looked to be tucked in for the night. James Johnny had yet to return to Stone Cross from his hunting trip. Temperatures were dropping, but according to Lieutenant Warr, the fog remained too thick for air travel. He was still at the office, spending the night there, he said, readying what few pieces he had so he could move them around the chess board the moment the fog lifted but before the front blew in off the Bering Sea. Troopers with the Alaska Bureau of Investigations in Anchorage were working up packages on the names Birdie had given Cutter. Full backgrounds would be available anytime. He’d call back when they were.
Judge Markham’s room was dark when they passed; the small piece of tape Cutter had left on the lower edge of the door was still there. No one had been in or out.
“Does this place seem haunted to you?” Lola said, glancing up and down the dark hall while Cutter used the key Birdie had given him to unlock the library. Lola didn’t exactly appear to be scared, just interested, like someone noting the color of the carpet. “Because I heard it’s haunted. A young girl who died here years ago is supposed to appear once in a while. You know, she just stands there and watches you . . .”
“As long as she doesn’t have long toenails,” Cutter said.
Lola frowned. “What?”
“Nothing,” Cutter said, easing open the door. “Just a story Birdie told me.”
Everyone else in the school was likely asleep, so he took care to be quiet, though all the other doors in the hall were shut and there was probably no need.
Lola shrugged since he didn’t engage with her ghost stories, and disappeared into the small book room off the library where she’d stowed her bags. Cutter laid out his air mattress and sleeping bag near the back wall between the stacks. The shelves were close enough that he could reach across with outstretched hands and touch books with the fingers of each hand. It wasn’t long before he had a reasonably comfortable nest beside a dusty Time Life set about seafarers. He fought the temptation to pull a volume and read, knowing he needed sleep more than a primer on windjammers or steamships. His brother, Ethan, would have gotten a kick out of this.
On his knees, Cutter took off his Colt and set it on the right side of his mattress next to a small Streamlight, both within easy reach from his sleeping bag. The Glock 27 would stay in the holster on the belt of the Fjällräven pants, which would eventually go beside the rolled fleece jacket he’d use for a pillow. It was like camping in a fort made of books. Flanked by shelves, he’d put the foot of his sleeping bag toward the library door. On the far side of the stack with the Time Life books to his right, a row of windows ran the length of the wall. He walked around the shelving and raised the mini-blinds a few inches, cranking the brass handle a couple of turns. The open window gave some ventilation, but there was more to it than that. Contrary to his present demeanor, Arliss had been timid as a boy, scared of the dark, nervous and jittery about what evil might be lurking outside. Grumpy hadn’t made light of the fears, but challenged young Arliss to sleep with the window open every night—to make anything out there more afraid of him than he was of it. Doors were one thing, Grumpy explained, but windows were only suggestions of security. They kept drunks from wandering in and provided an early warning if a bad guy did want to intrude, but, when you got right down to it, a thin piece of glass provided little more protection than a blanket fort. True security, Grumpy explained, lay with the individual. Ironically, the hard truth of his grandfather’s words made Arliss feel safer. Rain or shine, he’d slept with the window open since he was eight.
Window cracked, he’d just sat back on his bedroll to untie his boots when Lola called from around the chest-high shelves.
“You decent?”
Cutter pulled off a boot. “I’m still dressed,” he said. “Wouldn’t say decent.”
“You joke,” Lola said, mimicking the schoolgirls they’d seen earlier in the hall. She’d changed into a pair of gray sweatpants and a loose navy-blue T-shirt with the Marshals Service star silkscreened in gray on the chest. Her hair was down, slightly frizzed, thick