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then.”
    “What ways?”
    “You either go back to the drugs or you push through it. Those who push through it, many of them, they get pretty mystical about it. They go up on the mountain. They see burning bushes. The skies open up. They hear voices.”
    “They get born again, you mean?”
    “All kinds of born again. Born again Christian, born again Buddhist, born again Existentialist, for God’s sake. Same thing happened to me, in a way.”
    Pritchard grinned at me, and I returned his smile a bit uncomfortably.
    “Yep,” he said. “A born again cynic. That’s me. It’s a theology that works good for me.”
    I nodded. “That’s two. You said there were three ways someone could go. What’s the third?”
    Pritchard scratched his beard. “The third way is, you kill yourself.”
    “Buddy…?”
    Pritchard shook his head. “Not Buddy. I don’t think so.”
    “He’s been missing for about thirty-six hours now.”
    “Something might’ve happened to him. But he didn’t kill himself.”
    “The police mentioned to me that when Buddy was arrested, he refused to cooperate with them. Has he—?”
    “No. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say. I don’t know who supplied him. It’s not a question I would ever ask.”
    “Do you have any thoughts?”
    He ran his forefinger over his mustache. “Specifically, no. But I’ll tell you this, and it’s no secret. It had to be local. Somebody in this town. And I’ll tell you something else, if you promise not to press me for details.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “It’s this. Whoever was supplying Buddy is still in business.”
    “Selling coke to kids?”
    “Crack, now,” he said. “Cocaine for smoking. Evil stuff. Addictive as hell. Someone’s wholesaling crack to kids, so they can retail it to their friends.”
    “Mr. Pritchard,” I said. “A teenage girl was killed night before last. A teenage boy is missing. If there’s something you know…”
    He held up his hand. “There isn’t. Believe me. I just know the scene in general. I know what’s going on. If I knew who it was, I would tell the cops. I’d tell them in a minute. No problem. But I don’t. All I know is, Buddy isn’t involved in it.”
    I nodded. “Any other questions I should’ve asked?”
    “One.”
    “What?”
    “Would Buddy kill Alice Sylvester?”
    “How would you answer that, if I’d had the wit to ask it?”
    “I’d say no. But I’d say he might’ve had reason to be pissed off at her.”
    “Then I’d ask what that reason was.”
    “And I’d tell you that she wasn’t the Miss America candidate that everyone is making her out to be. And, no, I would not elaborate on that.”
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “No.”
    “Slandering the dead?”
    He shrugged.
    “There’s one other question that occurs to me,” I said.
    “Go ahead.”
    “Can you think of anybody who’d want to hurt Buddy?”
    “Sure.”
    “Will you tell me who?”
    “I don’t know who. But if you can find the person who set him up in business two years ago, you’d have a good candidate.”
    I nodded. “I suppose I would.”
    “Assuming,” he said, “that something happened to Buddy.”
    “Yes.”
    “Which,” he said, “isn’t a bad assumption.”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

Four
    I HAD A CUP of coffee at a dowdy little hole-in-the-wall restaurant a few doors down from Computer City and used the pay phone to make an appointment with Dr. Larsen at the high school. The place was empty. I sat by myself at a table by the window and watched it rain until it was time to go.
    Windsor Harbor High School was just outside the center of town. A long curving drive ascended a slope to the sprawling flat-roofed brick building. I parked near what looked like the front entrance. Three boys were standing under the overhang smoking cigarettes. When I got out of my car they hastily cupped the butts in their hands.
    The principal’s office was just inside the door. A white-haired woman was sorting