, was safe because it wasn't real. And the less-than-idealist part of me suspected that Fox was right. Bobby wouldn't be able to leave things alone; it wasn't his nature. And I, in my typical Dashian way, would continue to get flustered, to panic, and to mess everything up. And eventually, Bobby would decide he'd been wrong about me, and he'd stop trying. Fox was right: if I kept trying to play it safe, one day, Bobby would move on. No one would wait forever.

"Oh my God," I said, "I'm going to have to talk to him."

"Uh huh."

"About my feelings," I groaned.

Fox laughed. "Uh huh."

"I changed my mind. I'm going to buy an organ."

But that was reflex more than anything. (Plus, I definitely couldn't afford an organ.) The truth—if I dug deep—was that I knew Bobby was kind. Earnestly kind, in a way I'd never encountered before. To a degree, honestly, that felt like a miracle. And he was patient. He had to be, because otherwise, he probably would have killed the lot of us by now. When I talked to him—when I finally worked up the courage—I knew that no matter what happened, even if I was wrong about Bobby, and about us, about everything, even then, he would be kind, and it would be okay.

"I know this is going to sound crazy," I said, "but hear me out. Instead of a mature, adult, respectful, face-to-face conversation, what if we do it in a confessional booth?"

"I appreciate the irony of me being the one to say this—I promise I do—but I really can't believe sometimes how nerdy you are. This is when I wish Keme were here to beat you up."

"Or through a hole in the wall, like in all those Renaissance plays?"

"And somehow you manage to outdo yourself. Hemlock House has a million hiding places, you know. You could have hidden anywhere."

"Even in one of those mascot costumes," I said. "Basically anything so, you know, he can't see my face."

"How old are you again? Eight?"

"I could just shout it to him while I blow past him on a zipline," I said. "I mean, I wouldn't say, ‘I love you,' because that would be way too cringe. But maybe I could say something about how I, um, feel something. Inside me. When I look at him."

"Like indigestion."

"And then he wouldn't even have to say anything back, because I'd be on a zipline, and I'd already be zipping away."

"You're going for the theme park model of healthy relationships, I see." Fox sounded like they might have said more—in fact, I was pretty sure I'd given them enough ammo to get them through Memorial Day—but their phone buzzed. They looked at it, and then they sat up, making a disgusted noise in their throat.

"What?" I asked. "Oh God. Is it Garrett?"

"Jessica's on the run."

The change in subject caught me off balance. "Jessica? The ride mechanic?"

"The hammer matches the tools in her toolbox, and they're already trying to match prints. Tyler called her to get her over to the park, and when she didn't answer, one of the deputies did a drive-by. She's gone."

"What—" I regrouped. "How in the world do you know all that? Who's texting you?"

"Millie, obviously."

"How does—" But I didn't even bother asking. "But that's ridiculous. I mean, sure the letter looks bad. But she wouldn't go to all the trouble of moving the bodies but leave the hammer. That doesn't make any sense." Something from my conversation with Jessica floated back to me, and I rubbed my eyes. "She told me someone had taken some of her tools."

"So," Fox said, "either someone was planning on framing her, or she was setting up an early defense."

I sat up on the chaise. And then I stood and began to pace (which involved bumping into a lot of things in the dark). "Nothing about this makes any sense. The hammer means someone is framing Jessica. It has to be Tyler—I mean, that's standard mystery novel stuff, process of elimination, economy of story, all that. He's the only significant person we've run across who's left. Dagan's dead. Lyndsey's dead. Jessica's on the run. Chester—I mean it can't be Chester. He's clearly a subplot."

"Aren't you the one who always reminds me, quote, ‘This isn't an episode of Law it was practically his, and they took it away from him and stuck him in that security job."

"No—the first killing. The woman who looked like Lyndsey."

"We talked about that too. The murderer made a mistake; they couldn't see her well in the fun house, and they thought she was Lyndsey."

That loose thread—that piece of the puzzle that no one had asked about—was so close. I groped to put it into words. "In a traditional murder, you examine the body for evidence. You examine the crime scene. You investigate the victim and work your way through the victim's life. You look for places where those elements intersect. You identify people who had a reason to want the victim dead. You identify people who had an opportunity. And then you try to match all those things up to identify the killer."

Fox was sitting up now too—only a shape in the dark, but staring at me. "But we can't do that. We don't know who the first victim was. And we haven't found anything at the crime scenes until the hammer. And since we don't know when exactly the killings happened, it's impossible to pin down opportunity."

"It all comes back to the bodies. If we could figure out—if we could figure out how the killer hid the bodies." Excitement made me walk straight into a Victorian console, but I barely felt it. " How . Not why. How did they get the bodies out of the fun house? Because it's not an investigation." I could feel myself speaking faster and faster. "It's not an investigation. It's a puzzle. It's a locked room mystery! "

I could hear Fox's frown even if I couldn't see it. "Didn't we already have one of those?"

"Because that's the real problem here. How did they get the bodies out of the fun house? Nobody saw them take the bodies. And the park was busy both nights. The deputies searched that place from top to bottom."

"You realize the fun house wasn't actually, um, locked."

"But it's the same idea. It's all about the appearance of the impossible. And the trick with a locked room mystery is figuring out the assumption. Okay, the most obvious solution is that the bodies are still inside the fun house."

"Definitely not," Fox said. "Like you said, the deputies searched it."

"Okay, then some of the other standards are—a secret passage. Are there tunnels? Some sort of hidden underground system beneath the park?"

"That seems like something the sheriff would have caught."

"Let's see. Sometimes there's a wall that's not really a wall."

"Also something the sheriff probably would have noticed."

"Or the person was never inside the room to begin with."

"But you touched the bodies."

I visualized the fun house. The churning throngs of guests on the park paths. And for a moment, despair welled up. It was impossible. How could someone get a body out of there without everyone in the park noticing?

"Oh, do you know what?" Fox said. "In one episode of Law & Order , I think the killer disguised himself as one of the first responders. Was that the one where Stabler took his shirt off?"

"But we're not trying to figure out how the killer—"

And then I stopped.

I remembered my first visit to Shipwreck Shores. The gleeful chaos. The constant movement. The noise. The press of bodies.

"Oh my God," I said.

Fox was frowning. "Wait, has Stabler taken his shirt off, or is that just my vision board?"

The bodies had been removed without anyone seeing them. But, of course, we had seen them. We'd all seen them. We'd looked right at them and watched them go past.

And then it all started to come together. The break-in at Chester's portrait studio. Dagan's body in the theater's upper lobby, and the crumpled picture of a young Lyndsey in a pirate costume, performing at the Treasure Chest. Lyndsey, who had been a loner when she'd been growing up—except for her theater friends. Lyndsey, who had wanted to move away from here, who wanted nothing to do with the park. Lyndsey, who had wanted to make the world a better place through her mission trips. Who had moved out east with cousins. Who hadn't come back for her own father's funeral. Who hadn't come back for years, not until she and Dagan showed up to take over the park.

"I know how they did it." I stumbled toward the stairs and managed to crack my knee against an enormous (and invisible) globe. "I know how they did it, and I know why, and they're going to get away with it unless we stop them tonight."

"Wait, what?" Fox's voice sounded thin and far off. "Dash, slow down. We have to call the sheriff—"

"That won't work," I said. "They won't be able to get a warrant. Even if they could, it'd be too late."

"Then call Bobby—"

I definitely was not going to call Bobby, not after how weird I'd made things. I said, "Don't tell Keme or Indira where I'm going."

"Dash, wait!" And then, with obvious frustration: "I don't even know where you're going."

But I was already sprinting up the stairs and out into the night.