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and satellite-transmission vans from three different TV news stations.
    As Jim and Lieutenant Harris walked toward the beach house, a crowd of reporters and cameramen came hurrying toward them over the sand.
    â€˜Lieutenant! Can you give us any more details about the way these kids died? The ME says they were seriously burned. How seriously is seriously? Do you know if the fire was deliberate? Was it arson, or was it a horrible accident?’
    Lieutenant Harris stopped and raised both hands. ‘I’m sorry, people. Right now, I can’t give you any more information over and above what the coroner and the fire department investigators have already told you. As soon as I know anything more, believe me, you’ll know it, too.’
    â€˜Who’s
this
, lieutenant?’ asked Nancy Broward from CBS News, pointing at Jim.
    â€˜Mr Jim Rook from West Grove Community College. He’s agreed to assist us with our investigation. Mr Rook is Bobby and Sara’s class teacher … or he would have been, had they survived.’
    â€˜How are you spelling that? Rook as in bird?’
    â€˜Rook as in chess castle,’ Jim corrected her.
    â€˜In what way exactly are you going to be helping the police?’ asked Nancy Broward.
    Lieutenant Harris looked uncomfortable. ‘Mr Rook has some specialized abilities which may enable us to determine exactly what happened here.’
    â€˜Specialized abilities? Of what nature?’
    â€˜I can’t tell you any more than that,’ said Lieutenant Harris. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us—’
    But Jim interrupted him. ‘I’ve been teaching young people for nearly nine years. Teaching means giving them guidance, as well as facts. There may be some evidence here to tell us if Bobby and Sara had any particular problems. Like drugs, maybe. Or a falling-out with their parents. You know, one of those Romeo and Juliet-type situations.’
    â€˜So you think it could have been a teenage suicide pact?’
    â€˜I don’t think anything yet. I haven’t seen them.’
    â€˜OK,’ said Lieutenant Harris, taking hold of his arm. ‘That’s enough for now. You’ve already given them a goddamned headline.’
    He led Jim up the wooden stairs to the living room. A uniformed officer was keeping guard on the door, and the beach house was jostling with crime scene specialists and photographers and fingerprint experts, as well as fire officers and people who seemed to have nothing better to do than shout into their cellphones.
    â€˜It’s never like this on TV,’ said Jim as a broad-shouldered blonde woman with a digital camera pushed her way past him, and he was unapologetically elbowed by a young black man in a Tyvek suit.
    â€˜That’s because the TV production people are always trying to economize on extras. This particular crowd scene, on the other hand, is paid for out of your taxes.’
    Jim looked around him at the nautical decor – the ropes and the anchors and the paintings of four-masted clippers. ‘Jesus. Who lives in a house like this? Long John Silver?’
    Lieutenant Harris led the way through to the bedroom. Jim had been preparing himself to see two burned bodies, and he knew from experience that it was going to be horrifying. He had seen a burned-out Winnebago once, on the San Diego Freeway, with dad and mom still sitting in their seats. The seats had been reduced to their springs, while dad and mom looked like charred stick people. What was worse, the heat had left them grinning, as if they were still having fun.
    Here, however, he couldn’t understand what he was looking at, not at first. The bedroom walls and ceiling were covered all over in a fine film of waxy yellow soot. The carpet was black and crunchy when he walked on it. The bed itself was nothing but smoking layers of incinerated fabric, like a huge burned cake, and it stank of wool and latex and shriveled-up nylon.
    As