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"Let’s clean it up later," I said

Bernadette looked frolass to me "But where will Autumn sleep?"

"We’ll leave her a note," I said "We can crash in Jacey’s rooe" I didn’t care where she slept I wanted ain, and I followed her down the hall to Jacey’s room

Bernadette knocked When Jacey opened the door--her face white, eyes red--Bernadette said, "You’ve got coo to dinner, we stopped back at the room Autumn still wasn’t there

"Where do you suppose your friend is?" Bernadette asked

I thought of Autuet into trouble in the past "She’s an independent kind of girl," I said I hoped she hadn’t broken anything else

Very early the nextDashay’s voice sounded odd, lacking e to tell you to expect some visitors"

The way she spoketo our call, so I ?"

"Your ent Burton"

"May I talk to Mãe?"

"She’s not here," Dashay said "She’s in Georgia, visiting family"

The only family my mother had was a sister in Savannah, and she never visited her

"Is everything okay?" I asked

"She’ll explain when she gets there She’s already on her way"

"How are you?" I asked, feeling as if I were in a play

"I a "I took a trip to Atlanta last week, to look up an old friend"

She ht "How is he?"

"He and his fiancée are very well"

Dashay’s artificial calood-bye

I went back to our rooet e of clothes, I realized how hungry I was Bernadette was still asleep, so I went to the lounge to see if Autue was vacant

I went to breakfast alone

Back in the roo up the remains ofher When we pulled apart, the sight of her face alarmed me--she looked drained, as if she hadn’t slept in days

"What’s wrong?" I asked

That’s when Agent Burton walked in He apologized for disturbing us, but his voice didn’t sound sorry

At his suggestion ent to the library, to a closed-off nook called a carrel Burton took out his tape recorder and coughed a few times to test it He looked more so in the sas a body, and the body was Autu interviewed by Burton and the Georgia State Police, of being given a series of polygraph tests, of walking around in a state of shock--I listened to ize She said she’d wanted to call, warn , but she and Dashay decided it was better for the police to witness my first reactions to the news

By the end of that week, Burton felt fairly certain that I hadn’t caused Autuled, he said, but they weren’t sure where it had happened), but he was troubled by what he considered the "unbelievable coincidence" of three girls who knewup dead (To a lesser degree, he was troubled by the polygraph’s measurement of my abnormally low skin temperature, which Mãe persuaded him was a side effect of treatment for "a rare form of lupus--the same kind that killed her father")