Spaulding didn’t get out of bed in time to catch the bus the next day. Aunt Gwen would never know the difference. Anyway, she’d write a note to excuse him if he asked. Whatever Katrina was going to say about his family at school, he didn’t need to be there for it.

And Marietta—she’d be right there adding details, telling everyone every stupid thing he’d ever said. She’d talk about him investigating Mr. Radzinsky’s house because he thought it was haunted—and she’d conveniently forget to mention that he was right. She’d tell everyone he thought the grave robberies were the rise of the living dead, skipping the part about having seen the living dead herself.

Spaulding scooted farther under his blankets until he was in perfect darkness at the foot of his bed. There was a hiss as he squeezed his toes down into the space between the end of the mattress and the tucked-in sheet.

He let out a strangled scream. “Darn it, David Boa! Get out of there!”

The snake’s head popped up. His golden eyes gleamed faintly in the gloom under the blankets. He slid forward, nudged his head under Spaulding’s chin, and curled himself into a snug, contented coil that took up half the bed.

Great. He’d been asleep with a man-eating snake in his bed.

But the more Spaulding thought about it, David didn’t act like a snake who would eat anyone. No wonder Mr. R. had let his guard down. In fact . . .

Spaulding threw back the blankets and sat up, frowning. Something had been bothering him about the conversation he’d had with Mr. Radzinsky the other night—something to do with David Boa and Mr. R.’s death. Spaulding had almost forgotten about it after everything else that had happened, but he knew part of that conversation didn’t add up.

He snatched his notebook from the nightstand and yanked the cap of his pen off with his teeth. He had to get his thoughts organized.

He chewed the pen cap, shifting it from one corner of his mouth to the other. No matter how he looked at it, there wasn’t any explanation for how anyone could have known that David ate his owner. Besides, it was awfully hard to believe it of the snake once you got to know him. He adored Mr. Radzinsky.

On the Facts side, Spaulding added,

Could it have been a heart attack? That would explain how he’d died so suddenly just sitting at his desk. He pictured it: Mr. R. slumped at his desk, lifeless. Days pass. No one notices he’s missing, since no one ever saw him anyway. A growing smell drifts through the neighborhood until it can’t be ignored anymore. Someone calls the police. The police arrive and find the body.

But that wasn’t how it had happened—Mr. R.’s body was never found.

Okay, rewind. Body sitting there, time passing. David grows anxious—then hungry . . . too hungry to help himself?

No. As Spaulding well knew, the snake could get in and out of the house. And he’d kept himself fed all this time with no problem.

No matter how you looked at it, it always came back to the same question: Where had Mr. Radzinsky’s body gone? And the answer to that question had to be connected to the question of how anyone had known he was dead.

Maybe the connection was that one person had known he was dead—the person who had killed him.

The image of Mr. Radzinsky sitting at his desk writing his angry letter floated into Spaulding’s head once again—only this time, there was something new in the scene.

A shadowy figure loomed behind Mr. Radzinsky. It stepped forward, crept up silently behind him, reached out its hands . . .

Spaulding opened his eyes quickly. That was as far as he wanted to let that play.

But there was another one for the questions column:

Maybe Mr. R was right, and the letter was in a police evidence bag somewhere.

Or maybe it had been taken by the same person who had disposed of the body.

Mr. Radzinsky had said the letter had been another complaint about Slecht-Tech. What if Von Slecht and Dr. Darke had decided they couldn’t let Mr. R keep drawing attention to what they were doing at the factory?

That settled it. He couldn’t just lie here feeling sorry for himself. If Mr. R had really been murdered, someone had to make sure the murderers were brought to justice. And Spaulding knew just where to start looking for proof. Maybe he couldn’t get inside the factory—but maybe the factory wasn’t the only place where Slecht-Tech’s secrets were kept.

With a quick apology to David, he swung his legs out of bed. He had a counseling appointment to get to.

Spaulding rode as fast as he could to school. He didn’t have much time before his appointment, and he still had to work out a plan.

He dumped his bike in some bushes at the edge of the parking lot and slipped around to the back of the building. Cautiously, he crept along the wall, staying low and counting windows until he was pretty sure he was outside Dr. Darke’s office. He peered up over the windowsill.

Jackpot. There was Dr. Darke, sitting ramrod straight at the desk, her back to the window. She was tapping away at her laptop, and her ever-present black briefcase was open beside her.

Spaulding ducked down again, chewing his thumbnail. How could he get her out of there? He considered pulling the fire alarm, but no doubt she’d grab her laptop and briefcase before she left the building. What he needed was a short distraction, something quick enough that she’d leave her things behind, knowing she was coming back soon.

His eyes fell on a wire that ran along the outside of the building and entered the wall through a hole drilled just below her office window. The phone line. What if she got a phone call, but the phone in her office wasn’t working? She’d have to go take the call in the secretary’s office, wouldn’t she?

Carefully, Spaulding tugged the wire away from the wall. Just like everything else in the school, the phone line was old and falling apart. The brittle casing cracked as soon as he touched it, which made him feel a little less bad about damaging school property. He pulled the wire taut and sawed at it with a sharp rock until it snapped.

Then he slithered off through the shrubbery until he felt he was a safe distance away. He took out his phone and dialed the school office. “Dr. Darke, please,” he said when the secretary picked up.

He was put on hold for a long time. Finally, the secretary came back on the line. “Her extension doesn’t seem to be working,” she said, sounding annoyed. “Perhaps I can just take a message and have her call you back later?”

“No, I must speak to her at once,” Spaulding said, pitching his voice as low as he could. “This is her business partner, Mr. Von Slecht. Tell her it’s urgent she come to the phone.” He held his breath and waited for the secretary to tell him to quit messing around.

“Oh, yes, sir!” the secretary said quickly. “I’ll go get her, sir.”

Spaulding’s eyebrows crept upward. His plan was actually working. At this rate he might have to reconsider becoming a researcher when he grew up and look into secret agenting instead.

As soon as she put him on hold again, he hung up and ran to the nearest entrance, which led into the hallway where Dr. Darke’s office was. He waited. A few minutes later, the secretary appeared, bustling over to Dr. Darke’s door. She knocked and spoke to Dr. Darke for a moment, and then they walked off together. Dr. Darke looked concerned.

As soon as they were out of sight, Spaulding raced down the hall, his sneakers silent on the linoleum. He’d bought himself all the time he could, but he knew it wouldn’t be much.

In Dr. Darke’s office, her laptop was closed, but the briefcase was still open. He’d only have time to check one or the other. The laptop would probably require a password, so he went for the briefcase.

It was packed with manila file folders—she seemed to carry half of Slecht-Tech around with her. Hopefully that meant there was a good chance of finding something useful. But as he flipped through, nothing seemed unusual. In fact, everything was extremely dull. Employee files, budget files, invoices, shipping receipts . . . Everything was neatly labeled, and every folder contained exactly what the label said.

He was starting to lose hope when he noticed a single, unlabeled folder. Inside, a few newspaper clippings rested atop a stapled sheaf of perhaps twenty or thirty printed pages.

Spaulding stared at Mr. Radzinsky’s name. There was something ominous about that red circle drawn around it like a target.

The other clippings were more of the same. Each letter described the odd noises, lights, and clouds of strange-smelling smog that Mr. Radzinsky had witnessed coming from the factory while the town slept.

Then other people began writing in response. Some defended Slecht-Tech and called Mr. Radzinsky a crackpot. But others said they believed the factory was still running. Several demanded someone be sent out to inspect the factory and enforce regulations.

Next, Spaulding picked up the stapled sheaf of papers. At first he couldn’t figure out what he was reading.

It wasn’t until he read “6:00 to 7:30 p.m. — feeding, grooming, and talking to snake” that he understood. It was surveillance data on Mr. Radzinsky. Pages and pages of it. They’d been watching him for weeks before he died.

The file contained nothing else. No comments; no memos discussing what to do with the surveillance information; no statements issued to the paper in response to the bad publicity. It didn’t really prove anything, he supposed, beyond the fact Von Slecht had ways of spying on people. It could be they’d merely kept tabs on Mr. Radzinsky and the reaction his letters received.

But as Spaulding shuffled the papers back into order, a small, tightly folded paper fell out of the stack. He picked it up. It was a different kind of paper than the rest, thick and textured. Stationery.

He unfolded it carefully.

Spaulding’s heart started racing.

This was it. The last letter. And there was only one way it could have come to be here.

His stomach roiled. He folded the paper up again quickly, careful not to touch the brown stains. Just as he laid the folder back in the briefcase, he heard footsteps in the hallway—the sharp, clacking footsteps of someone wearing high heels.