The walk back was silent, and it was with heavy steps that all three reentered Brookline. The dorm has never looked so ugly before, Dan thought, so hulking and dilapidated. Now it was the scene of a murder and a possible attack, to say nothing of the grisly experiments it had once hidden away.

Jordan led them down the hall to his room. As he dug for the key in his pocket, Dan wondered what Abby would say when she saw the room papered in Jordan’s mathematical scrawl.

But when Abby stepped into the room behind Jordan, there was no surprised gasp, no cry of horror. The room was clean. Not one piece of yellow paper was in sight, the desk and bed were bare, and there were even a couple of posters on the wall. There was also no sign of the mutilated photographs.

Dan looked at Jordan, but Jordan had slumped on the bed and was staring down at his feet. For a moment, Dan doubted his memory. Could he have just imagined the way the room had been? The photographs? Surely it was strange that Yi hadn’t mentioned anything about the paper explosion to Dan and Abby when he told them about how worried he was about Jordan. Or maybe Jordan had cleaned up to freak Dan out deliberately. There were those two photographs he’d defaced, after all. Now that Dan thought about it, maybe Jordan was the one hiding the scratched-out picture of the warden.

But could Jordan really be behind all the shit that was happening to him? It was the second time that night Dan found himself asking this question.

Abby put a kettle on Jordan’s hot plate, then joined Jordan on the bed.

“Okay, so I know we’re all feeling a little freaked out and distraught right now, but there’s something I need to tell you guys,” she said. She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, easing into her next words with that delicate earnestness that Dan found so endearing. “My aunt Lucy is still alive.”

A grown-up Lucy? So she hadn’t died after the operation?

“But how did you . . .” Jordan trailed off.

“Find out?” Abby finished.

Dan wanted to know, too. Abby had clearly been doing her share of snooping, and she’d managed to keep it incredibly well hidden. They had that in common, then.

“You know that tiny little church on the way to Camford?” Abby said. “Dan and I passed it when we went to dinner that night, and I thought, well, maybe they’d have a record of Lucy. I mean, supposing she had been here as a little girl, I figured she couldn’t have gone far when Brookline closed.”

“Okay . . . ?” Dan said, marveling at her calm rationality.

“I went yesterday afternoon. The pastor there was in his office—he’s this nice old man, even shorter than I am—and he was very helpful. I told him I was looking for information on my lost aunt who lived in Camford in the late 1960s. He got out the old baptism registry, and we just started going through the names.”

Jordan was aghast. Dan hoped he was hiding it better, but he felt the same way.

“There she was, 1973. Baptized with a whole group of kids from the Camford orphanage when she was thirteen. The orphanage is long gone, of course, but the important thing is she made it out of here and stayed in Camford. Like I said. Et voilà.”

“Oh my God, you actually found her? Did you talk to her?” Jordan blurted out.

“No, I didn’t quite find her. Not yet, anyway.”

“This is a lot to take in,” said Dan. “I mean . . . you’re sure it’s her? You’re sure it’s your aunt?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” Abby replied. “The name . . . the location . . . the timing . . . Do you know what Occam’s razor means? It means if there are lots of possible explanations, the simplest one is probably right.”

“Who are you and what you have done with Abby?” Jordan said, and Dan laughed before he could stop himself. But when Abby just continued to stare at them, Jordan finally threw up his arms in a shrug. “Oh, what the hell. After everything that’s happened, I’m pretty much willing to believe anything at this point.”

Dan agreed. They were way beyond coincidences. And maybe now that they were all being so honest, Abby and Jordan could help him put his own puzzle pieces into place.

“Look, guys, there’s something I need to tell you, too. I—” He faltered. He’d never be as bold or open as Abby. “I did some online research on Brookline.”

He took a deep, centering breath. “Yi told me that when Felix found Joe he was propped up in a weird position. And then tonight, when I found Yi in the stairwell, he was posed strangely, too. It wouldn’t matter, but there’s mention of this guy on the page that I found. . . . He was one of the patients here who was a murderer. A serial killer. He would kill people and then set them up in these tableaux, posed like statues. . . .”

Reportedly, the victims posed to dance looked remarkably convincing.

“Dan, what are you saying?” Abby asked.

“He was called the Sculptor, and he was here, at Brookline. I . . . also found a card about him in the old wing. That time when Joe caught us. According to the card he was cured, but according to the website no one knows what happened to him. What if he’s still around? I mean, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Just like you said about Lucy: Why go far when he could just use his old home as a hunting ground?” Dan wished he hadn’t phrased it that way. The thought of being hunted by that monster . . . God, could the Sculptor be his stalker? Did he somehow find out a kid was coming here who had the same name as the warden, the man who had performed bizarre experiments on him?

“You have to go to the police with this,” Jordan said.

“And tell them what? That a man who was treated here years ago is back for revenge?” It sounded absurd coming out of his mouth. “Why would they believe me?”

“I don’t care if they believe you!” Jordan shouted. He stormed to the door, throwing it open. “Yi was attacked. My roommate was attacked. Joe was killed. Anything you know, anything that might help . . . We owe it to them to tell the cops.”

“Jordan’s right,” Abby said. She gave Dan a sympathetic smile. “You don’t need to mention the old wing at all.” It was like she’d read his mind. He felt a little guilty that she knew the real reason he was apprehensive to approach the cops.

Dan finally nodded. “You’re right. I could just point them to the stuff I found online.”

Not to me. Not to Daniel Crawford.

“It’s something, at least,” Abby agreed. “Let’s find an officer now and get it out of the way.”

In the hall, it didn’t take long to track down a roaming policeman. Jordan and Abby flanked Dan as he approached, as if they were worried he might retreat.

“Excuse me,” Dan said, a bit sheepishly. Police always made him nervous, even when he hadn’t done anything wrong. The cop turned. The name stitched on his uniform was “Teague.” He was short, broad through the shoulders, and had a brown mustache that was just beginning to turn gray. “Excuse me? Hi. I’m a student at the program here. . . . I just wanted to bring some information to your attention, Officer.”

“Oh. And what would that be?” the cop said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well . . . It’s just that I was doing some reading about Brookline online. Out of curiosity, you know, to learn more about the school and so on.”

“A serial killer lived at the asylum,” Jordan burst out. No turning back now . . .

“Go on,” Teague said with a nod.

But Dan could already tell this was pointless. The officer had that look on his face, the skeptical one where a smile wasn’t a smile but a subtle hint that, while he might be listening, he wasn’t the least bit interested in taking a bunch of freaked-out kids seriously.

Careful to leave out anything he had learned from his trips to the basement, Dan told the cop everything he knew about the Sculptor. He mentioned the similarity between the murders back in the sixties and what had happened to Joe, and now Yi.

“I’ll make a note of it,” Teague said when Dan finished.

“You didn’t even write anything down,” Jordan pointed out tartly.

“I’ll make a note of it.” The cop gave Jordan a long, cold look. “Look, I’ve lived in Camford all my life. We know about the Sculptor, okay? You couldn’t grow up here and not hear about all the crazies who were sent here. Especially that man. Dennis Heimline. That’s a name I won’t forget.” He tugged down the edge of his uniform and leaned closer to Dan. “He died in ’72, the same year this place got shut down.”

Dead? Had Sal Weathers gotten his wires crossed? Dan wasn’t sure who he trusted less, a crazy self-defined historian or a local cop. But it would make sense that the police would have kept tabs on Heimline.

“It could be a copycat,” Dan suggested. “It’s not hard to find out about the Sculptor online, anyone could look it up and mimic the crimes.”

The cop sighed, waving him off. “Look, kid, we got our man from last night in custody. This thing tonight? It was an accident. Boy slipped, fell, what have you. So this?” He gestured at them. “What you’re doing, is scared talk. You should go see one of the counselors, and stop chasing ghosts.”