It was just Cooper's luck to stumble, literally, over a dead body.

"Tracy?" he asked stupidly, and then threw up all over the carpet.

Tracy Smith sat with her back propped against the wall, her legs twisted at an unnatural angle. Her throat had been sliced open; a fountain of blood spilled down her chest and saturated her baby pink ballerina costume.

Her eyes, the most recognizable blue eyes in Greenwitch County, stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. The expression on her face was one of surprise, as if to say, I can't believe I'm dead.

Cooper backpedaled away from her body, and then realized, too late, that he'd dropped his beer on the carpet. For some reason, this seemed to be of vital importance. He'd dropped his beer on Tracy Smith's super expensive carpet, and now he was a dead man. A dead man.

So is Tracy, he thought. She's a dead man. A dead girl.

It was official. He'd lost it. One ticket to crazytown, please.

He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair once. Twice. Three times.

Always three times.

Crap. He pulled his hand away from his head as if he'd been burned, staring at his bloodstained fingers in horror. Crap-crap-crap-crap—

"Get it together," he whispered, fighting the urge to run a hand back through his hair. He couldn't let his compulsions get the best of him. Not here.

"Think," he murmured, balling his hands into fists. "Think. I found a dead body. Now..."

Now I need to call 911.

Cooper fumbled for his cell phone. The music two floors below pulsed beneath his bloody sneakers, vibrating softly. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound as the phone rang once, then twice, and then:

"911, what's your emergency?"

"I found a dead body," Cooper blurted stupidly.

The emergency responder hesitated. "What's your location?"

"Um..."

Cooper panicked. He'd called 911, and now he had absolutely no idea what to say.

Calm the hell down, you idiot, he thought.

"Yeah, um, I'm at Tracy Smith's house." He rattled off the address, his voice shaking.

"Can you tell me what happened?" The responder sounded cagey, disbelieving. But of course she didn't believe him. It was a Friday night on Halloween. How many sick prank calls did the emergency lines get on a night like this?

"She threw a huge party tonight," Cooper rambled. "I got here like an hour ago, and I was just sitting in the kitchen bored out of my mind, and Vincent told me to go upstairs. Tracy had this haunted hall thing going on, but by the time I came up it was over, so I decided to look for the bathroom because I really had to go, but it was super dark and the strobe lights totally sucked. And I sort of...tripped over her body. Tracy's. Tracy's body. The girl who—"

"Threw the party, yes." The responder still sounded doubtful, but in a town like Greenwitch, the last name Smith meant something. "I'll send an officer down to check things out."

Cooper withheld a groan. Once the first kid caught sight of a cop car cruising toward the house, everything would go straight to hell. Mass panic. Confusion.

A lot of kids would get in trouble tonight. And all of that would be on Cooper.

Tracy Smith is dead.

"Please," he pleaded with the woman on the other end of the line. "She's dead. I could—"

Could what? Send a selfie?

Cooper had the sudden wild mental image of him taking a picture with Tracy Smith's corpse.

I'm losing it.

"An officer will be there in five minutes," the woman said.

The line went dead.

*     *     *     *     *

As predicted, all hell broke loose after the cop showed up.

Cooper couldn't quite remember how it happened. Looking back, he would wonder why he went downstairs after that phone call. Why, covered in a dead girl's blood, he sat down at the kitchen table as if it were just another day. Did Vincent come over and urge him to play a round of beer pong? He couldn't recall.

He did remember some time passing before the chaos erupted. Whoever the first responder was, they'd taken a coffee break. Of that, Cooper was certain. He could drive from one end of town to the other in ten minutes flat. Maybe the poor guy on duty wasn't in a rush to check out some bogus Halloween call.

Oh, boy.

Another random detail that would stick with him: Tom Sahein. Why that skinny freshman from the yearbook committee stuck out as an important memory from that night...Cooper would never understand it. But even weeks after the incident, he would remember Tom standing at the front door, his face awash in hues of red and blue. He stood there like that for a time. Seventeen seconds, by Cooper's recollection.

He could remember that. Of course he could. Yet he couldn't remember a single detail about that shadowy figure on the staircase.

Naturally.

"Watch your head." Deputy Mitchell Pendowski tapped Cooper on the head as he ducked into the back of the cruiser. The deputy—who Cooper was positive lived in the same apartment complex as he did, on Kerry Lane—closed the door as gently as possible, blue lights dancing across his sharp features. Doubt and curiosity marred the frown turning down the corners of his mouth.

But in the end, it was silence that won out. He climbed into the driver's seat and threw the cruiser in reverse, carefully navigating out of the swarm of vehicles that had gathered outside of the Smith residence in the last forty minutes. Cooper counted fourteen cruisers. Another two were speeding down the half-mile drive, dust kicking up in their wake.

He could see it in the eyes of Deputy Pendowski every time their eyes met in the rearview. He could hear it in the silence as his classmates were escorted to the front lawn for questioning. He could taste it in the air—the thick stench of fear hanging over the skyline like smog. Oppressive. And inescapable.

It was a question. The same question he kept asking himself.

Who killed Tracy Smith?

Cooper rode to the station in silence. Deputy Pendowski tried taking pity on him by turning on the radio, but the signal was no good. Cursing, the deputy punched the dash, plunging them into the quiet of a soft engine.

It wasn't until they pulled up to the station that Cooper began to wonder about Vincent. He hadn't seen him—or had he? Maybe he'd gotten away. Or maybe he was already at the station, drunk and confused. Cooper figured he'd find out soon enough.

Tracy's dead, he thought. And so am I, once Mom finds out where I am.

Cooper bit back a sigh.

Deputy Pendowski undid his seatbelt and turned to face him. "Kid?"

It took Cooper a moment to collect himself. "Hmm?"

"Things are going to get a little crazy. Okay?"

"Sure," he muttered. It wasn't like he had any other choice but to go inside and face the music.

What music? You found a dead body. You're not a murderer.

Pendowski guided Cooper out of the car and into the station. The parking lot was empty. Pendowski assured him it wouldn't be empty for long.

"Trust me," the deputy said, leading Cooper past a row of desks and into the back hallway. "You're going to be glad I got you here when I did."

Cooper would have to take his word for it. He told him as much, and the deputy laughed.

"You're funny," he observed. "Can you hold out your hands for me?"

Cooper went through the motions, allowing the deputy to take a sample of the blood on his hands and in his hair. The ordeal took less than ten minutes, which would have been great, had Cooper been free to head home. Instead, the deputy had him sit back in one of the station's six cells, four of which were currently being used as storage for a variety of cardboard boxes.

Pendowski didn't bother locking the door to his cell and apologized profusely for the "song and dance" of it all. Before he left, he reminded Cooper that he would be free to leave soon.

That, as it turned out, was a lie.

Cooper sat on the cell's sole bench, his head in his hands. He knew what this meant: the police cruiser, the personal escort, the jail cell. As if finding the dead body of the most popular girl in school wasn't bad enough, now he was a suspect—or at least suspected of being involved somehow.

And in this town, that was enough. Come sunrise, all of Greenwitch County would see his bloody hands, and then they would whisper.

His fate had been sealed the moment he walked up that staircase.

That's how small towns worked. It didn't matter how the word spread, or who spread it. All that mattered was that a pretty girl was dead, and Cooper had been the one to find her.

He envisioned himself rotting away in this holding cell, sitting just like he was for the rest of his long, miserable life. He would grow a beard, he decided. Work out a little. Maybe buzz his hair—his mom had always longed to give him a nice, good trim. He could look like a completely different person in jail. Not that it would matter, but the idea appealed to him.

He could be a stranger. A stranger named Cooper Daniels.

You just had to trip over the dead body, didn't you, Coop?

Cooper rubbed his temples. It felt like a sledgehammer was doing its best to blast a hole straight through his skull. Maybe that was the shock. Or the exhaustion.

"Or both," Cooper muttered to himself.

"Coop."

Cooper looked up, straight into the tired eyes of Sheriff Marks. The sheriff wore faded jeans and an old flannel shirt dotted with coffee stains. He towered over Cooper, as thin and tall as a scarecrow.

Cooper opened his mouth, but he couldn't find his voice.

Sheriff Marks waved him off. "Don't. I don't want to hear it." He scratched at his receding hairline. What little hair he had left was grey. "Damn. Double damn, Coop. Do you have any idea what's going on out there?"

A helpless shrug from Cooper. The sheriff sighed.

"Can't say we have any idea what's happened, either. I've got my best officers out there combing through the scene. Doubt we'll find a thing that matters, at least not for a couple of days. And I'm not holding you that long, Coop. I won't allow it." He paused. "Now tell me honestly. You kill that girl?"

Cooper sat up straight, stunned. "What?"

"Coop—"

"No," he said fiercely. "Sheriff, it's me. I wouldn't—"

"Then why, Coop." He pressed a finger to his temple. "Why did you go and get her blood in your hair and on your hands? Your vomit's all over the floor, for god's sakes! There isn't a single damn inch of that crime scene that doesn't have Cooper Daniels all over it."

Cooper deflated. He buried his face in his hands—and then recoiled at the smell of blood. "I...I just..." He swallowed past a lump in his throat. When he glanced back up at the sheriff, his vision was blurry. "I had to use the bathroom. That's all it was. I didn't want to go down to the stupid party and play stupid beer pong. I should have just stayed with Rachel."

"Rachel?" Sheriff Marks raised an eyebrow and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. "As in Rachel Smith? Coop—"

"She was wasted." Cooper stood and began pacing from one end of the cell to the other, ignoring the open door. "I took her upstairs. She passed out. I just wanted her to sleep it off."

"What time was this?"

He paused in the middle of the cell and frowned. Hadn't he checked his cell phone right before heading upstairs? "Ten. Or just past ten."

"Good." Sheriff Marks kicked the door open the rest of the way. The iron swung on rusty hinges. "'Cause I didn't much feel like telling your momma you killed that Smith girl."

"Huh?" Cooper stared at the open door. "But—"

"But what, Coop? Sure, it don't look good. And we got a hell of a lot of reports to run if we're gonna find out who did this. But if you were really with that Rachel girl when you said you were...well. That helps, son." The sheriff smiled wryly. "Now get out of the damn cell. We got actual criminals we need to hold."

It was a lie. Greenwitch County had an infamously low crime rate—hence the medieval state of their local jail. But Cooper smiled nonetheless. And when he stepped out into the hall, it felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. The sheriff believed him. He actually believed him.

Or at least, he wanted to. And that was enough.

"I do gotta ask, though." Sheriff Marks paused just outside the door that led back into the bullpen. The prehistoric lights hanging overhead cast odd shadows against his cheekbones, giving him the hollow look of a recently reanimated skeleton. "You got any idea what this is?"

He dug a photo out of the front pocket of his khaki uniform. It was a folded polaroid. Of what, Cooper couldn't quite tell. Not at first, anyway.

He grabbed it from the sheriff and stared. And then grimaced.

"Oh." He cleared his throat. "Uh. Looks like a pile of my vomit."

"Yes, Coop." The sheriff rolled his eyes and tapped the upper right hand corner of the polaroid. "I'm talking about that. The piece of paper."

Cooper took a closer look. He was right. What looked like a torn page from a book had been half-buried under the pile of puke. A dozen or so words on the center of the page had been circled with a red pen.

She'll sting you one day,

Oh, ever so gently,

so you hardly ever feel it.

'til you fall dead.

"It...I don't know. It's from a book, I guess." Cooper frowned at the thin lines of text.

"Hmm. Well." The sheriff waved him off when he tried to hand the polaroid back. "Keep it. We've got digital copies. You'll let me know if you can think of what the hell that means, won't you?"

Cooper nodded. He shoved the photo in his front pocket. "Yeah. Yeah, of course."

He wasn't sure what insight he would be able to provide, as compared to the entire police force of Greenwitch County. But he wasn't about to argue the point. Not now that he was a free man.

The sheriff nodded and led Cooper out into the bullpen. Half of the desks were unoccupied; the other half sat a random assortment of deputies, men and women in slacks, and a handful of familiar faces that Cooper knew from school.

He and Ryan Kane made eye contact from across the room. The senior had been secluded to a distant corner; a man Cooper recognized as Cory Michaels' father sat in a chair across from him, a notepad in hand.

Nearby, Stephanie Brighton—who ran in Rachel's crowd and typically had him right by the balls when it came to yearbook assignments—perched on the edge of a desk, mascara running down her cheeks. She dabbed at her eyes as a woman in uniform took a swab of DNA.

He was surprised Jessica Sneider wasn't there to hold Stephanie's hand. He still couldn't believe he'd managed to snag a kiss from the co-captain of the cheerleading squad in the fourth grade. Then again, that had been a simpler time.

Maybe it was for the best that she wasn't there. He hated the way she always turned her nose up at him, their elementary kiss banished from her memory like a bad smell.

His eyes stopped on the desk closest to him. Smaller even than Cooper, he immediately recognized Tom Sahein. His expression was still stunned, his knuckles white around his Canon EOS 90D. Cooper wondered how much dirt he'd captured on the student body that night.

And then he wondered if any of that dirt included a murder.

A row of windows ran along the length of the room. The blinds had been shuttered, blocking out the outside world. Cooper half expected to hear an angry mob outside, but it was silent as the grave.

Bad pun.

Cooper's gaze landed on a petite blonde at the front of the room, somewhere between the makeshift lobby and the bullpen. His world came to a screeching halt.

Amelia Daniels shifted anxiously from foot to foot, her long hair a disheveled mess. She wasn't wearing makeup and her clothes were wrinkled, but Cooper thought she was beautiful—which was pretty lame for a sixteen-year-old kid, but he didn't care. His mother was a good person, and her life had been too hard.

She scanned the room every few seconds, as if waiting to catch someone's eye. When she saw Cooper, her eyes began to shine. Guilt bubbled in his chest. His mother wasn't one to cry, especially not in public, and the fact that he'd pushed her this far hurt him.

His mom raced across the room and embraced him in a ferocious hug. He always forgot how strong she was. "Are you okay? Tell the truth, Cooper."

Her eyes—green, the way his looked if the light caught them right—blazed, daring him to lie to her.

"I'm fine, Mom." He gently pushed her away.

She pursed her lips. Cooper knew that look. She was about to start an argument worthy of World War III. And he knew exactly what she would say.

Fine? Fine, after finding a dead body?

"I'm just tired," he announced, giving her a significant look.

She didn't look convinced. In fact, Cooper thought she wasn't going to let it go. But then she took his hand—he let her, especially if it meant she would drop the subject—and turned to Sheriff Marks. "Thank you, Ted."

"Sure, Amy." Sheriff Marks gave a nervous smile. Smart man. "I'll call if there are any more...developments."

Cooper read between the lines: I'll call if Cooper's the killer.

His mom nodded stiffly, and then she and Cooper left the station, clinging on to one another. She let him go only long enough to let him crawl into the passenger seat before gripping his hand in hers.

He let out a long, slow breath.

She didn't say a word on the drive home. That was one thing he loved about her—she knew when enough was enough.

And Cooper had definitely had enough for one night.