Carla was not helping. Everyone else was quiet as they waited in the parking lot for the police and the ambulance, which they could see approaching in a formal line a mile up the highway. Carla was shaking and crying and it took Ricky and Pete to hold her still while Surtees checked her pulse, “Just in case.” Of what? She kept saying “Oh my god,” rhythmically, and it seemed as though she’d been doing this for a half hour. Amy wanted to slap her. Carla, she recalled, was the one who had thought the Sniper mystery was cool. On top of which, she hadn’t even seen Frank’s body.

Carla hadn’t been alone with it in the dark for five minutes, turned to stone and staring, unable to move or make a sound or process a thought or do anything but go on staring, seeing more and more of Frank, who looked nothing like a pile of boulders. Frank had died wearing running shorts and Nikes and a sweatshirt and a watch. Frank wasn’t headless, literally. Frank’s head was just bent so far back that not even his jawline was visible above his neck. Amy couldn’t recall ever noticing that Frank had such a freakishly long neck. Probably he hadn’t. Not before.

Amy had been unable to move in any direction. Her ancient options—fight or flight—apparently shorted each other out. She was paralyzed, and noticed it, and went on breathing, shallowly and slowly. She had no urge to scream, although it would have been nice to tell someone about Frank. And then, magically, a cell phone appeared at her feet—well, at Frank’s feet—and she was able to reach down and pick it up and turn it on. For his cell phone screen Frank had selected a beach at sunset. The last caller was Chuck. (She had misheard that shrieking girl. She hadn’t screamed, “He’s dead,” but rather “His head! His head!”) Amy selected Chuck’s name and hit “enter.” On the second ring Chuck answered, sounding very, very relieved. “Where the hell are you, man?” he asked. “He’s right here,” said Amy. And when Chuck asked her where that was, she could only repeat, here. He’s here. Her voice had been calm, though. She hadn’t lost it, like Carla.

Now, as she watched the lead police car roll to a stop, Amy began seriously marshaling her thoughts. She had quite a story to tell them, and she guessed it was best to start in the foreground—this night, with all of the class here, looking for Frank and finding him—and then work back, naturally, filling in the story of the Sniper as the police asked the logical, inevitable questions. Who are you? Who are all these people? Why were you all here? What were you worried about, again?

“We have a thought,” said Edna, into Amy’s right ear.

Tiffany, at Amy’s left, said, “We assume you’re going to tell them everything?”

Amy looked at them. They were calm and alert. They looked like Amy felt. “Of course,” said Amy. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I agree,” said Edna. “But our thought is we probably shouldn’t call him ‘the Sniper.’”

“Oh, Lord,” said Amy. They were right. “Sniper” meant something specific to a cop. Things were bad enough without calling in S.W.A.T. teams and the FBI. Ahead of the crowd, Carla broke free, chugging toward the police. “Somebody grab Carla,” Amy said, in a voice she’d never used before, and Chuck and Pete each took an arm and turned Carla back toward the group. The class formed a loose circle, and they all looked at her. “We need to talk,” Amy said.

“I’m way ahead of you,” said Harry B. “There’s been a lot of speculation lately about the Sniper—”

“We’re not calling him that!” said Amy and Tiffany and Edna.

“Whatever. The point is, we have to look at this rationally. On the one hand, somebody in the group is playing head games. Tonight another group member is dead. Is there any reason to assume that these two things have anything to do with each other?”

Carla looked at Harry as though he had lost his mind. “What do you mean, ‘any reason’? My God! Who else could it be?”

“We don’t even know yet what happened to him,” said Dr. Surtees. “Obviously his neck is broken, but we don’t know if it’s by accident or—”

“Accident!”

“The point is,” said Harry, “we’ve got to tell them why we’re all here, and we can’t be hysterical when we do it.”

Everybody looked at Carla. “What?” she said. “I’m not hysterical! What’s the matter with everybody?”

“Here they come,” said Harry, coming to stand beside Amy. “If they ask, I’m your lawyer.”

“You mean, lie?” What an extraordinary suggestion.

“Of course not. I’ll actually be your lawyer. If you want me to.”

“Why would I—”

“Which one of you called the police?” The cop was a little taller than Amy and carried a gun. So did the other three with him. She couldn’t see their faces, since the light was behind them.

“I did,” said Amy. “Would you like to see the body?”

Behind her, Tiffany started giggling. The cop craned his neck to get a look at whoever found this situation so damn funny. “I’m sorry,” said Tiffany, “it’s just that—” and she was off again.

“Steady on,” said Edna.

“It’s been a long night,” Amy said, by way of explanation. She could feel her own hysterics lurking just offstage, waiting to grab hold at any moment. “Why don’t we all—”

“Would you like to see the body?” gasped Tiffany.

“I know,” said Amy, “it sounds like, ‘Would you like to see what we’ve done to the nursery?’”

“It really has been a long night,” said Harry, stepping manfully into the breach.

“And we’re tired,” said Amy, looking closely into the cop’s deep-set eyes, “and I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ll show you where it is.”

All the time Amy was leading them back to Frank’s body she thought about the deadpan expression on the cop’s face. He was young and clean-shaven, and of course in uniform, but he had old eyes, and he reminded her of Dr. Scherm, her Bangor psychiatrist, whose company she had kept for two months after Max died. That same studied blank expression, except that in the case of the $100-an-hour man it was a professional affectation. She had loathed Dr. Scherm for it, but she sympathized with the cop. Police spend half their time getting evaded and shined on and lied to. Amy, for instance, had always considered herself a law-abiding citizen, but just now she and her law-abiding cohorts had been discussing how much information to withhold from these people.

“He’s over there,” she finally said, pointing.

The police huddled over poor Frank and waited for the ambulance guys, who followed with a stretcher. Amy couldn’t hear what anybody was saying, but they were all shaking their heads, and then one of them must have said something funny, because two of the cops threw their heads back and laughed. Occasionally the lead cop looked over in Amy’s direction, but he never waved her over.

“This is going to take forever,” Ricky said. “The crime scene techs haven’t gotten here yet, and you know what a big deal that’s going to be.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Harry.

Amy had no idea what a crime scene tech was, but listening to Ricky and Harry argue, she learned that when there was a suspicious death, nobody could touch the body before it was specially photographed and measured and generally assessed, in a high-tech way, for the subtlest clues. This was according to Ricky. Harry kept saying, “Yeah, but this is Encinitas.” Apparently, whatever Harry meant by that, he was right, because before long one of the ambulance guys unfolded a long black thing and disappeared with it into the knot of uniformed people.

“Oh, my God,” said Carla. “It’s a body bag!”

Amy prepared herself mentally for the sight of Frank Waasted’s body, shrouded in black plastic, as they carried it past her on the stretcher. It took a long time to materialize, and when it did it was both less and more than what she’d prepared for. From a distance the long plastic bag looked like a python with eyes considerably bigger than its stomach. And up close it still didn’t look like a shrouded body. It was as if someone had shoved an armchair into a big and tall garment bag. The carriers had a tough time balancing it on the stretcher. “Rigor,” said Dr. Surtees.

Amy watched as they tipped Frank into the ambulance, which almost immediately started up and drove out of the lot, followed by two of the cop cars, leaving one. The lead cop, practically as an afterthought, checked back with Amy and the group.

“Here it comes,” said Amy. “We’re not calling him the Sniper, but we have to fill him in on what’s been happening. Calmly.”

“I really don’t appreciate this,” said Carla.

“We’ve got your number,” said the deadpan cop, “and you’ve got everyone else’s. That right?”

“Yes, of course,” said Amy, “but don’t you want to—”

“Tomorrow,” said the cop. “Or Friday. Depends on what the coroner says.”

“Officer,” said Chuck. “This is wrong. This man shouldn’t be dead.”

“Tell me about it,” said the cop, who obviously didn’t want anybody to tell him about it.

“Do you at least get that he was supposed to be with us in class tonight, and he was supposed to actually bring something for everybody to read, and that this was a man who was absolutely totally punctual, by which I mean that if he said he was going to bring something he was going to bring it, and now he’s horribly dead?” Carla’s voice was unpleasantly pitched, but she wasn’t hysterical anymore.

The cop sighed. “I can tell you this much.” He looked at Amy and away from Carla. “His car’s back there.” He pointed up, toward the top of the bluff. “Parked at a picnic area a half mile down, more or less directly above where the body ended up. There’s no sign of a struggle up there. But that’s where he was.”

“So, he fell?”

“One way or the other. Happens more often than you’d think.” He turned away and headed for the car, which had already started up. “I’ll get back to you,” he said over his shoulder.

“Don’t strain yourself,” muttered Carla, “you smug bastard.”

After the car drove off, Carla turned to Amy. “We have to go up there and look around,” she said. “Maybe he left something.”

Harold warned that they shouldn’t disturb a crime scene, but Ricky and Chuck agreed with Carla. “It’s the least we can do,” said Chuck.

It was after three in the morning. “Suit yourselves,” said Amy. “I’m worn out and probably in shock, and I’m going home to see my dog.”

 

She left them standing there, without even a promise to get in touch. Of course she would, but she had to get away. She was numb on the drive home, and when she let herself in, her little house was warm, and her little big dog was grudgingly happy to see her. She made herself a giant mug of real cocoa, got into bed, and settled in for a long insomniac wait for dawn. The shock would wear off any minute and she would take what had happened to Frank into herself, and it would change her forever. There were emotions to be experienced. Perhaps fear; perhaps even terror. Certainly sorrow. With any luck, she wouldn’t suffer long in the dark. The sun would rise in a few hours and help put it all in some kind of perspective. It was odd, she thought, how stoical she felt. She closed her eyes, just for a minute, and slept deeply.