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he shambled into the room. Without waiting for directions, he took a seat in one of the three chairs arranged before the vice principal’s desk, extended his legs, and folded his thick, pimpled arms across his chest. He had some sort of biblical verse tattooed on his forearm: Ezek. 23:30. How old did you have to be to get inked these days? I wondered.
    Rivard stepped forward, so that he practically loomed over the boy. “I’m Sergeant Rivard and this is Warden Bowditch.”
    The invocation of my name caused the boy to turn in his chair and look me flat in the eyes. His pupils were tiny black dots.
    “I’d appreciate your looking at me when I talk to you,” Rivard said.
    The kid paused just long enough to make the point that he was doing so because it suited him and not because it was a command.
    The itching I was feeling started to burn. The Scared Straight approach had its uses, I supposed, but as a rule, I didn’t believe in humiliating children, even gargantuan ones.
    Standing beside me, Mandelbaum shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again. He could sense that, despite my sergeant’s earlier assurances, something here wasn’t on the up-and-up. He lowered his head, trying to catch the kid’s almost catatonic gaze. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your folks, Barney?”
    “No, suh.”
    “We’ve had some break-ins over at Bog Pond,” Rivard said. “You know where that is?”
    It was a lake in Township Nineteen, not far from Doc Larrabee’s house, I realized.
    “Yes, suh,” said Barney Beal.
    “You ever go snowmobiling over that way with your friends?” Rivard asked.
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “We have witnesses who said they saw you riding your sled on the pond last Friday night. You and your friends.”
    “That sounds like an accusation,” said Mandelbaum.
    “It ain’t illegal to go sleddin’,” Beal said.
    “But it is illegal to break into someone’s cabin to steal the satellite TV chips,” Rivard said. “We know it was you who broke into those camps, Beal.”
    Mandelbaum held up both of his narrow hands. “That’s enough! Don’t answer any more questions, Barney.”
    “We’re talking about a Class D felony, Mr. Mandelbaum. That’s punishable by a year in jail.”
    “In which case, Barney should have an attorney present, as well as his parents.” The vice principal turned to the boy. “I apologize for bringing you in here. I never should have agreed to this conversation.”
    Beal raised his chin. “Can I go now?”
    “Yes,” I said, scratching the itchy place over my heart. “You can go back to class.”
    Beal lurched to his feet so abruptly, he kicked the chair over.
    The boy reached down with his long arm and lifted it as it were made of balsa wood. He set the chair delicately into place. I made a note to myself, in case I ever encountered him again, that this teenager was as strong as the Hulk.
    “We’ll be watching you, Beal,” Rivard said. “You won’t know it, but we will.”
    For the first time, the faintest trace of a smile appeared on the boy’s pimply face.
    “Yes, suh,” he said on his way out the door.
    Mandelbaum waited until the boy was out of earshot before laying into us. “You lied to me,” he said. “You came in here and you lied. You told me Barney wasn’t a suspect in any crimes.”
    “Those weren’t the exact words we used,” Rivard said. “What I said was, we wanted him to help us out with some information.”
    “That’s—sophistry! You have no right to bully my students. These are good kids here. Yes, some of them have some problems. There’s poverty and addiction. But just because Barney Beal comes from a broken family—just because he has a tattoo—doesn’t mean you can treat him like a thug. Not without evidence.”
    “How long have you worked here, Mr. Mandelbaum?” Rivard asked.
    “This is my second year. Why?”
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “So because I’m not a Maine native, I’m a