The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier

the imminent moment of success, felt the sweet thrill of triumph, everything else cast aside for the moment, all doubts gone. This was what he was hired to do, what he was born to do.
    You are what you do.
    Ah, Lottie. Ah, Sarah.
    Five minutes later, the boy uttered the words Trent needed to hear.
    As the machine whirred, recording the bruised and broken voice.

PART III
    S ymbolic, Trent thought when he saw the bug—black, swollen, glistening—crawling across his desk. He didn’t know what kind of bug it was and watched fascinated as it reached the transcript and lifted itself onto the cover, pausing to rest on the title:
Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant.
    Trent rolled a magazine into a weapon and prepared to dispatch the bug with one decisive blow. But it began to move again and Trent swept it off the desk with the magazine, watching it spin through the air, land upright and scurry away to a far corner of the office.
    He turned his attention to the transcript with its pebbled black cover, finding it irresistible as usual.
Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant.
He reached for it, opened it, thinking: one more time, the transcript impossible to ignore, like a scab to which your finger keeps returning.
    He stared at the words on the page but derived no meaning from them, as if they were hieroglyphics, impossible to decipher.
    Inevitably, he thought of the small office in Monument and the boy and, of course, Sarah Downes. And most of all he thought, against his will, of that scene in the hallway at police headquarters in Monument, moments after he had walked out of the small office, leaving behind the boy sitting stunned and silent in the chair, disbelief in his eyes.
    Looking down the corridor, Trent had seen Sarah Downes emerging from an office at the far end. She spotted him at once, an eager smile appearing on her face. He closed the door behind him, leaving the boy alone to contemplate what he had done. He smiled at Sarah as she hurried toward him. He realized how beautiful she became when she abandoned her cool elegance.
    Trent waited, audiocassette in hand, savoring the sweet moment. Her heels clicked on the warped old wooden floor. As she approached, she glanced at the cassette, her eyes lingering on it. Trent wondered if the office had been bugged, if she already knew about the boy’s confession, the boy’s voice captured forever on tape.
    When she came to an abrupt stop before him, her lilac scent was diluted by a hint of perspiration, which somehow made her seem dearer. She frowned, her jaw tightening as she again looked at the cassette.
    “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
    “Yes,” Trent said. “The boy confessed. It’s here on tape.” Suppressing his excitement. Surprising himself by the excitement he felt.
    He offered her the cassette, as if it were a gift.
    “That’s not possible,” she said, shaking her head.
    “But it is.”
    “You made him confess.” Not a question but a statement. Voice flat. More than flat, deadly, an accusation.
    He didn’t answer, knew instantly something was wrong.
    “They have the killer in custody,” she said. “I was coming to tell you that. The girl’s brother. His alibi with his friends broke down. One of them implicated him, then the other. He confessed.”
    Trent looked down at the cassette in his hand.
    At that moment, he heard the office door swing open behind him. Turned and looked, as did Sarah Downes. Saw the boy standing there, wan, abject, eyes haunted, flesh moist and sallow. He looked broken, as if just lifted down from the cross.
    The telephone rang, bringing Trent back into the reality of his own office. He picked up the phone, heard the voice of Effie, the dispatcher.
    “Still no answer, Trent,” she said, a bit impatient. “Want me to keep trying?” Her voice betrayed her unwillingness to do just that. “It’s been three days and now her machine doesn’t pick up. It’s apparently been turned off.”
    Three days or thirty, Trent knew