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“He sent me back here to find out what you know,” Kenya whispered. She was massively unhappy about her errand, and though she’d always liked me okay, she didn’t think I could do anything to help the police. She thought Andy was a fool for stalling his career by asking me to sit back there, concealed.

Then I caught something else, something faint and weak.

I jumped to my feet and grabbed Kenya by the shoulder. “Look in the garbage can, the one loaded on the cart, right now!” I said, my voice low but (I hoped) urgent enough to light a fire under Kenya. “He’s in the can, he’s still alive!”

Kenya wasn’t rash enough to leap out from behind the curtain, jump down from the stage, and dash over to the custodian’s cart. She gave me a hard, hard, look. I stepped out from behind the curtain to watch as Kenya made her way down the little stairs at the front of the stage, and went over to where Maddy Pepper was sitting, her fingers tapping against her legs. Miss Maddy wanted a cigarette. Then she realized that Kenya was approaching her, and a dull alarm sounded in her brain. When the custodian saw Kenya actually touch the edge of the large garbage can, she leaped to her feet and yelled, “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to!”

Everyone in the room turned to the commotion, and everyone’s face wore identical expressions of horror. Andy strode over, his face hard. Kenya was bent over the can, rummaging, tossing a snowstorm of used tissues over her shoulder. She froze for a second when she found what she’d been looking for. She bent over, almost in danger of falling into the can.

“He’s alive,” she called to Andy. “Call 911!”

“She was mopping when he ran back into the school to get the picture,” Andy said. We were sitting in the cafeteria all by ourselves. “I don’t know if you could hear all that, there was so much noise in the room.”

I nodded. I’d been able to hear her thoughts as she’d spoken. All these years on her job, and she’d never had a problem with a student that wasn’t easily resolved with a few strong words on her part. Then, today, Cody had come running into the classroom, pollen all over his shoes and pants cuffs, tracking up Maddy’s freshly mopped floor. She’d yelled at him, and he’d been so startled that his feet had slipped on the wet floor. The little boy had gone over backward and hit his head on the floor. The corridor had indoor-outdoor carpeting to reduce the noise, but the classrooms did not, and his head had bounced on the linoleum.

Maddy had thought she’d killed him, and she’d hastily concealed his body in the nearest receptacle. She’d realized she’d lose her job if the child was dead, and on an impulse she’d tried to hide him. She had no plan and no idea of what would happen. She hadn’t figured out how she’d dispose of his body, and she hadn’t counted on how miserable she’d feel about the whole thing, how guilty.

To keep my part of it silent, which the police and I both agreed was absolutely the best idea, Andy suggested to Kenya that she’d suddenly realized the only receptacle in the school she hadn’t searched was Maddy Pepper’s trash can. “That’s exactly what I thought,” Kenya said. “I should search it, at least poke around and see if an abductor had tossed something into it.” Kenya’s round face was unreadable. Kevin looked at her, his brows drawn together, sensing something beneath the surface of the conversation. Kevin was no fool, especially where Kenya was concerned.

Andy’s thoughts were clear to me. “Don’t ever ask me to do this again,” I told him.

He nodded in acquiescence, but he was lying. He was seeing before him a vista of cleared cases, of malefactors locked up, of how clean Bon Temps would be when I’d told him who all the criminals were and he’d found a way to charge them with something.

“I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I’m not going to help you all the time. You’re a detective. You have to find things out in a legal way, so you can build a court case. If you use me all the time, you’ll get sloppy. The cases will fall through. You’ll get a bad