The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(18)

It was the Instagram. Brian had an annoying daughter a couple of years behind Zoe at school, and the girl had seen the photo, thought it was hot, and left some lame comment, like YAASS! She’d also shown it to her dad.

The photo showed X from behind, his arms and legs spread so wide that he looked like an actual X. You could see his broad, shirtless back, lit by the glow coming off the ice. You could see the primitive tattoos running down his forearms. You could see Stan cowering miserably at his feet.

“Now, there are many odd things about this photograph,” said Chief Baldino. “For instance, the lake is orange.”

“That’s just a filter,” said Maerz. “Everybody uses them.”

Zoe had stopped listening. She was staring not at X but at Stan. Her mother was staring at him, too. She seemed stunned to see him again after what must have been decades. The man was vile: The buzz cut. The shock-white eyebrow. The ugly boulder of a head. Zoe had not just let him live, she had let him escape. She couldn’t pull her eyes away, even when she tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Baldino began hammering her with questions now: “Can you confirm that you took this photo last night? Can you confirm that you took it outside the former residence of Bertram and Elizabeth Wallace?”

Zoe felt dizzy. Only Vilkomerson noticed. He put a gentle hand on her arm, and said something she couldn’t quite process. Everything was sliding. Everything was flying sideways.

And Baldino wouldn’t shut up.

“We know that this man here is Stan Manggold,” he said. “The truck was stolen but we ran his prints, and it turns out he’s wanted by the State of Virginia for a whole bunch of nasty stuff. What we don’t know is who the other man in the picture is—the one with the tattoos. We ran the image through our database, and came up empty. So why don’t you stop wasting our time and tell us who he is?”

“I don’t know,” said Zoe.

“Do you know if he was involved in the murder of Bertram and Betty Wallace?”

“He wasn’t involved. No way.”

“How can you know that if you don’t even know who he is?”

“I just know.”

“How about you tell us everything else you just know about him?”

“I told you—I don’t even know his name.”

Baldino grunted. He was sure she was lying.

“You want to sit here all night, Miss Bissell?” he said. “I don’t—but I will.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Zoe said. “He came out of the woods, and then he went back into the woods. I didn’t say two words to him. I don’t know who he is.”

“Then why have you been lying to protect him?”

Zoe was close to tears now. She looked to her mother.

Her mother stood up.

“This is totally unacceptable,” she told Baldino. “You’re harassing a girl who’s talking to you of her own free will. You think because I do yoga, I can’t find a lawyer who will kick your ass?”

In the silence that followed, there was a racket on the stairs. It sounded like a prisoner with a ball and chain. Everybody turned.

It was Jonah, looking horribly betrayed. His fingertips were covered with Band-Aids. His right ankle was dragging a skateboard on a piece of purple yarn.

Baldino shook his head and said, quietly for once and to no one in particular, “These people are not normal.”



Jonah told the police everything—because, as Zoe feared, he’d seen everything. He had woken up on Bert and Betty’s couch. He had shouted for Zoe. When she didn’t answer, he’d wiped the window with a cold little hand and peered outside.

Now Jonah was sitting on Zoe’s lap at the table, and pointing at the Instagram.

“That’s Stan,” he said. “He said his last name was The Man, but he maybe made that up so you should check.”

Jonah stopped for a second.

“I threw a rock at him,” he said, then looked at his mother uncertainly: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay just this once,” she said. “Your dad introduced me to Stan many years ago, sweetie—way before you kids were born—and I wanted to throw a rock at him, too.”

“What else can you tell us, son?” Vilkomerson asked.

“Stan was mean,” Jonah said, his voice breaking for the first time. “He hurt Bert and Betty, and he tried to hurt my dogs. I don’t know why. This other person in the picture, the kind of naked one … I don’t know his name, but he’s magic—and he saved them. He also made the ice get all orange like that.”

When Jonah finished speaking, everyone let his words settle. No one spoke, except for Officer Maerz who said, “Seriously—it’s a filter.”

Baldino turned back to Zoe.

“Young lady, can you corroborate any of what your brother is saying?”

“I can corroborate all of it,” she said.

Did he think she didn’t know what the word meant?

“Interesting,” said Baldino, the patronizing edge creeping back into his voice. “Even the part about the magic?”

“Especially the part about the magic.”



Chief Baldino announced that he was sick of being lied to—of being “trifled with by a damn teenager”—and soon he and his men were driving off into the night. The Bissells watched from the front door until darkness swallowed the squad car a quarter of a mile down the road.