I took a breath and forged ahead. “Better than not knowing if—” I stopped. I’d almost said Fritz’s name aloud. “Better than not knowing if a student is dead or alive,” I said.
Ren considered me. “I don’t think the Jarrars could appreciate that right now,” he said.
Sam stirred and leaned forward. “Ren, what’s Travis have to say about all this?” he asked.
Ren reluctantly shifted his attention away from me and eyed Sam. Thank you, Sam, I thought. “He’s flying back tomorrow morning,” Ren said. “He doesn’t think we should do anything else until then regarding the students.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “One of their friends just died, Ren,” he said. “They’re going to be upset.”
“I’m upset.” Ren brought his hand flat down on the desktop, smacking it hard enough to make all of us jump. “How careless are we?” he asked the room. “How utterly, criminally careless? How in God’s name did that boy get hold of a shotgun?” He swiveled in his chair so that he looked directly at me. “Matthias, you were on duty this afternoon. Where were you when this happened?”
I stared blankly at him for a moment, feeling as if we were all riding together in a car and Ren had just spun the wheel and veered onto the wrong exit ramp. “Uh,” I said, instantly regretting it—Ren was the kind of man who would hate people who said uh and um. “I was on the infirmary porch, talking with Porter. We were talking about—a book,” I finished rather lamely.
“And while you were talking about a book, Terence Jarrar was shot.”
“Ren,” Sam said.
“How did that boy get a shotgun?” Ren asked. The question was asked of the entire room, but he was looking directly at me.
“No one signed it out —” I managed to say.
“Signed it out?” Ren looked at me incredulously. “Do you think I give a damn about a piece of paper? Where’s your key?”
I reached into my pocket and took out the master key—it was a single key on an old plastic Blackburne Lions key chain that would get passed to whoever was on duty. I held the key out to Ren, who took it and shut it in a drawer. “Who else used the key today?” he asked. “Did you give it to another faculty member? A student?”
Realization and fear shot through me, lighting up my spine like a phosphorescent tube. Ren thought Terence had gotten the shotgun because of me, because of a mistake I had made. Some students brought their own shotguns to school to use when skeet shooting or bird hunting, both under close supervision. The few student-owned shotguns we had were kept in a gun cabinet in a locked closet in Stilwell Hall, at the bottom of the stairs that led from the admin hall down to the bottom floor, where the game rooms and mailboxes and the Brickhouse were. My master key would unlock that closet. I hadn’t given the key to anyone—it had been in my pocket all day—but Ren’s accusations threw me off and made me look guilty, which was a wicked sort of self-perpetuating cycle: I thought I looked guilty, which made me act as if I were, which further increased my fear of how guilty I looked.
“Matthias,” Sam said, not unkindly, “could anyone have gotten your key? Either they borrowed it or maybe they knew where you kept it?”
I shook my head. “It was in my pocket all day. Plus there’s a padlock on the gun cabinet, right?”
Ren leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers like a judge in a courtroom drama. “There is,” he said. “A combination lock. It’s still on the cabinet. I checked it myself. And there’s a shotgun missing from the cabinet.”
After a pause, Sam asked, “Is it Terence’s?”
“We’ll have to confirm with the sheriff,” Ren said, folding his steepled fingers together. “He kept the shotgun they found next to Terence for evidence. But for now, yes, it looks like the same gun.”
I was about to protest my innocence again—and likely dig an even larger hole for myself—when Porter spoke for the first time. “I have a question.” He looked terrible, pale and almost sallow, as if he’d become physically ill from what had happened. “The police are treating his death as an accident, right? That he slipped or something and the gun went off?”
Ren nodded slowly—his radar was up. “That’s correct,” he said evenly.
Sam frowned. “What are you thinking, Porter?”
“I’m wondering if Terence might have killed himself,” Porter said. “Purposefully.”
Joyner’s eyes fluttered. “Suicide?” he asked, his voice rising a notch.
Ren spread his hands and placed them flat upon the desk, as if he were about to push himself up. “That’s speculation, Porter. We don’t know what happened out there. We need to let the police conduct their investigation. Until then”—his eyes swept the room—“I don’t want anyone spreading rumors. The Jarrars are coming tomorrow. God knows they don’t need to hear something like that.” He leaned back in his chair and sighed, then turned to the chaplain. “Jim, you might get a few calls tonight and tomorrow. Please minister to the boys as needed.” Joyner jerked his head in a nod. “Porter,” Ren continued, and I saw Porter look up from his lap, “you’ll need to keep an eye on the rest of your advisory.”
Porter said nothing for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course,” he said. His earlier determination seemed to have been snuffed out, and now he looked like a mournful, washed-up coach. “Poor kid,” he murmured. “I just took him to Charlottesville last week.”
Gently, Sam asked, “Matthias, could you gather all of his personal things in his room? I think that if we packed all that up for the parents, it would be easier for them. And for his roommate, too.”
“Of course,” I said. Something sticky and solid had formed in my throat, and I coughed to try to clear it. “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
As I walked out of Ren Middleton’s office, I realized there must have been a very similar meeting the night Fritz disappeared, perhaps even in that same room. It wasn’t a reassuring thought. As children, we assume adults will take charge when calamity strikes, that they will redress wrongs and make things right in the world. What I had just witnessed seemed more like a dutiful but resigned prayer that all would be well.
I left Stilwell Hall and crossed the darkened Lawn to Lawson-Parker, wanting nothing more than to collapse into my bed. Then I thought of the boys in their rooms, Terence’s friends, grieving privately, and I recalled Sam Hodges’s kindness to me when Fritz vanished. I felt a sudden tidal pull. I needed to check on them.