“You erased them? That seems very strange to me. Weren’t you planning to do anything about the fact that one of your teachers-at least as far as you believed-was having a sexual relationship with a student?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Patricia dropped her head into her hands and kneaded her eyebrows. The Yorkie lying on a satin dog bed in the corner perked its head up, then jumped into Patricia’s lap and began licking her face. “Yes, darling, Mommy’s upset,” Patricia said, stroking the dog, which settled into her lap.

“Frankly,” Melanie continued, “that seems quite out of character for you, based on what I’ve observed about how carefully you run this school.” In other words, I don’t believe you.

“What can I say? I reacted emotionally, out of deep disgust. Everybody’s human.”

“What are you planning to do about this alleged sexual relationship?”

“I’ve already confronted Harrison. He knows he’s going to be suspended as soon as the gala is over and the endowment campaign closes. But given the furor over the ODs, I couldn’t do it before then without hurting the school. I promise you, Harrison won’t be left alone with any of the girls between now and then.”

“When you confronted him, did he admit to having a sexual relationship with Whitney?”

“No. He denied it.”

“So what do you plan to use for proof if you deleted the e-mails?”

“Look, I made a mistake. I’ve admitted that. What do you want me to do?” Patricia said. This woman was a tough opponent; she had her story and she was sticking to it. But Melanie was pretty convinced she was lying. Maybe the e-mails had never existed at all, or maybe they’d existed but Patricia had never erased them. Either way, it looked like Melanie would have to get a search warrant and check through Holbrooke’s entire computer system, which was going to be an annoyingly time-consuming process.

“You’re not planning to go public with this, are you?” Patricia asked.

Melanie hesitated. She wasn’t, but let the headmistress sweat it. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“If you ever did, I can tell you what Harrison’s defense would be: that Whitney sent the e-mails unsolicited and that he didn’t stop her, because he was playing therapist.”

“You don’t believe him?” Melanie asked.

“Psychobabble. Lies.”

“Well, like I said, it seems to me you’re going to have a difficult time making your case, since you destroyed the best evidence. Anyway, I’m not wasting any more time on Dr. Hogan right now. Let me ask you about another staff member. I’ve found Ted Siebert somewhat…difficult. Hostile.”

The headmistress nodded, smiling. “That’s Ted for you. He’s a good lawyer.”

“Is there anything about him that I should know about?”

Patricia flushed again. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”

Melanie studied the headmistress’s face. She had the feeling she just wasn’t getting straight answers out of this woman. “Hmm. Okay. One more question, then, Mrs. Andover, and I’ll let you get back to work. I’m sure you understand, we need to cover all bases. This is simply a matter of gathering information for the record.”

“Fine. Fire away.”

“Where were you on Monday night when the girls OD’d?”

The headmistress stroked her dog, considering for a moment. “May I ask why you’re interested in my whereabouts, Miss Vargas?”

“As I said, only as a matter of routine. We’re asking the same question of everyone we interview.”

“Of course. I understand. I appreciate how thorough you’re being. Well, I must confess to being rather dull. I was home alone on Monday night with the doggies. I took a bath, drank a glass of wine, and turned in early.”

“Okay, thank you.” Melanie made a note on her yellow legal pad, then looked coolly back at Patricia. “You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, where James Seward was then?”

Patricia went bright red. Her mouth fell open a split second before she was able to get any sound out. “James Seward? I…uh, no, I don’t,” she said, then closed her mouth again, doing her best to act as if that were a perfectly normal question.

AFTER DELIVERING the wiretap lecture at ENTF headquarters, Melanie searched out Ray-Ray Wong. She found him speed-typing reports in his pathologically neat cubicle.

“Holbrooke is apparently a hotbed of corruption and lies,” she said cheerfully. “Let me ask you, from what you saw on the blog, did Whitney Seward send any of her dirty pictures to a Holbrooke e-mail address?”

“What’s a Holbrooke e-mail address look like?”

“I think it’s the person’s first and last name, at Holbrooke dot e-d-u.”

“Definitely not. I would have noticed something that obvious. Why?”

“Because Patricia Andover claims to have intercepted dirty pictures that Whitney sent to Hogan.”

“Hogan, the school psychologist?”

“Yes.”

“There weren’t any. I’m sure of it. Could Andover be making that up for some reason?”

“Hogan says she is. But Whitney’s cell-phone records say different. I went through them very carefully when we were working on the wiretap affidavit. It turns out Hogan is all over them, going back almost a year. Long calls, late at night, mostly between her cell and his home telephone, some to his cell and his office. The volume can’t be explained by ‘You’re failing English’ either, though that’s what he claims.”

Ray-Ray shrugged. “Doesn’t surprise me if he was bangin’ her. All those longhaired sixties throwbacks are morally corrupt.”

“We need to subpoena Hogan’s phone records to see what else comes up and get a warrant for the Holbrooke computer system as well, to track down the e-mails. Someone figured out how to access Whitney’s blog and take it off the Web altogether. Maybe it was Hogan. Maybe he erased all the e-mails to himself, and that’s why you didn’t find them.”

Ray-Ray looked at her like she was insane. “Not for nothing here, ma’am, but we’re up on a drug wire on an extremely viable target, and so far it ain’t going too well. Very few pertinent phone calls. We should be concentrating on that, instead of trying to find out if Hogan was in Whitney’s pants. Let’s just agree he was and move on, all right? I mean, it’s a safe bet.”

“We should definitely pursue the wire aggressively, but we can’t just drop other leads. What if the drug smuggling isn’t why the girls died? What if there was something strange going on at Holbrooke?”

“Brianna Meyers had balloons of heroin in her stomach! How can that not be why they died?”

Melanie frowned. He had a point there.

“Esposito and the drug-smuggling angle are what matters,” Ray-Ray continued. “Not who was bangin’ Whitney. Shoot me for thinking that-I’m a DEA agent.”

Melanie sighed. “Oh, hell, maybe you’re right. I’m just frustrated that we don’t have more leads on Carmen Reyes.”

“Yeah, about that?”

“What?”

“I hate to be a downer, but it occurred to me: If Carmen’s not a drug dealer, if she’s just a witness like you said, who stumbled across something at Whitney’s house…” Hehesitated, looking uncomfortable.

“Yeah? Spit it out,” she said.

“Don’t you think Esposito’s killed her by now?”