Amanda’s mother, Cynthia Griffin, and the girl’s stepfather, Mike Griffin. On the drive over, Skylar had mentioned to Maggie that Mrs. Griffin’s family—the Vicks—owned several businesses in the area, including the meat-processing plant, a ranch, and two area banks. Maggie was sure she must have misunderstood about the banks—no one owned banks anymore, did they?

Skylar pulled up a chair, keeping a safe distance from the bed, unlike the menacing stance he had taken with Dawson. Whatever the sheriff’s intention, Maggie remained quiet. After her only question about the bite mark she stayed back out of Skylar’s way and out of the trailing vapor of Amanda’s annoying incense. She wanted to keep the girl off center and slightly outside her nice, warm comfort zone.

If it had been up to Maggie she would have questioned Amanda outside of her bedroom, another of Skylar’s decisions that she didn’t agree with, but not necessarily a bad one. Maggie decided to use it to her advantage. There was such a thing as a witness being too comfortable. Maybe she’d catch Amanda off guard with some of her own interrogation tricks, like simply standing instead of sitting. It made the witness have to keep track of two interrogators even if both weren’t asking questions. Being on different levels accentuated the effect. Sometimes the interrogated lost track of his or her story—or lie—needing to watch for a reaction from two people.

It appeared to be working.

The girl’s bloodshot eyes flitted from Skylar to Maggie and back to Skylar, trying to stay on the sheriff. She batted at her blond hair, pushing tangles out of her face. It looked as if she hadn’t brushed it yet today. She held on to a water bottle and absently took the cap off and screwed it back on, but Maggie noticed her coordination was off. Every few seconds Amanda stopped and gulped a few swallows like each sentence left her mouth dry.

“I know it’s not easy to talk about but can you tell us what you saw, Amanda?” Skylar’s questions came soft and gentle like he was coaxing a kitten out of a tree.

“It’s hard to describe,” she started to answer, eyes darting to Maggie. Her hands made the plastic water bottle crackle as she squeezed too hard and tightened the cap, then immediately started unscrewing it again.

“The lights came out of nowhere. We were, like, just sitting and talking. Then there’s this flash of light. It was like one of those big strobe flashes on a camera.”

She took a sip from the bottle. That was it. She was finished with her story. Maggie wanted to ask how soon had they seen the lights after they chewed on the salvia. She knew Amanda wouldn’t be confessing anytime soon to using any drug. Maggie also guessed the salvia wasn’t the girl’s first experimentation with drugs. Skylar had to see that, didn’t he? He’d questioned Dawson about drugs. Certainly he would ask Amanda.

“How about sound?” he said instead. “Did you hear anything unusual?”

“Oh yeah. It was really weird. Sort of like a hum. No, maybe more like a purr.”

“You mean a purr like an animal?”

Maggie could see the girl peeking out from behind a strand of hair, looking at Skylar as if waiting for him to give some hint as to the correct answer.

“I don’t think so. Then there was this sort of sizzle. You know like when you first throw a hamburger on the grill.”

Skylar winced at the comparison. If she wasn’t mistaken, Maggie thought the girl seemed pleased by his reaction.

“What made that sound?” Skylar asked. “Did it come from above? Did it seem like it was coming from the lights?”

This time Maggie had to stop herself from wincing. He was offering too much information. Why was he leading this girl?

Amanda simply shrugged and tried to put the cap back on the bottle. She missed. Looked down and tried again. Maggie noticed the girl’s hands were steady. There was no shake or tremble from ner vousness. She didn’t see any of the signs of fear in Amanda that she had seen in Dawson’s eyes. In fact there seemed to be nothing uncomfortable about recounting the incident, and Maggie realized it had nothing to do with her lack of coordination.

“Did you see what happened to your friends?”

This time she looked like she was actually thinking about the event for the first time.

“When the flashes went off, me and Courtney were sitting to one side. I got up and then I sort of pointed at the fireworks. It looks so pretty I can’t take my eyes away. I didn’t see Trevor and Kyle. Johnny was with us and he was sort of stumbling around because, you know, he’s looking up at the lights, too, and we’re all oohing and aahing.”

Maggie wished she had suggested they record the interview. She lost track of how many times the girl switched from past tense to present and back. Forensic linguistics was about as scientific as criminal profiling, but each had undeniable benefits. To find a probable truth in someone’s statement you analyzed not only their choice of words but also the tense. When describing an event from memory most people used past tense. If they switched to present at any time when telling the story, that part was more likely to be a fabrication than the truth. Amanda had switched tenses several times and without pause. She also managed to do so without giving them any details, so that her mingling of fact and fiction didn’t much matter.

“She needs to get some rest,” Amanda’s stepfather said from the doorway, and Maggie wondered how long he had been standing there. She hadn’t heard him come up the hallway. “Mandy wasn’t even supposed to be there last night.”

“That right?”

“She was supposed to be at Courtney’s studying. She’s been tired a lot lately. Too many demands on her time.”

Maggie watched Amanda while the men talked about her as if she wasn’t there. She caught the girl rolling her eyes. Both men missed it. Her stepfather seemed a bit too proud that Amanda was so popular that it would exhaust her this early in the school year. He sounded more worried about her overextending herself than about the fact that she had lied about her whereabouts. Either he didn’t know about her extracurricular activities outside of school or he didn’t want to know.

Griffin’s concern evidently was enough for Skylar. He flipped his notebook closed, satisfied to call it quits. When he stood up he saw Maggie still standing by the bookcase. He looked like he had forgotten about her.

“I think we’re done here. That is unless Agent O’Dell has any questions for Amanda.”

“Just one,” Maggie said and she patiently waited for Amanda’s eyes to flit back up to her. “Do you usually get high this early in the day?”

TWENTY-FOUR

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Velma Carter wiped her bloodshot eyes and couldn’t look at Platt.

“We were already short two people,” Carter explained. “I couldn’t call in sick another day.” She sunk her chin into her chest and shook her head. “Those poor babies. All my fault. I didn’t mean to make them sick.”

“But you didn’t think about that when you took off your gloves.” Roger Bix’s rage was brutal. He had been looking for someone to shred and now he believed he had found the culprit.

“Roger,” Platt tried to interrupt him.

“We’ll need to test you.” Bix was unrelenting. “See just what the hell you’ve been spreading.”

The woman started sobbing again. When Detective Racine brought her in the small office, the woman’s face was already red and blotchy. Racine hadn’t left and no one suggested she do so. She stood quietly aside, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Platt didn’t think she was comfortable with Bix’s approach, either.

“What the hell were you thinking,” Bix continued and this time Platt stepped in between the two.

“Ms. Carter, I’m Dr. Benjamin Platt.” He left out the “colonel.” No sense in putting this poor woman more on edge. “We’ll need to take a couple of test samples from you. Is that okay?” They’d need both blood and stool samples, but he’d tell her that later.

She pulled a tissue from somewhere up her sleeve and blew her nose. He could hear the rattle inside her chest. But it sounded like typical cold or flu symptoms. Nothing that would give almost seventy children such

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