Jack grinned at him. "Getting frisky."
Molly blushed and looked away.
Vance waved the words away. "Bullshit. You two aren't a couple. You told me that yourselves. And even if you were, you've got a room at the hotel. So, again, what were you doing there?"
Slowly, Jack reached up to scratch his head. Then he stood up from the table and walked toward the barred window in the back. He glanced out at the stars.
"We got lucky," Jack said, back to all of them. "We were driving around, just checking out the town. It's nice up here, but I don't have to tell you that. We went down the wrong road and drove into the library lot to turn around. We heard screaming, glass shattering, and we got up to run toward the front doors just as they came outside with the girl. I'm guessing her father was already dead inside. They ran off with her into the woods, and we followed. Her screams led us to that clearing, but by the time we got there, she was already dead."
"And these mysterious killers, they had the guns?" Tackett asked, nearly spitting with his disgust at what he perceived as an outrageous lie.
"They tried to kill us. They missed. We got lucky, I guess," Jack replied. Then he turned and glared at the two lawmen. "If you could call this luck."
Tackett stood and stalked across the room toward Jack. The sheriff glared at him, tried to force him to make eye contact. Finally Jack turned to meet his penetrating gaze.
"You killed the girl," Tackett said, voice cold. "You killed Kenny Oberst. And I'm wondering if you have an alibi for two other recent murders up here."
Jack sneered at him. "For Christ's sake, Sheriff, even you don't believe that. So why do you have us locked up in here?"
"Why don't I believe that?" the sheriff asked, incredulous.
Molly's eyes lit up. "The blood."
"What?" Deputy Vance asked.
"There's no blood on our clothes," she went on. Then she turned to gaze at Jack and the sheriff, and knew it was true. "If we had killed that girl, we'd be covered in her blood. We're not."
Tackett's nostrils flared and he lifted his chin slightly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded map. "I found this in your pocket, Jack." He unfolded it.
Molly cringed. On the map were all the marks they had made when charting where the Prowlers had left the corpses over the years. It was a map of where murders had been committed in the area around Buckton, going back decades.
"I'm not going to ask what the x's are just yet. For now, answer me this. These three," he pointed to a small cluster on the page, "they're at the old Bartleby place. That's where we arrested you. Want to explain that?"
Deputy Vance stepped up to study the map, then glared at them both. "They told me they'd stumbled on that place hiking the other day, and were trying to find it again so they could have a picnic there."
Jack only glared at them. "There's no blood on us, Sheriff. How do you explain that?"
"Maybe I don't have to. You're in this. You were the only ones there. And I know those guns were yours. You can't even tell us what these killers supposedly looked like."
A shiver went through Molly, but Jack only laughed. He walked back to the chair, shaking his head, and sat down again. When he glanced up at the sheriff and Deputy Vance again, the almost perverse smile was still there, but his eyes were filled with pain. This was the Jack she knew, the boy she had been through high school with, the one who had worked so hard and lost so much and never been anything but good because he didn't know how to be anything else.
The moment he revealed that pain within him, Molly knew that he was going to do something stupid.
"Jack - " she began, trying to caution him.
But all caution was gone from him.
"You never asked us," Jack said. His eyes went from Tackett to Vance, and then back. "How come you never asked us before this? What they looked like, I mean. I'm guessing it's because you already know."
Molly stiffened. She had her own suspicions about the sheriff, for a lot of reasons, but she doubted that bringing them up was the wisest thing to do.
Especially if they were true.
The gray box of a room seemed to grow smaller around them. Tackett crossed his arms and stood officiously over them. Deputy Vance glanced back and forth between his boss and his suspects with an expression of utter confusion on his features. But it was clear he sensed that something unusual was going on here. A weird energy crackled in the room.
"Jack," Molly began again. "Maybe now's the time for that lawyer."
"Y'know," Sheriff Tackett observed, arms crossed over his belly, not even bothering to tuck his shirt in where it had slipped out of his pants, "I'm not sure your boy here wants a lawyer."
"What good would it do?" Jack replied harshly.
But Deputy Vance was still stuck on Jack's comment about the killers. He cleared his throat, scratched his head, and hefted his gun belt around his hips. It was something he did from time to time, Molly had noticed, and she wondered if it was his way of reminding himself of his authority.
"What about these supposed killers?" the deputy prodded. "I don't like the sound of what you're suggesting, Jack. Maybe you want to elaborate on that?"
Molly was startled when Jack turned to look at her. His smile faltered as he reached out and took her hand.
"Talk to them, Molly."
"What's the point?" she asked, surprising herself. "They had to have found the bodies, which means they're just playing with us now."
Deputy Vance stiffened. "Bodies? More than one? What are you confessing to here?"
Jack closed his eyes to
