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lime out of the bottom of her glass.
    “I . . . ?” he prodded.
    “What? Oh. You don’t give me that ‘How are you doing’ shit or ‘Isn’t it terrible aren’t you traumatized what can I do’ blah blah blah.” She made a fake vomiting noise. “You don’t care about what I do, you don’t care about anyone but yourself. Thank God.”
    “Uh, thank you?” he asked sardonically. He leaned forward. This was the moment, he realized. Kane hated nothing more than not having the answers, and ever since that day in the hospital, he’d had nothing but questions. Her guard was down. She would answer. “Where’d you get the drugs, Grace?”
    “Huh?”
    “That day. The speech. What were you high on? And why?”
    She shook her head furiously. “Not you, too!” But after a flicker of anger, she sighed loudly and slumped down in her chair. “Nothing,” she said. “I told you. I told them. Nothing.”
    “Come on, Grace,” he pushed. “They found them in your system. Everyone saw you up onstage—I heard what a head-case you were.” And I saw the way you pulled out of the parking lot. I saw the car skid out, I saw you drive away. “ You were on something.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “Believe me. Don’t believe me. Who cares. And what’s the difference? It’s over now.”
    “Yeah, I guess. What’s the difference?”
    He is sitting in the waiting room, breathing shallowly. The scent of citrus-scented air freshener is overwhelming—but not enough to mask the smells beneath it. Old age, decay, vomit, blood, death. He hates hospitals. He hasn’t been in one since he was a kid, sitting by his mother’s bed, pretending not to know his father was crying out in the hall.
    It’s too soon, too fast, and no one knows everything, but as always, Kane knows enough. He has his sources.
    One crash. Two girls, both thrown from the car. One with traces of psychotropic drugs in her bloodstream. One dead.
    “Mr. Geary.”
    The cop sits down across from him. It’s a woman, which he’s not expecting. She’s short and stocky in a dark gray blazer, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Right out of central casting, he thinks. Not a coincidence—she probably takes her cues from Law & Order.
    The thought depresses him.
    “I’m told that you have some information that can be of assistance to us, Mr. Geary.
    “She has a sexy voice.
    He shrugs. “I saw them leave the school,” he says.
    “Can you describe what you saw?” She doesn’t ask what he was doing loitering on the back steps when the rest of the school was stuffed into the auditorium for a mandatory assembly.
    “Harper ran out of the school.”
    “How did she appear?”
    “What do you mean?” He knows. But he’s not in the mood to help.
    “Did she seem upset? Disoriented? Ineb—”
    “She seemed in a hurry. She didn’t stop to talk. She ran down to the parking lot. Kaia was standing there, by her car.”
    “What was she doing?”
    The question hadn’t occurred to Kane before. He didn’t know the answer. He never would. “Standing. Staring. They talked for a while. Then they got into the car and drove away. ”
    “Who was driving?”
    It is the question he has been waiting for. She asks it casually, as if uninterested in the answer. He responds the same way, without pause, without hesitation, without thinking of Harper grabbing the keys, jumping inside, and tearing out of the lot.
    “Kaia” he says with certainty. “It was her father’s Beamer. She always drove. ”
    They believe him. The evidence has all burned away. There’s only his word. And when Harper wakes up, groggy and confused, she believes him too.
    “I can’t remember,” she says, her voice soft but angry. These days, she is always angry. “Nothing. Just school, that morning, then . . . here. I can’t remember. “ She closes her eyes and knits her brow. She can’t rub her forehead—her arms are caught in a web of wires and tubes. He surprises himself pressing his palm to