Daniel Kennicott first learned this lesson in his rookie year as a cop. He was working on the case of a forty-nine-year-old pedophile named Herman Marchmount, who targeted girls between the ages of five and nine. A detective at the division suggested that Kennicott swear out a search warrant to get his report card. Sure enough, it described in vivid detail how at recess Marchmount dragged a girl from his grade-two class into the bushes and pulled her skirt up over her head. And what am I going to learn about you, Samantha Wyler? Kennicott thought as he took his seat across from Corinne Tressider, head of guidance for Cobalt High School. “We were all so shocked to hear about Sam—I mean Samantha.” Tressider sat comfortably behind a desk in her bright room. The school was on a hill above the town and the large windows on the east side looked out across the river beyond. “Everyone called her Sam.” “You remember her?” “Never had a student like Sam, and I’m in my thirty-second year of teaching.
