Dark Corners

The Calling of Andy Rain

“Prisoner, stand on the line.”

Billy Stark came to a halt and put the toes of his shoes on the white painted line before the barred entrance to “C” block. In his manacled hands he carried a cardboard box containing the few possessions he had been allowed in his death row cell. The corpulent guard on “C” block’s entrance looked through the bars and grinned displaying large, crooked teeth. “Back in the general population, huh, killer? Welcome to Club Fed. My name’s Grubbs.” The guard shook his head. “Man, Stark, you gotta give me your lawyer’s name. Can’t ever tell when I might need a miracle worker.”

“C’mon, Grubbs,” urged Lt. Rain. “I don’t have all day.”

“Yessir. Open seventeen!” shouted Grubbs to the door keeper. A warning beep sounded, the bars rolled open, and the guard stepped aside and commanded, “Prisoner, step inside the door.” Billy, his eyes kept to the front, took two steps and came to a halt, his toes on the yellow line inside the door. “Close seventeen!”

The prisoner listened as the alarm beeped and the door rumbled and clanged shut behind him. Something hard and twisted in his gut loosened just a bit. The smell of death row was still in his nostrils, but it was fading. He realized he was holding his breath and took a tiny gulp of air.

“Billy.”

As Grubbs waited, the prisoner turned and looked through the bars at the death row guard supervisor. “Yes, lieutenant?”

Lt. Gary Rain’s face was broad and amiable beneath a shock of blond hair. He looked like he should be hosting a kid’s TV show rather than running the death row screws. Billy had been renting a room at Rain’s hotel for seven years.

“I won’t be seeing you again, Billy.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “It’ll seem strange after all this time.” Lt. Rain’s shoulders shrugged slightly. There were some words called for, but Grubbs was there, and Stark had been convicted of killing three men, and Billy knew that Gary Rain hated that. You don’t say “good luck” to someone you think ought to fry. Good-byes in prison were screwed up anyway. Billy would miss Gary Rain. The death row guard commander was a by-the-book officer, but he was scrupulously fair and always treated the condemned as though they might be human. He figured the payment to be collected from the condemned was death, not humiliation. Billy would miss Gary Rain and he hoped he would never see the man’s face again.

“I hope the experiment does some good.” Lt. Rain turned and walked back toward death row.

Grubbs shook his head as he watched the solid fire door close behind Lt. Rain. “I bet he’s good to his mother.”

Billy turned his head and looked at the guard with steady gray eyes. He did not change expression, and after a moment Grubbs shifted uncomfortably and nodded toward the first gallery cells. “Step off, Stark. Head for personal issue and get your bedding. After that there’s an old friend of yours in your cell. You’re in one-sixteen.”

Burdened now with bedclothes and pillow, in addition to his box of belongings, Billy entered cell one-sixteen. There was the old friend Grubbs had mentioned. Detective Sergeant John Draper was seated in the middle of the small cell’s only bed, his back against the cell wall, hands in his trouser pockets, his legs thrust out before him and crossed at the ankles. Draper was a slender man in his early fifties with a long angular face beneath short brown hair peppered with gray. His brownish sport coat needed pressing and his five-dollar necktie was pulled down, his collar button open. A rumpled trench coat, wet from the damp day outside, was tossed on the foot of the bed. Billy stood there until Grubbs said, “Prisoner, put the stuff on the desk and put out the wrists.”

When the cuffs were removed, Grubbs left and Billy was left alone with the officer who had tracked him down and arrested him almost eight years ago. Draper looked up at him with pale blue eyes. “Hi, Billy.”

Billy rubbed his wrists and nodded. “Sgt. Draper. Congratulations on the promotion.”

Draper shifted his gaze and looked around at the cell’s dingy yellow interior. “This is a lot nicer than The Row, isn’t it? Bookshelf, desk, your own chair. You even got your shoelaces back. Now you can go out in the exercise yard, play chess, and powwow with all the other killers.”

Billy pulled out the chair, faced its back toward Draper, straddled the seat, and sat down. “What can I do for you, sergeant?”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider suicide.” Draper sat up, removed his hands from his pockets and leaned his elbows on his knees. “You think you got away from Old Sparky up there, don’t you, killer? You run out of stalls, appeals, and stays, and presto, out pops donating your body to science.” The detective slowly shook his head. “And I’ll be damned if the governor didn’t go for it.”

“The people at the institute asked me, sergeant. It was their idea. I didn’t ask them.”

“Yeah, I know. Out of all the cons in here, you’re the one who has never been sick a day in your life. You don’t smoke and never used any drugs, so when they shoot those enzymes and that secret gunk into you, the only thing they have to worry about is: does it work on humans?” The cop grinned slightly. “I wonder if it does?”

“That’s what they’re going to find out with me, isn’t it?”

Draper’s grin faded. “Last week I went to the institute for a visit. Those people are real proud of their work. Dr. Polinzer gave me the fifty-cent tour, showed me a bunch of slides, talked a yard of gibberish, introduced me to a couple of chimps, and put on a demonstration just for me. He and his assistant took a full grown sedated chimp, wired it up, and gave it a shot. Then we all watched while the chimp looked around dopey for a bit and then started screaming.”

The homicide detective slowly turned his head to the left and allowed his gaze to settle on a prisoner in the center of the block mopping the gallery floor. “Billy, you never heard such screaming, not in your whole life.” He faced the new occupant of cell one-sixteen. “Not even from your victims. It almost made me send in my dues for animal rights.” Draper stood, walked to the back of the cell next to the seatless toilet, turned around and fixed Billy with his gaze.

“I asked the good doctor if the screaming was because of what the chimp was thinking, seeing, or feeling. He didn’t know about the first two, but he told me the chimp was doing some big time feeling. Pain, man. Pain that is so far off the pain scale it’s impossible to imagine. You see, Billy, every cell in that animal’s body was undergoing reconstruction. That gunk chops up the cells, rearranges the parts, throws away what it doesn’t want, and puts it all back together again.”

The detective clasped his hands behind his back and brushed the cell’s tiny bookshelf checking for dust. He looked at his fingertips, brushed them against his thumb, and nodded. “That includes every nerve cell, Billy. Can you imagine having a trillion splinters? All at the same time? Man, it’s going to be like having your entire mind and body amputated and put through a meatgrinder a million times over. All while you’re conscious.”

The police officer waited a moment, but Billy Stark’s face did not change expression. “Anyway, I watched that chimp for almost six hours. The first thing that happened, besides the screaming, was all his hair fell out. Then it looked like he lost control of every function of his body. Remember those films you see in the service about nerve gas?”

“I never was in the service, but you already know that.”

“You’re damned right I know that!” Draper exploded. He took several deep breaths and slowly resumed an appearance of uncaring calm. “Every muscle begins twitching uncontrollably,” he continued, “you lose control of your bowels and bladder, tears run from your eyes, mucous from your nose, drool from your mouth. Then, slick with sweat, the breathing gets very hard. That chimp bled from its eyes and ears.” Draper forced a smile onto his face. “And that was the easy part.”

Billy raised his eyebrows and held out one hand for a moment. “They showed me a video of that back on The Row.”

“Did they show you the end, when the dead and dying skin comes off in sheets and you begin excreting the old you.”

Billy let the hand drop. “Yeah. My lawyer made them go into the whole thing detail by detail.” He smiled. “Surround sound and living color. More than once.”

The detective resumed his seat on the bed. “I have studied you and everything I could about you for more than eight years, Billy. I know you’re not stupid.”

“The prison shrink says I got the IQ of a genius. ‘Course if she was any good, she wouldn’t be workin’ here, right?”

Draper lifted a hand and rubbed the back of his neck as he continued studying the prisoner. “Billy, the chimp I saw died a death I wouldn’t even wish on you.”

“The one on the video I saw lived,” answered Billy, “but my lawyer got out of Polinzer that only one out of three survives regeneration. After that I got to see a tape of one that didn’t make it. You’re right about one thing, sergeant. It looks like a hard way to go.”

Draper leaned back against the cell wall and frowned as he continued his examination of Billy Stark’s face. “You are going to suffer like few humans have ever suffered, your mind is going to be wiped of everything, and in the unlikely event that you live—”

“I thought about this for a long time, sergeant. You think I’ll quit out now and run back to the hotseat just because you shake the bogeyman at me?”

“No.” Draper patted his coat pocket, reached in and withdrew an evil smelling briar pipe. Holding it by the bowl, he tapped the stem against the fingers of his left hand. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re doing this. It’s not for medicine or science or anything like that. You’ve never did anything for another person in your entire life.”

Billy remembered a boy he helped once, but that was a murder the cops didn’t know about. Anyway, he was beyond having to prove anything to anyone. Billy shrugged. “I guess I figure it’s a better chance than the chair. That’s all there is to it.”

The detective stood and looked down at the killer. “You don’t get it at all, Billy. The odds of you living might be two to one against, but the you that is you has no chance. No chance at all. The regeneration process wipes the slate acid clean.”

Turning around to his desk, Billy reached into the box of his belongings and withdrew an issue of New Detective Magazine . “I read the story you wrote. ‘Blood’s Truth.’ Your first story it says in here.”

Astonished, Draper looked from the magazine to the killer’s face. “Yeah.”

“I liked it.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Are you going to go full time writing?”

Draper curled his lip, glanced away for a moment, then faced the prisoner. “I have a few more killers to put away before I try anything like that. Think about what I said.”

Sgt. Draper turned to go and Billy held out the magazine. “Could you autograph it? I never asked for an autograph before.”

The detective burst out with a single laugh, stared at the open magazine for a moment, then took it as he reached into his inside breast pocket for a pen. “I never gave an autograph before.” He scribbled for a bit, handed back the copy, and left the cell. As his leather heels echoed on the block, Billy opened the magazine to the proper page and read the inscription:

To Billy Stark,

You’re all finished. Rot in Hell,

John Draper

Billy looked at the sentiment and wondered. The chimp in the first video Dr. Polinzer had shown him was an intelligent creature, good at games and quick to learn, according to the tests that were described in the beginning. More than that, the chimp’s face was expressive. It showed that there was more there than a dumb animal. The animal was full of mischief and liked to play jokes. When he thought he had been especially clever or funny, there was this thing he did with his mouth. A strange sort of grimace.

When the film cut to the testing of the regenerated baby chimp, it showed that the baby chimp remembered none of its tests or games. There was something else, though; something that didn’t fit within the tests; something none of the scientists appeared to have noticed.

The baby chimp pinched its handler, a studious youth with glasses that made him look like an owl. The handler jumped back and yelped. Then the baby chimp did that thing, that strange sort of grimace, with its mouth. Something of the old chimp’s thinking might have made it through the regeneration, thought Billy. The chimp in the second video had a completely different set of expressions before it died. On the first chimp, though, some individuality had made it through. Maybe. Possibly.

There was that study he had read about in Science News where a worm was trained to make some simple moves in response to a stimulation. Then the pencil necks conducting the experiment ground up the worm and fed it to some other worms. After those worms ate the smart worm, they became smart, too. They could all do what the ground up worm had been trained to do.

Doc Lamb, the serial killer children’s dentist in the cell next to his on the Row, had been the one who told Billy about the worm study. Lamb also mentioned that humans are a little more complicated than flatworms.

Cell regeneration. It was such a slender thread. It was a chance, though, and any chance is more of a chance than Old Sparky would give him.

“Stark.”

Billy looked up at the guard standing in the open door to his cell. The man’s name tag said he was Connely. “Yeah?”

The guard cocked his head toward the block access door. “On your feet, Stark. Shrink wants to see you.”

Billy Stark stood, placed the magazine into the box next to his coded notebook, and followed the guard named Connely. The coded notebook reminded him to apply for a phone call later in the day. It was November second.. The experiment would be in less than two weeks and there were some details that needed tending.

Just in case.

Over the next eleven days it seemed to Billy that he took and repeated at least four times every psychological and physical test ever invented. Ellen Nash, the prison psychologist, seemed very excited by the project, even though the people from the Steiman Institute seemed to have difficulty tolerating her. Dr. Nash was very young and very beautiful behind the dowdy image she presented for the benefit of the male prison population, but that didn’t seem to be reason enough to irk her coworkers.

On the day of the experiment, as he floated in the warm fluid of the tank the techs called “The Iron Womb,” Billy worked at trying to let the drugs relax him. He had just about written off Ellen Nash’s problems with the institute bunch as a personality thing when the tech supervising his monitors let slip to a nurse that, as prison shrink, Ellen Nash’s approval had been required to secure the necessary funding. The price of her approval was participation in the experiment and credit on any papers published.

A touch of ambition, thought Billy. It doesn’t mean anything. Everybody’s in everything for what they can get. If playing poker made Mother Theresa feel better than helping the poor, she’d be in Vegas dealing stud. Ellen Nash had been pleasant and had tried to be helpful. He didn’t begrudge the shrink a little career boost.

The tech nodded, looked at Billy, and said, “So long, killer.” The nurse pushed the plunger on a syringe and Billy reviewed his numbers one last time:Eleven, three, ninety-seven. Four-three-one-two. Twenty-four forty-two and … and a bright color—

Billy’s breath caught, the images around him smeared and went blinding white. He felt a slight burning sensation in his arm followed by his entire body getting warm. Immediately afterward his entire body felt as though it had been dipped into molten steel. His mouth opened and he heard himself cry out, then scream. For a split second he wondered if Sgt. Draper was watching, then it all dropped into a nightmare of plasma flashes, thundering sounds no synthesizer ever produced, smells of fire, feces, and fear, violent touch sensations from every nerve in his body, the taste of salt and blood. As the pain transcended mere sensation, he felt himself lifted from his body into a great dark.

…the sound of a heartbeat, dull and steady, layers of existence in flight. A voice garbled, distorted.

The heartbeat is the world, warmth its sign—

—abrupt cold, a wash of painful light, and warmth again.

…eleven, three, ninety-seven …

—sucking, a thick warm sweet cloying substance in the throat, sending it up again, the smell, acid—

…four-three-one-two …

Dark, light, both smaller, dark, light, smaller still.

Dark forever and ever.

… twenty-four forty-two and a bright color …

A sound; steady, monotonous as it grew louder and louder still. A never ending scream, a lump of trembling tissue crying for help to a very small universe.

Stillness.

A song, meaningless words, gentle touches.

Light, dark, movement, light, dark.

Endless.

He opened his eyes.

The dream, the deadly ages of light and dark, haunted the shadows. He tried to turn his head to the left, and it was difficult, his neck weak.

The darkness was a smear of forms, yellow from below, cool white from the left. Wiping his eyes with his hands, he found them full of tears. He looked at his hands, confused by the wetness, the softness, the size, the shape. The smell. A really bad smell.

The tears cleared from his eyes and he could see a window, a tree beyond, lights, and a squat gray building. There was a night light on a dresser next to the door, a fat clown with a red hat and nose glowing from within. He looked back at his hands. Something about them was wrong. Everything was wrong. And that smell.

His breaths came rapidly as panic filled him.

He wasn’t where he belonged, but where he belonged he couldn’t remember. He was lost and everything was all wrong.

With effort he turned his head to the left. He saw bars. A row of vertical bars. He felt his heart move into his throat, then he looked again. A row of green, yellow, red, and blue beads were strung on a metal rod and set into the middle of the bars. The bars were made of wood.

“Where am I?” he cried, the squeak of his own voice strange on his ears, the feel of his mouth speaking bizarre. He tried to remember the day before. How had he been brought here.

He closed his eyes and tried to squeeze the memories out. There was nothing but numbers.

Eleven, three, ninety-seven.

Four-three-one-two.

Twenty-four forty-two and a bright color …

He held his hand to his mouth and felt the tears dribbling down his cheeks. He knew he was the numbers, except they meant nothing to him.

A scream was coming.

He could feel it building in his throat, and he didn’t know what to do with it except hide it. He knew he had to hide it. He couldn’t afford to attract attention until he knew where he was, who he was, what was going on. He picked up a blanket, stuffed a corner in his mouth, and screamed. Again and again he screamed until he was too exhausted.

No whimpers, no cries, nothing to be heard outside the room.

He was alone.

Alone, frightened.

There was something lumpy, wet, between his legs.

The smell.

It was a diaper .

There was a mess in it!

The horror of that drove other fears before it. He couldn’t deal with any of the big issues right then. He was scared, tired, and confused.

He shook his head, the weakness in his neck making the gesture an effort. Issues for another moment. Right then his crotch burned and the smear and the smell of the bowel movement in his diaper were making him ill.

He moved to the side of the crib and looked for the locking mechanism. Finding none, he reached out his hand and froze as he saw it again.

So small. The hands and fingers, so tiny.

He reached through the bars near the bottom and felt around. His fingers touched a thin metal bar and he pulled on it. When that had no effect, he pushed. The entire side of the crib slid down with a bang, not falling quite far enough to guillotine his arm at the shoulder. He rolled onto his belly, moved his legs over the rail, and slid to the floor, his toes touching the short pile of a carpet.

Teetering for a moment, he held on to the rail and tried to remember something very important. He felt the tears rising again, and he forced the feelings of panic down. He didn’t know if he knew how to walk. He took a step back, turned, released the rail, and began wobbling toward the door, reeling from one leg to the other, terrified that he would lose his balance and fall down on his bottom and its filthy diaper. He made it to the door, reached up with both hands, turned the glass doorknob, and slowly pulled it open.

There was a dark hallway illuminated by a dim night light on a small narrow table. On the wall were framed photographs of enigmatic faces, one of which he thought he ought to know. It was a man with light colored hair and an engaging smile. He was standing next to a woman whose identity was a total mystery. The hardwood floor was cold on his feet as he passed the stairwell going to the floor below. There was a dim light on down there, as well. Through a window in the very top of the door he could see the reflections of a porch light. All left on for someone who was out of the house working late.

He passed a closed door that muffled the sounds of gentle snoring. The space beneath the door was black. He turned the knob and pushed the door open enough to see inside. The room was dark, no night lights, the curtains allowing almost no light in from outside. Whoever was in there was dead to the world. He backed out and pulled the door shut behind him.

The next door opened onto the upstairs bathroom. It was warm in there and he closed the door behind him. He turned the lock and snapped on the lights. The bathroom was modern, all pink enamel and blue and pink tile. There was a full length mirror attached to the wall and he walked over to it and beheld himself.

A small boy, five or six years old, looked back. Tear-reddened eyes, tousled black hair, with the look of a frightened rabbit. He was clad in powder blue pajamas with snaps that ran up the inseams of both legs and the crotch, enabling the diaper to be changed without making it necessary to remove the garment, which stank of feces and Johnson’s Baby Oil.

The snaps at back of his neck were impossible to reach and he undid the crotch snaps. He was shocked to see how thin his legs were. Putting that aside for the moment, he pulled the pajamas off over his head and dropped them on the floor. Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself and pulled away the self-sticking tabs on the sagging disposable diaper. Gasping at the odor, he pulled the diaper away from his bottom, used it to wipe up what he could, then, holding it with both hands, he looked for a place in which to dispose of the thing. There was a blue plastic pail in the corner and he teetered over, lifted the lid, and found the mother lode. He dropped the diaper in, replaced the lid, and didn’t give a thought to trying to clean himself up with toilet paper. He headed for the shower.

He pulled the knob on the faucet, turning on the water. After adjusting the temperature, he climbed in, grateful to soap up and wash away the feces, the urine, the baby oil and powder, and the stench of something else. It was more a feeling than an odor. It felt like an old life; a past. As the steam filled the air, he felt himself relax a little.

After soaping his bottom and crotch, he soaped his genitals and looked down. The size, the shape, astonished him. Something very old inside saw and the boy said, “I’m new.” He reached his hands to his face, felt his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes, his ears, “I’m brand new.”

He felt as though someone was looking over his shoulder and he turned to see nothing but a back brush dangling from the shower head by a plastic cord. Feelings of fear, sadness, regret, and guilt bubbled up in him. “Maybe it’s a dream.”

All these feelings.

Turning off the water, he pulled the curtain aside, climbed out of the tub, took a fresh bath towel from a shelf, and rubbed himself dry. While he was drying himself, he heard the doorknob rattle. “Honey? Gary? Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice. Strange and almost familiar.

He took a deep breath and let it escape slowly as he notified himself that it had to begin sooner or later. “It’s me,” he answered, his voice still small and squeaky.

There was a profoundly stunned silence from the other side of the door. Wrapping the towel around his body, he unlocked the door and opened it. A woman’s sleep-puffed face looked back, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open. She was incredibly tall. She pulled her flower printed flannel nightgown in to her lap, squatted down, and placed her hands on his shoulders. She smelled of sleep and a familiar perfume.

“Andy? Andy, honey? You talked.” Tears filled her eyes. “You talked.”

At this observation Andy’s eyebrows went up and he said, “Yes.”

She looked up, saw the blue pajamas on the floor next to wet footprints. “You can stand, you walk …” She looked into his eyes, her own eyes showing confusion. “What have you been doing? How did you get out of your crib?”

Her hands moved down his body. “You’re wet and where’s your diaper?”

He turned and nodded toward the diaper pail. “In there. It was dirty.”

The woman stood, rocked a bit as though dizzy, walked to the blue plastic container, and looked in. On her way back from the pail, she stooped to pick up the blue pajamas. While she was bent over, she looked into the shower. “You had the water on.”

“I took a shower.”

Her eyes opened wide and she almost fell over. She straightened up, her hand held to her mouth, and she lowered herself down until she was seated on the toilet. “Oh, Andy! You could’ve scalded yourself! You’re never to play with the water!”

“I wasn’t playing,” he answered curtly. “I was taking a shower. I was dirty and I wanted to get clean. I want to go to bed now. I’m tired.”

His mother looked down at him, her brow wrinkled in confusion. She blinked her eyes, shook her head, and held a hand to her forehead. She lowered her hand and looked at the boy. “I must have taken too many of those pills. Everything is just a little unreal.”

“That’s no lie,” agreed the boy as he shivered in the draft from the hall.

“Talking after all this time. Talking, walking …” She reached forward, placed her hands on his cheeks, and studied him.

“You are talking. Standing there. And you sound so smart.” She took him gently by the shoulders and kissed both of his cheeks. Her eyes were blue as they stared into his. Another tear streaked down her right cheek. “But you did talk to me, didn’t you? I should call Gary. Didn’t you talk to me? Say something, Andy.”

“Yes. I talked.”

She shook her head, chasing away those pieces of reality that didn’t fit. “We both need sleep, honey. First a fresh diaper then back into your pajamas then back to bed for both of us.”

“No,” he answered flatly.

“No?”

“No diaper. I don’t wear them anymore. I don’t want those pajamas near me ‘til they’re washed. They stink.”

The confusion on the woman’s face grew deeper. Lifting the pajamas to her nose, she sniffed at the garment and then smiled. “Why, honey, they smell like baby oil.”

“Baby oil stinks,” said the boy. “It makes me sick to my stomach. I won’t use it. No baby powder either. It stinks, too.”

She studied the strange creature with the strange requests and squeezed his shoulders. “Honey, you have to wear a diaper. You’ll wet the bed.”

“No I won’t. I’ve already shown I can make it to a toilet.”

The woman’s face filled with love. “Andy, honey, let me change you.” She smiled warmly.

“I’m too old for that, too.”

“Honey, you haven’t been well, and an important part of being a mother is changing her baby.”

With an effort the boy shrugged her hands off his shoulders and said, “Go buy yourself a baby doll to change. From now on, I do my own changing.” He left her there, sitting on the toilet, her expression even more confused.

He walked into the nursery, closed the door behind him, and flicked on the lights. His heart was pounding, his mouth dry. She was huge, the world was huge, and he was desperate to find something real. At last the cold drove him to find some clothes. After trying several drawers, he found a fresh set of yellow pajamas. This pair had feet sewn in them. He put them on, turned off the light, and walked over to the crib. There was a faint smell of urine in it and the overpowering stench of baby oil. He turned away, took an afghan from the overstuffed chair in the corner, wrapped it about himself, and settled into the chair.

His heart was still pounding. He didn’t talk right. He knew that. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. The woman could tell that. She said so. Tomorrow he would talk like a kid. He had to say something to her, though. He couldn’t have some strange woman strip him and clean the crap out of his pants. The thought of it filled him with embarrassment.

But what about how he talked?

It’s late at night, he thought to himself, and the woman had taken some pills. Maybe too many. She won’t even believe herself. He had almost dozed when he said out loud, “That’s my mother !” In another moment he said, “My name is Andy !”

He felt a lump beneath his rump, pulled out a small brown teddy bear, studied it for a moment, and tossed it to the floor. He curled up once more and watched the lights from the squat gray building. There were more lights, some of them moving. He got up, walked to the window, and watched as a long black car left the building through a gate. Somehow he knew the car was a hearse. He knew that the building was a prison. He knew that there was a fresh corpse in the hearse.

Andy shuddered as he ran back to the chair, climbed up on the seat cushion, and curled into a ball. The tears in his eyes were for someone he never knew; someone who could never cry for himself. The woman came in, picked him up, settled into the chair, and arranged him on her lap, his head resting on her ample bosom. He was surprised at how comfortable it was.

“Why are you crying, honey?” asked the woman.

He just shook his head and buried his face in the woman. In a moment he was asleep.

A gaunt man with hooded dark eyes wearing prison grays. His head was shaved. He was sitting in a field of wild flowers. Next to him was a little boy with black hair. The boy picked a bright orange flower and handed it to the man. The man held the flower and wept. The man looked at the blossom for ever so long. He stood, turned, and began walking, the flower still in his hand. The boy watched until the man was gone leaving him all alone.

A noise. There was a noise from downstairs. The front door closing. A familiar voice talking to the woman. It was still dark and Andy noticed that he was in the crib. Although slightly annoyed, he felt too tired to make an issue of it. He thought about the man’s voice, couldn’t place it, but decided before he fell back to sleep that he had a father, too.

The next morning Andy was awakened by voices. “He talked,” said the woman from the bedroom next door.

“Talked? You mean … talked? Words? Really talked?”

“Honest.”

“After all this time, and what the doctors said?” The man’s voice was giddy from lack of sleep and, perhaps, a pain killer or two of his own. Andy frowned. The voice seemed very familiar. “What’d he say?”

A long pause. The woman answered, her voice troubled. “The talk was strange.”

“Strange?”

“You know, like in full sentences. Almost like an adult.”

“What did he say?” asked the man, disbelief in his voice.

“He told me no more diapers and from now on he changes his own clothes. I’m supposed to throw out the baby powder and baby oil. He says they stink. The smell makes him sick to his stomach.”

“He didn’t.”

“I am not kidding! He told me … That’s right. He told me if I wanted to change something to go and buy a doll.”

Andy’s father laughed, the strain in his voice making it crack. “Marnie, no more super migraine pills for you.” He laughed again. “Go buy a doll,” he repeated, “How many of those pills did you take?”

A long pause, then she said quietly, “I might have taken my medication twice. But he just doesn’t talk. He walks! He went in the bathroom and took a shower, for god’s sake!”

“Go buy a doll,” the man laughed, the laugh changing by slow degrees into sobs. The man cried and for some reason Andy felt his heart ache. Afterward the man and the woman talked.

“This one was really bad. They had to run the charges twice. After we hit him with the twenty-five hundred volts, we gave him the low tension one. You know, the five hundred volts to interrupt his heartbeat. God, sparks, smoke, and stink all over the place. The doc checks Stokes’s heartbeat and he says it’s still beating. Can you believe that? Stokes ate amps for seventy seconds and he was still alive. So, we do it all again.”

He talked, calmed down, talked some more, and Andy seemed to know that this was a familiar ritual his parents went through every time a prisoner was executed. The name Stokes seemed familiar, too. Killed his girlfriend’s entire family. Mother, father, younger sister, younger brother, uncle, and the girlfriend, too. Had a strange laugh. Used to cry all night about how sorry he was. In the dream, though, where the man took the flower from the little boy, Stokes wasn’t the man. That was someone else.

Andy’s daddy talked awhile about Ricky Stokes, his family, his childhood, his life and execution. Then he shared his own dark thoughts from the night before. Taking the .32 revolver he had locked up in the kitchen, about eating a bullet. Then they talked about a vacation, seeing his parents, maybe getting a new job. And what would pay as well? Besides, it’s tough starting over again at fifty, and so on. Captain Wilson should be retiring soon and the warden promotes from inside. As yard captain he’d be off the Row.

Soon Andy’s strange behavior was forgotten. Later, when Daddy looked into his room, his eyes were red. He smiled at his boy and said, “Say, Andy. Mommy told me you talk. Say something for Daddy. Say something for Daddy.”

Andy looked at his daddy and couldn’t understand how he could have forgotten his name. It was Gary. Gary Rain. “Yes, Daddy.” Andy nodded and could not protest in time before his father swept him up in his arms, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. “We are so lucky, son. So lucky.”

Andy hesitated for a moment, then as a flood of emotion covered him, he put his arms around his father’s neck and hugged him. “I love you, Daddy.”

There were days of adjusting, days of learning, trying to sort out the joys and the horrors of being five and a half years old. Once his parents had put the Stokes execution behind them, the feeling of this new beginning filled Andy with resolve. Stokes was dead. Andy Rain was alive. Somehow Rick’s death made his own life new. He’d work hard at school when he could go, sports, enjoy all of life, do the things he’d never been allowed to enjoy—

Five and a half.

Five and a half years, but nothing before that night; the night he awakened wearing that filthy diaper.

Still, it’s my turn.

My turn. He would frown at this feeling, this it’s-my-turn passion, that would devil him, drive him to have a childhood. He would push away the feeling, secure in the heart of his home within the bosom of his parents’ love. This is my life now, he would think to himself. Everything is perfect. He couldn’t understand what it was that used to fill him with fear and he let the fear fall away.

Then Uncle Herman showed up.

Andy’s mommy and daddy talked about it. Argued about it.

Mommy’s brother, Herman Jenner, had had a rough life. When he was young he’d gotten mixed up in “something shady” and ever since he just didn’t seem to be able to get a break, especially after those hoods at that one bar attacked him, putting him in the hospital. It was rare that he could get work doing whatever it was that he did, and when he did get work, it just never seemed to last out the week. His wife and two daughters had left him years before amid a cloud of dark rumors. He was the family embarrassment to both the Rains and the Jenners. Whenever he visited he would sit in the kitchen, his left hand around a cup of coffee, the handle pointed away from him, complaining about the breaks he never got or bragging about the fights he had been in.

A few days after the Stokes execution, Uncle Herman moved in for an indefinite stay and Gary Rain received a promotion. He was no longer running death row. Captain Wilson had taken early retirement due to illness and Lt. Rain was made acting yard captain. In celebration Andy’s parents were invited to dinner by the Drapers. Mr. Draper’s name was John, he was a mystery writer who was a former police detective, and Mrs. Draper was the prison psychiatrist. Her name was Ellen, and she was very young and very beautiful. John Draper looked at Andy with a strange expression. No baby sitters were available on such short notice, which left Mommy’s brother the only one available.

Uncle Herman was charged with making sure Andy ate his dinner, washed, brushed his teeth, and went to bed on time. In a low voice, his sister made Uncle Herman promise not to drink anything. After Andy’s parents left, the first thing Uncle Herman did was to turn on the TV to the football game. The second thing he did was go to his room and return with a pint bottle of whisky. Problems began with the dinner.

“I don’t want to sit in the high chair. I sit at the table.”

“Like hell,” said Uncle Herman as he grabbed the boy beneath his armpits and dropped him none too gently into the wooden chair. “You sit where I tell you to sit.” Without fastening the safety belt, he swung the wooden tray down with a bang. “Here, kid.” Uncle Herman dropped a bowl of unappetizing green slime in front of Andy. Next to it he placed a white plastic spoon. “Eat it.”

“What is it?” asked Andy.

Uncle Herman’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Don’t worry about what it is. That’s what I put in front of you. Eat it.”

Andy sniffed at the soupy stuff and wrinkled his nose. “That’s creamed spinach.”

“You’re right.”

The boy shook his head. “I can’t eat this stuff. It’ll make me sick.”

“Oh, you’ll eat it. Marnie said you might start working your mouth. God knows why she was so damned happy about it. You be careful unless you want me to slap it off.” Uncle Herman opened the refrigerator door, took out a can of beer, and walked into the living room.

The boy could feel his skin tingle. It was back there somewhere. Hands hitting. Somehow he knew what it was like to be beaten, to be helpless under the control of the powerful.

He looked down at the bowl. He wouldn’t eat the slime. He couldn’t eat it. He looked to the cabinet door beneath the kitchen sink. Behind it was the garbage pail. He could climb down from the chair, empty the bowl into the garbage, and make it back into the highchair before Uncle Herman came back for another beer.

He slumped back in the highchair. He knew Uncle Herman’s type. If his mother’s brother spied the discarded spinach in the garbage, he’d go into a vicious rage, and the rage would be directed at Andy. If Uncle Herman did not find it, he would simply fill the bowl with more slime. Uncle Herman wanted to rage —needed to rage.

The boy knew a few simple truths:

First, he would not eat the slime.

Next, he would not allow himself to be beaten.

Finally, Andy’s father kept a .32 revolver locked up somewhere in the kitchen.

Andy moved all the way to the left in the chair, slid forward, picked up the bowl with both hands and placed it on the seat next to him. He placed the spoon in the bowl and lifted the wooden tray until it quietly came to rest on the wall behind the chair. Once the tray was up, he slid to the edge of the seat, turned and climbed down.

Once on the floor, he quickly scanned the kitchen. Beneath the counter, on both sides of the sink, were six drawers. One of the drawers sported a flat black plate containing a keyhole. The boy went to the door, glanced through it, and saw the back of Uncle Herman’s head as the man finished off the pint of whisky, put the empty on the end table, then popped open the beer and took a long drink. The TV’s volume was on very high. If Andy made some noise opening the drawer, the noise from the TV would probably cover it. The boy turned from the door.

Once he reached the drawer, Andy reached up and pulled on the handle with both hands. Locked. He looked around, went to the edge of the counter near the sink, and picked up a dinner knife. Going back to the drawer, he inserted the knife in the crack above the lock and pushed hard. The crack widened as the thick part of the blade next to the handle jimmied the lock. Holding the knife in, he pulled on the drawer’s handle. The drawer slid open easily. He reached into the drawer and felt around inside the drawer until his hand found the hefty chunk of machined metal.

It was cold and heavy, its touch bringing strange images into his head. Dark marks, spatters of red, a waiting place for death. With both hands he took it from the drawer. It surprised him how surprised he was at the weapon’s size. He could comfortably fit two fingers side by side on the trigger. Looking to the side, he toggled the cylinder catch and checked the load. All of the chambers were filled.

As he stood looking at the open cylinder, there were flashes of things: horrors, screams, blood, the jump of a gun in his hand.

He looked dizzily at the gun, knowing somehow that using it would take his life away from him. He wasn’t going to let Uncle Herman take away his new life. He closed the cylinder, reached up and replaced the revolver in the drawer.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Andy whirled about and saw Uncle Herman staring in disbelief at the highchair with the bowl of creamed spinach on the seat. The man staggered around and looked at Andy. “You get over here and eat this spinach and don’t get out of your chair until I let you out, understand?”

Andy Rain narrowed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and balanced making an issue of eating a bowl of creamed spinach against his new life. “I understand.”

He took a step toward the high chair and met his uncle’s left hand flying the other way. The open palm against his face twisted his head around and drove him to the tiled floor. “That’s for not doing what I told you the first time.”

Face down on the tile, Andy’s tears dried up as a cruel heat filled his face. His eyes went in and out of focus in time with his heartbeat and he placed his hands on the tile, lifted his head from the floor, and turned his head toward his uncle.

“Don’t you look at me like that!” The man dropped his beer can, strode across the floor, and swept down with his left arm, slapping Andy with the back of his heavy hand. The boy twisted over onto his back from the force of the blow. “Now, get up and eat that spinach, and no more mouth!”

With the taste of blood in his mouth, Andy pushed himself to his feet, wobbled over to the open drawer, reached in with both hands, and came out with the .32 pointed at Uncle Herman’s head. The gun shook wildly as he cocked it with both thumbs.

“What … now, Andy. Now, kid. You don’t know what you’re doing. Give me the gun!” Uncle Herman was bent over, his left hand extended toward the boy. “Give me the gun, boy. That’s not a toy.”

The angle was all wrong. It had to be in the left temple or the mouth. The mouth shot wouldn’t work unless Uncle Herman had his mouth open and was looking up. Unless he had a beer or bottle to his lips, his mother’s brother had permanently clenched teeth. There could be no broken teeth. Uncle Herman was a southpaw. It had to be in the left temple. He thrust both of his index fingers through the trigger guard and looked at the door to the living room. Opening his eyes wide, he exclaimed, “Mommy!”

Uncle Herman, still in a crouch, swung around to face the empty doorway. At that instant, Andy took three steps closer, stood on his toes, held the gun close to the man’s left temple, and pulled the trigger. He jumped back and fell to the floor as the pistol barked and jumped out of his hands. His heart beating wildly, he looked around and saw that Uncle Herman was down on his right side on the floor. Andy stood, walked around the still form, bent over, and held the backs of his fingers beneath Uncle Herman’s nose. Dead.

Going to the counter, Andy stood on a chair, took another cartridge from the gun drawer and opened the window above the sink. After that he took the dinner knife from the counter, polished it with a dish towel, and went to the corpse’s side. Placing the knife in Uncle Herman’s left hand, he wrapped the fingers around it, then removed it by holding it by the blade with the dish towel. Replacing it on the counter above the open drawer, he took the towel back to the weapon, replaced the spent cartridge with the new, cleaned the prints from the gun, placed the grip in the man’s left hand, wrapped the fingers around the grip with the index finger on the trigger, waited for the right commercial to come on the TV, aimed the gun out the window, and fired. The gun jumped and shook itself out of the dead man’s limp grip and fell to the floor. Andy checked the powder burn around the entrance wound and concluded that the pattern looked small enough. Then he climbed up in the chair before the sink, put some dish soap on his hands, and washed his hands all of the way above the elbows, using a vegetable brush to get beneath his fingernails. After he had changed his pajamas, he was done, and all that was left to do was to wait.

Andy curled up in the corner of the kitchen opposite the door to the living room and stared at the body. He was surprised at how little blood there was. As he sat looking at the remains of Uncle Herman, his feelings returned. He hated the man. He hated the man’s memory. He hated that Uncle Herman had been who he was and what he was when and where he was, and that all of that added up to making Andy Rain a killer. There was a nagging thought, though. The thought was that it was not Uncle Herman who had made Andy into a killer. It was, instead, something else.

Uncle Herman had done the big wrong. He had hit Andy. What Andy had done was self defense. Using the gun was the use of too much force, if he had been an adult. He could have just wounded the man, but then it would be his word against Uncle Herman’s, and he’d be in trouble for having the gun, and most likely his father would be in trouble for allowing the boy to get to the weapon. Better for everyone that Herman Jenner should get severely depressed and act on it. Andy wrapped his arms around his knees, let his head nod down, and went to sleep.

The scene when his parents returned was predictably hysterical, but brief. Once the doctor had sedated Marnie Rain and put her to bed, the uniformed police officers had only a few questions. Andy kept shaking his head and they allowed the doctor and Andy’s father to put the boy to bed. Afterward, Andy crept part of the way down the stairs and watched the scene in the kitchen through the balustrade. In addition to the two uniformed police officers, the mystery writer, John Draper, was there. Instead of his suit, he was wearing jeans and pajama tops beneath a rumpled trench coat. He only watched and listened as Andy’s father continued.

“Herman relied on the bottle a little too much. Just look at the empties. Marnie said he promised he’d stopped. He hadn’t had a regular job in years. God, I feel like a damned fool for letting him baby-sit my son, but he’s my wife’s brother and … Yes, he knew I kept a gun in the house, locked up there in the drawer—

That was when Andy remembered that his fingerprints were on the brass drawer handle, not Uncle Herman’s. The handle seemed to grow larger, looming, almost shouting for attention.

Caught.

One stupid mistake.

Everything thrown away. The great new life finished before it had a chance to start.

The situation, however, looked pretty clear cut to the cops. Suicide, plain and simple. No one had heard the shot, but everyone had heard the TV. A couple of photographs; no dusting for prints, no firearm or trace metal residue tests. A brief visit from the medical examiner. He agreed with the cops. The orderlies from the coroner’s office bagged Uncle Herman and toted off the remains.

A few swipes with a Handi Wipe, and it was over, except for one little detail.

“It’s your son, Captain Rain,” said the one uniformed officer, a big man with black hair and olive skin. “He really ought to be put into some kind of counseling. Besides seeing the suicide, from the welts on the boy’s face I’d say it’s a sure thing that your brother-in-law smacked the kid around some before he shot himself. That combination of things has a good chance of screwing up the boy’s whole life. He might even be blaming himself for what happened. I’ve seen it before. Anyway, keep it in mind. I can get you the names of some good people if you want.”

And then they were all gone, except for John Draper, who was leaning against the back of the couch, looking at the sparkling clean kitchen. He turned and looked at Andy’s father. Gary Rain rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks for coming all the way back, John. I guess you ought to call home and let Ellen know what happened.”

Mr. Draper placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Gary, why not let Ellen talk to the boy? She’s really good with kids and I think Andy likes her.”

Andy watched as his father covered his face, shook his head, and turned away from Mr. Draper. “She’d be great, John, except, you know. What if she finds out?”

“How?” The writer waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “That project became ancient history as soon as the funding dried up. Andy is just a boy that needs help and Ellen knows how to give that kind of help. Think about it.”

They said goodnight and Andy quickly ran back up the stairs and climbed into his crib. The door opened quietly and his father entered the room. “Andy? Son, are you awake?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“I guess that was a stupid question.” Gary Rain stepped all of the way into the room and stood next to the crib. His eyes seemed to glisten in the dark. He reached down, took his son’s hand, and said, “How are you doing, son?”

“Okay.”

“That was a horrible thing that happened down there. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m sure, Daddy.”

“Did your uncle hit you?”

Andy turned his face away from his father’s gaze. He could feel the tears welling in his eyes. He was scared. He didn’t want to kill anyone. Uncle Herman shouldn’t have hit him, though. That was dead wrong.

Gary Rain held his hand against the boy’s cheek. “Andy, how would you like to talk to someone about what happened tonight? A special person; someone who’s trained to help?”

The tears would not stop. Andy nodded. “Somebody I know, Daddy. Could I talk to that friend of Mommy’s, Mrs. Draper?”

“Ellen?” Andy’s daddy frowned for a moment, then raised his eyebrows. “Sure. Sure, that’d be fine.” He picked up his son and began drying his tears. “That’d be fine.” That night Andy slept in the chair wrapped in his father’s arms.

The next Tuesday Gary Rain dropped the boy off at the Draper’s house and, upon Mrs. Draper’s advice, went to work. Ellen would take Andy back to his home.

Andy sat on the couch and Ellen Draper sat in a chair facing the couch. She studied the boy for a long time before she spoke. “You can call me Ellen. May I call you Andy?”

“Sure.”

She studied him some more. “Your father told me what happened, Andy, and I’m so sorry. Gary said that you asked for me by name. Do you remember me from somewhere?”

“Somewhere.” Andy looked around at the room. He was seated in a cozy den before a fireplace. On the mantelpiece were a tobacco humidor and a rack of six pipes. He turned and faced Ellen. She was in her early thirties, but she looked like a teenager. Ellen was petite and attractive with large dark eyes and billows of auburn hair. An oversized turquoise knit sweater and black slacks finished the picture.

“I want to know something, Ellen.”

“Very well, Andy. What do you want to know?”

“Is everything between you and me secret?”

Ellen’s beautifully smooth brow wrinkled in a tiny frown. “What do you mean?”

“If I tell you something, is it just between you and me, or do you tell my parents or the police or someone else?”

“What kinds of things, Andy?”

The boy sat back on the couch and clasped his hands over his belly. “Any kind of things.”

As her eyebrows lowered, Ellen Draper settled back in her own chair. “How old are you, Andy?”

“Five and a half.”

“I thought that’s what your father said. You talk as though you are older.”

“My question still needs an answer.”

She stared at him for a long time. At last she blinked her eyes. “According to the law, if I suspect certain things in a family situation, I’m required to report it.”

“I want it different between us,” stated Andy. “Whatever I say to you stays just between you and me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, Andy.”

“If you can’t, I won’t talk to you about anything.”

Her lips spread into a wary smile as she studied the boy. “Andy, I can’t quite get over the way you talk. I know your parents very well, and neither of them talk the way you do. You’re very assertive. Do you know what I mean when I say ‘assertive’?”

“Yes.”

“Then, how does a boy not yet six years old know terms like ‘assertive,’?”

Andy closed his eyes as he fought down the frustration, the fear, the loneliness. Something within told him that he couldn’t trust Ellen Draper. Something else told him he didn’t have any other choice. He needed to talk to someone.

“Do you agree?”

Again she smiled. “If I agreed, what would I tell your parents? They’ll want to know how you’re doing.”

“Say I’m doing better, things are moving along, he’s just fine. Nothing specific.”

Her smile faded by slow degrees as her eyes studied him. At one point she frowned. “Okay.” Before she spoke again she let the word hang in the air for a long time. “Okay, Andy. We have a deal. Whatever you say to me is just between us.”

“No tapes, no notes, no files.”

She held out her hands. “I have to make notes.”

“No you don’t.”

Ellen Draper leaned forward. “Why?”

“People can get into notes.”

“What people?”

He shrugged and began playing with the crimson fringe on one of the couch’s pillows. “Anybody.” He looked at her. “Your husband.”

“Do you know my husband?”

“Sure. The night Uncle Herman died. I met both of you before you went out with Mommy and Daddy. He came back that night to talk with Daddy.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Very well, Andy. We have a deal. No notes.” Her eyes opened and she leveled her gaze on the boy. “What do you want to talk about?”

Andy whispered through his tears. “I killed my Uncle Herman. I didn’t want to, but he hit me. He hit me.” The tears rolled, he went to her side, held on to her and cried. When he calmed down, Ellen continued holding him and stroked his hair.

“Now, Andy,” she said softly, “what makes you think you killed your Uncle Herman?”

He turned his head and looked up at her. “Do you believe me?”

“What you believe is what’s important.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer I have, Andy.”

He looked down at his hands on his lap. “He hit me. He wanted me to eat that horrible stuff, and at first I wasn’t going to do it. But he hit me. He hit me twice!”

“So you wanted to kill him.”

He shook his head as the tears came to his eyes again. “I didn’t. Don’t you see? I don’t ever want to kill anybody. But what was I supposed to do? He was going to hit me again!”

She hugged him, stroked his hair, and began rocking him. “How do you feel now, Andy?”

He was quiet for a long time. When he realized his cheek was leaning against her right breast, he pulled back, his face red. “I feel better. A little better. What am I going to do?”

“We’ll take care of that together, Andy. It’ll take some time, but we’ll take care of it.”

“I don’t want to kill anybody else. I just want to be a boy.”

She stroked his cheek and continued rocking him, her face in a frown. “You don’t have to do anything for now except be a boy. Everything is going to be okay.”

On Wednesday Andy Rain woke up feeling much, much better. Despite the fact that his mother didn’t get out of bed all day, his father seemed happier, too. Thursday he saw Ellen again and they played some games and colored some pictures. She had him talk again about killing Uncle Herman, and he described it in detail: how he forced the lock, checked the gun, put it back, the hitting, and then the shooting followed by cleaning up and planting the fingerprints and gunshot residue. She seemed very strange after that.

He told her about his numbers and she asked him to repeat them several times. Eleven, three, ninety-seven. Four-three-one-two. Twenty-four forty-two and a bright color.

She wanted to know where the numbers came from, but Andy didn’t know. One day he woke up with them, that’s all. Did he remember anything before that day?

He didn’t know. Sometimes he sees things, has strange dreams, but he didn’t remember anything for sure.

In twenty-four forty-two and a bright color, she wanted to know what the bright color was, but Andy just shook his head. Then they played more games.

By the time Ellen dropped him off at his home, Andy’s mother was up, although still groggy from medication. By that evening, Marnie Rain had a meal on the table and the family sat down to eat. They talked, and there was even laughter. There would be a closed coffin funeral for Uncle Herman on Saturday, but that night Gary Rain, his wife and son, did much to heal the family.

Later, as they tucked him into bed, his father kissed him and left the room. His mother kissed him and then said something. “I know you think you did something bad to your Uncle Herman, but you didn’t, baby. It’s just a bad dream. Please believe me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She kissed Andy, turned off the light, and closed the door. Andy looked at the glowing face of the clown and tried to keep his heart quiet.

Had Ellen violated his confidence? Did she say something to Marnie? Or was it worse than that? Did she say something to Gary and Gary said something to Marnie? Who else had Ellen told? Her husband?

Even Ellen didn’t really believe he killed Uncle Herman, he was sure. But he needed to know if he could still trust her. It was possible that his mommy could’ve come to the conclusion that he felt guilty about her brother’s death all by herself. Andy knew from how his mommy talked that even she felt guilty about Uncle Herman’s death. If she had only done this; if she had only said that.

There were no decisions to make right then. To do the right thing, he needed to know the facts. He looked at the squat gray building outside his window, closed his eyes, slept, and saw faces he only knew from his dreams.

On Saturday they buried Uncle Herman. Little Andy insisted on attending, and the tears he shed were genuine, although he was crying more for himself than for the contents of the box being lowered into the ground. Twice during the service and once at the graveside ceremony, Andy caught John Draper looking at him. Ellen was there, too, and she smiled at him. By the time they got into the car and went home for the tiny reception hosted by his parents, Andy was convinced Ellen had told her husband.

As they drove home from the funeral through the center of the city, Andy sang the numbers beneath his breath, not knowing what they were, but enjoying the sounds. As his father steered the car left from Broad Street onto Cherry Street, Andy looked at the stores and shops and signs. Half of the way down Cherry the businesses were larger, fewer windows, doors, and signs. There was a fur storage company with a sign over its door that said “Nightlinger & Sons, Since 1887.” Opposite Nightlinger’s was a printing company. “Dodson & Steel, Quality Printing” said its sign. The number next to the printing company’s door was 2398. Andy noticed it because it was so close to one of his numbers. He looked to see if there was a number matching his. Because the buildings were so big and the doors so few, a lot of numbers were missing.

The car crossed Benton Avenue and the first building on the corner was huge with no windows at all. It’s sign said “Burke General Storage.” The number next to the door was formed by the ends of bricks sticking out from the wall. Two four four two. Twenty-four, forty-two. And Cherry is a bright color. Twenty four, forty-two Cherry Street. He wondered at it as he watched the Burke’s sign move out of sight.

Four Tuesdays later, Ellen picked Andy up for his regular session. As they were driving toward the Draper home, Andy finally asked her. “Did you ever tell anyone what I said about killing Uncle Herman?”

“No. We have an agreement.” She glanced at him and returned her gaze to the traffic. “Why?”

He told Ellen about what his mother said and about her husband looking at him during the graveside ceremony. “Well, you know I didn’t say anything to your mother. She was in bed and under sedation for most of that time. Besides, even if I was willing to break our agreement, which I’m not, I wouldn’t risk upsetting your mother. I’m sure she guessed on her own how you felt. After all, Andy, she’s your mother.”

Andy thought on that for a time and allowed that Ellen was speaking the truth there. “What about your husband looking at me like that?”

Ellen shrugged. “I don’t know.” She faced Andy and raised her eyebrows. “Maybe you should ask him.”

As she turned back to the traffic, Andy looked down and studied his hands. Before he had completely thought out the matter, he looked out the window and saw that Ellen was turning onto Cherry Street. “Why’re you going this way? This isn’t how to get to your house.”

“I have to pick up something on the way home. Do you mind?”

Andy shook his head as he continued staring out of the window. On this side of the street the numbers were odd instead of even. Before they reached Benton Avenue, Ellen pulled over to the curb and parked the car. Across the street was the entrance to the Burke General Storage Company, twenty-four forty-two Cherry Street. Ellen was smiling at him. “Do you want to come in with me?”

Andy nodded, a strange chill going down his back.

Burke’s was a curiously boring place. Nothing but endless locker-lined corridors. The size of the lockers grew progressively smaller as the number of the floor increased. On the first floor, the lockers were the size of Andy’s bedroom. On the second floor they were the size of closets. On the third floor they were the size of the new clothes dryer in the basement. On the fourth floor they were only as large as a small suitcase. Andy looked around and Ellen and the storage company man were out of sight. A woman went around a corner and Andy could hear her opening a locker. In a moment the locker door slammed, there was a click, then the woman returned. She walked with her eyes to the front, aware of everything and pretending to notice nothing.

Andy was alone and he looked at the lockers near the door. They were stacked three to a column, and the top of the near stack had the number four thousand. The one next to it, four thousand and three.

Four-three-one-two.

Andy walked down the corridor, and at the end the top locker’s number was four-one-oh-two. He turned the corner into the next corridor and followed the numbers, the second corridor with a number of columns only stacked two high. In the third corridor, on the bottom, was locker four-three-one-two.

It looked like all the other lockers, but Andy knew there was something in there — something meant for him. He looked at the wheel of the combination lock, and for a second his mind went blank. Then he twisted the knob and stopped on the number eleven. He turned it right to the number three. Moistening his lips he turned it to the number ninety-seven and … nothing. It didn’t open. He pulled at the lock, hit it, then twisted the knob and tried again. Nothing.

“There you are,” said Ellen. Andy dropped the lock as though it were red hot and turned to look. Ellen was standing at the turn of the corridor. She held out a plastic tote bag. “I got what I came for. Let’s get going.”

Andy glared once more at the lock, turned away, and followed Ellen. Once in the car, Ellen pulled away from the curb and said, “Hey, Andy, how would you like to go on a picnic?”

The boy shrugged as he looked out of the window. “That’d be okay.”

“I have just the place: St. George’s Park. Have you ever been there?”

Andy thought on it and the name meant nothing to him. “I don’t think so,” he said, still looking from the window, wondering why he couldn’t open that lock. Everything fit. The address, the locker number, a combination lock, but the combination he knew didn’t work. Ithad to work, but it didn’t.

“What are you thinking about, Andy?”

“Nothing.”

“It looks pretty heavy to be a nothing.” Andy glanced at Ellen and saw that she was smirking at him. “I bet I know what you’re thinking about.”

Andy shook his head. “I bet you don’t.”

“You’re wondering why you couldn’t open that combination lock.”

Andy felt his lower jaw fall open.

Her smile very broad, she turned her attention to the traffic and said, “I know because I did the same thing you did, except I did it a couple of weeks ago. I took your numbers, found the storage company and found what was in locker forty-three twelve. When I emptied the locker, they changed the combination on the lock.”

There was a well of anger bubbling up inside the boy. There was no claim that he could think of to the locker’s contents excluding an overwhelming feeling that it belonged to him. He could see that Ellen knew that too. The plastic tote bag of stuff she had gotten from the locker was on the seat between them. Without asking for permission, he pulled the bag over and reached inside.

The first thing his fingers touched was a magazine. He took it out and looked at it.New Detective was the magazine’s name, and John Draper’s name was among those on the cover. He looked at the date and saw that the magazine was issued more than three years before he was born. He turned to the Draper story, “Blood’s Truth,” and read the inscription written there:

To Billy Stark,

You’re all finished. Rot in Hell,

John Draper

“This is your husband’s first story, isn’t it?”

“We weren’t married when that was published, but yes, that’s his first story. Do you remember it?”

“How? This is before I was born.”

“Andy, did you ever wonder why you can read?”

The boy frowned, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ve always known how to read.” He put the magazine on the seat and reached into the bag. This time he came out with a wad of photographs wrapped with a rubber band. The photo on top was a black-and-white of a thin little boy with ragged clothes and very short hair. He had a serious expression and was standing in front of a decaying barn. The date on the snapshot was almost forty years ago. The boy removed the rubber band and looked at the writing on the back of the snapshot.

Me at two years old at the farm.

Hair short like that because of head

lice, I was told.

The next photo, also black-and-white, showed the same boy a little older standing between a middle-aged woman and a girl of about fifteen. They were on the broad front porch of a large New England town house. He couldn’t see it in the photo, but he knew that the post on the right going down the front stairs to the path had his sister’s initials carved into it. He turned it over.

Just before my third birthday at

Grampa Borden’s. The woman is

Mother. The girl is my half-sister,

Arlene.

He knew that both of them were dead. Mother of a respiratory illness, Arlene was a suicide.

Without looking at the rest, he put the photos back in the bag. As he replaced the photos, his fingers felt the cover of a book. He took the book out and opened it to the first page. It was one of those bound books filled with blank lined paper. On the first page were groups of letters.

bsgyi eouee grcat eiity fytuo

eniow tyfit deaho rwhio rohtw

stnur hofhh inual eaomu ouitw

owsao iubai fosre nnpek mtsih

mhtrt naeds fwedt ttepn moino

“Can you read that?” asked Ellen.

He leafed through the book and the entire thing was filled with similar columns of letter groups. He smiled as, in his mind, he tilted them, tilted them again, reversed and divided the letters into words. It was like those strange pictures that look like meaningless squiggles and specs, unless you focus through it and see the three dimensional picture within.

“I can read it.”

“Read it out loud,” asked Ellen.

Andy moistened his lips and began. “‘I wrote this to let you know who you were. I had a hard time putting in stuff because I hope this isn’t who you are now. I want you to be something different from me, but I don’t know what. I put down everything about my life I could remember, and I put down everything I did, including a couple things the cops don’t know about. I put down the facts, why I did what I did and how I felt about it.’”

Andy could picture the book in front of him, balanced on his lap, while he wrote with a ball-point pen. And he remembered knowing that he had no feelings and correcting himself. The words were in front of him and he read them to himself.

No, I didn’t put down how I felt about it. I don’t feel anything about it or much of anything else. I guess what I mean is I put down what I think I felt about it. All I really feel right now is about you. I want you to be a man. A good man. I want you to feel these things that others feel. Especially love. I’d feel love right now if I could, but I’m too hard.

If everything works out, and you do remember enough to get this book and read it, I’m not sure you should read it. The way I understand it, this experiment might be a lot more than a way out of the chair. It might be a chance to begin life all over again. If you make it, please don’t waste your life. Become somebody, do some good for others, do important things. I want you to have a good life.

Make up your own mind about reading the rest of this. I sure hope you’re smarter than me.

Andy lowered the book to his lap as he closed his eyes and let the images, feelings, and thoughts swim through his awareness. He could almost feel the pieces of himself coming together, joining larger pieces, becoming memory.

—Stokes, Lamb, Dorentz, and Beck on the Row, waiting as they all waited. The smells: disinfectant, machine oil, stale air. Old Sparky always hovering in the back of memory.

A dead man, another dead man, a dead woman, another dead man—

—caught by a demon, a feeling, and then blood.

—a race through the night, dozens of flashing blue lights, his face being ground into the gravel as his hands were cuffed behind him. That was Detective Draper.

Then Lt. Rain.

Dr. Polinzer.

Ellen—

He reached back into the bag and looked at the photo on the top of the stack, the photo of the little boy with the shaved head. Andy knew him. He knew that barn, the places where he hid from his stepfather, the places where Ailene and her boyfriend hid to kiss and make love, the places where his stepfather hid his drinking —

In the bottom of the bag was a pile of newspaper clippings and articles from magazines. Andy closed his eyes.

There was a memory, a scene with a man from Burke’s.

Kirk Miller.

Miller was paid to store the stuff in the locker and add to the stuff anything the press printed about the experiment.

Part of the memory: Billy Stark wondering if the man from Burke’s would actually do what he was being paid to do.

As a young boy Billy learned that if he trusted anyone, he would get hurt. On the Row the only person he trusted was one of the men who was supposed to walk with him to keep his date with Old Sparky: Gary Rain. After his return to the general population, he had no choice but to trust that the man from Burke’s would do as he said he would. Still, he wondered. Kirk Miller turned out to be an honest man. Ellen Draper, maybe not so honest.

“Ellen?”

“Yes?”

“You know all about this, don’t you? About the experiment. About who I was?” He opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked at her. Excitement filled her face.

“I didn’t know at first,” said Ellen. “I mean every dream I ever had was crushed as a result of that fiasco. I knew Gary and Marnie adopted you, but I didn’t know you were that baby. See, after you regressed uncontrollably to that baby vegetative state and stayed that way, the project was considered a flop and lost its funding. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we all wound up in the tabloids. I almost lost my job because of the publicity and Dr. Polinzer; do you remember him?

Palefaced fragile man, skin like parchment. He’d go down in a strong wind. A will like iron. Used to getting his own way. Old, obsessed with not getting any older. “I remember him.”

“He was ruined professionally. God, the media had a field day with him. He died three years ago. Whatever there was left of the project died with him.”

“Except for me.”

Ellen nodded. “Except for you. Of course, you were virtually brain dead, and in the three years subsequent to the regeneration, you didn’t grow, gain weight, develop intellectually, or anything. You could feed and fill a diaper, and that was about it. John and I were married by then and he knew that Gary and Marnie were childless, so—“

“So he had them take me in and I’m almost nine instead of almost six?”

“If you want to be technical about it, you’re almost forty-nine. Look, Andy, eight years ago no one expected you to live more than another year or two, but after Marnie saw you in the hospital, she insisted on bringing you home. I’ve never seen a mother love a baby more. Every day she’d move your limbs about the way the therapist showed her. But don’t you see, Andy? The experiment wasn’t a failure. It’s more of a success than anyone could have imagined. John and the Rains never told me where you came from, but I began suspecting after we talked that first time. When I saw what was in that locker, I was certain. You reading that coded book is all the proof I needed.”

“You know what’s in it?”

“A little. An old professor of mine used to be a cryptologist back during the Korean War. He fiddled with it for half an hour, then showed me how to decode it. I managed about forty pages so far. One of the things Billy Stark confessed to was killing a woman in St. George’s Park. No such murder was ever reported.”

“The police thought it was just a hoax,” said Andy. “They never found a body.”

“I’m sure that must be in the book,” said Ellen. “When you show me where that body is, that will be all of the proof that anyone will ever need.”

Andy looked out of the window as a sickness filled him. He didn’t need to read Billy Stark’s book. He had lived it. He spoke to Ellen as he continued to look from the window. “You figured out what the numbers meant, then you waited to see if I could figure it out.”

“And you did! Don’t you see what this means? Polinzer’s regenerative solution works. Even better, the individual personality isn’t completely lost in the process! That’s more than old Polinzer ever dreamed of. Look at you. This is going to revolutionize so many disciplines, and I’m the one who is going to publish it!”

The boy felt the tears burning his eyes. Fragments of memories, bits of feelings, the shards of a shared past, but he was not who Ellen thought he was.I am not Billy Stark , he swore to himself.I do not want to be Billy Stark . He smiled inwardly as he remembered what was written in the coded book. Billy Stark didn’t want him to be Billy Stark either.

One clipping in the bag reported a fantastic tale of a medical experiment where an adult serial killer was actually turned into a drooling cuddly baby. The headline read simply: BABY KILLER . The article next to it was titled PET CAT EATS ALIEN . There were more and Andy didn’t want to read them. He didn’t want there to be any new stories, either. A whole new life dogged by scientists and reporters would not be worth living. And sooner or later someone would take another look at the Herman Jenner suicide.

He put the clippings back into the bag and looked up at Ellen. “You promised not to tell anyone about me.”

“Andy, don’t be a child.” Ellen glanced at Andy and laughed at what she had said. “Strictly speaking, I’m not going to pass on anything you’ve said. I’m going to make history, though, by showing the world who and what you are. Andy, can’t you see all of the good this can do? All of the people you can help? Andy, you are going to be the most famous person on earth.”

“You promised me.”

Her brow furrowed as an irritated note crept into her voice. “I’m not going to break that promise. Another thing I’m not going to do, young man, is bury the most important scientific happening of the decade. Now I want you to trust me, okay? I know you’re a little scared right now, but you’ll see. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to have a picnic and then you are going to show me a very old hiding place of yours. Please trust me, Andy. I know best.”

Andy sat in sullen silence for a few minutes then looked into the back of the car. Ellen had loaded the back seat of her sedan with pillows and blankets in case he wanted to nap while they drove. There were two bags of groceries, as well. The boy looked at Ellen and noted that she didn’t use her seatbelt. Andy settled into his seat, reached to the door, and snapped his seatbelt in place. There was time.

As they left the limits of the city, Ellen Draper finally broke the frosty silence. “Andy, do you know where we are?” She nodded toward the crowded four lane highway upon which they were driving.

He adjusted his seatbelt so it wouldn’t rub against his neck. “Beaman Road,” he answered. “It goes through Harrison and Grange Corners, then it goes to two lanes, twists up through the park and ends at the expressway outside Watertown.” He looked at her and she was biting at the skin on her lower lip.

Andy sat back and let his gaze play among the hills, trees, and wildflowers while the thoughts in his head sped from one dark corner to the next. He knew the park. He remembered a traffic rotary and a tourist information center, closed for the season. On the other side of the small wooden building was a parking lot. There was a playground next to the parking lot. Sand boxes, swings, monkey bars, slides, teeter-totters, and the whirl-around. His senses swam as the years fell away.

There weren’t many people there that winter twelve years ago. The ground was frozen but there was no snow. The air was bitter. There was only a woman leaning against a station wagon. She was chain smoking cigarettes.

A child.

Little boy. There was a child in the back of the station wagon. Four years old; perhaps five. “Can I get out? Can I get out and play? Can I please? Please!”

“Oh, all right!” she snapped as she tossed away her cigarette and yanked open the tailgate. “Stay close to the car and keep your voice down.”

The little boy climbed down from the back of the station wagon and ran to the whirl-around.

Billy watched from the edge of the trees. The little boy looked happy on the whirl-around. Twice he squealed with glee. The second time he squealed, the woman lit another cigarette, looked at her watch, and said, “That’s enough. Get back to the car. We have to go.”

“No!” protested the boy.

The woman went to the whirl-around, grabbed one of the handles, and pulled the turntable to a halt. She slapped the boy’s face and dragged him to the car. Lifting him up, she threw him in the rear and slammed shut the tailgate.

“I do you a favor and look how you pay me back! Stop that damned crying,” she commanded. The boy continued crying and Billy Stark felt his own throat closing with rage, his jaw muscles straining. “Do you want me to give you something to cry about?” Reaching through the open rear window, the woman slapped the little boy. Once, twice, three times.

Then Billy moved from his hiding place.

Andy looked down at his hands. There were no scars, no blood, no signs pointing to what they had done. They were new hands. Every cell in them was new. He was a new person. He wanted nothing to do with Billy Stark, and Billy wanted the same.

“I know where the woman is hidden,” he said. Then he told Ellen about the woman, the crying boy, and the station wagon, how he had carried the woman into the woods, down to the bottom of the gorge. It was steep, choked with brush and trees. No one ever went down there. Billy went down there, however, because Billy always traveled paths unfamiliar to most persons. He met fewer of them that way. There was the entrance to a tiny cave above the stream at the bottom of the gorge.

When he was down there he lost track of time.

Hours.

Days.

There were no feelings. His heart felt dead. By the time he returned to the parking lot, the station wagon and the boy were gone.

“I remember,” said Ellen. “I was still in college. The TV and newspapers were screaming about it, the kidnapped boy. What was his name? Jimmy something. Jimmy Patrick. His picture was everywhere. He’d been kidnapped, and a few days after the ransom note was delivered, the police found the boy in the park sleeping in a car. The boy never would say what had happened to the woman.” She raised her eyebrows and looked over at Andy.

“Ellen, it’s a long way to the park from here. Is it okay if I go in back and eat something.”

“Of course. Do you like peanut butter and jelly?”

“Yes.”

“Let me pull over.”

“It’s okay,” said Andy. “I’ll just climb over the seat and make myself something.” He unclipped his seatbelt, stood on the seat, and climbed over the back.

Once he was on the back seat, he looked around Ellen’s shoulder and saw that the speedometer read over eighty miles per hour. There were two paper grocery bags in back. In one he found the peanut butter, all fruit jelly, and white bread along with a few other things she had picked up at the store: paper towels, yogurt, dishwashing detergent, toothpaste, dinner candles, a clear bag of plastic eating utensils, a box of animal crackers.. “Is all this stuff for the picnic?”

“When I was at the store I picked up a few things I needed at home.”

“Can I have some animal crackers?”

“Sure. I got those for you. Have an apple juice, too. I got them out of the cooler.”

Andy opened the box, placed a rhino cracker in his mouth, and chewed as he looked into the other bag. Household ammonia in a special bag, parmesan cheese, paper napkins, tomato paste, pasta, aspirin, a small bag of apples, a six-pack of apple juice cartons in a quilted plastic bag, and a newspaper.

Using a plastic knife, he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and as he was eating it, he took out an apple juice, removed the pointed straw, punctured the carton with it, and took a sip. As he was eating, Ellen said in mock hysteria, “I can’t take it anymore! The smell of that peanut butter is driving me crazy! Could you make me a sandwich?”

“Sure.” He pulled out the peanut butter, opened the jar, and used the same plastic knife he used to make his own sandwich. As he was spreading the peanut butter he took a moment and considered the household ammonia. It left too many unanswered questions. He would have to stick with the animal crackers. Lifting the wax paper liner full of animal crackers from the tiny box, he placed it on the floor of the car. On Ellen’s sandwich, he put the peanut butter extra heavy with only a thin layer of jelly. As he stood to hand it to Ellen, he stepped on the liner full of crackers, crushing the contents.

While Ellen ate and Andy finished his apple juice, the boy refolded the three blankets, one atop another, on the back seat so that they exactly fit the width of the seat, but only half its depth. There were several throw pillows, and he placed one of them on the seat next to the right hand door. Another he placed flat on the floor next to the right hand door, and a third he put on the floor leaning against the right hand door. The last pillow he put on the floor leaning up against the back of the passenger seat.

When they reached the end of the four lane part of Beaman Road, the traffic seemed to triple and Ellen pressed on the accelerator and began passing the cars in front of her, weaving in and out of the other lane, dodging the trucks and cars coming the other way. One trucker gave his air horn an angry blast as he hit his brakes to avoid hitting her.

One last chance.

“Ellen, please keep my secret. You don’t know how important it is.”

“Oh, I know you’re scared, honey, but don’t you see? What about all of the people this can help? You don’t want to be selfish, do you? This is so important. Please trust me in this, Andy, and you’ll see.

“Ellen, I don’t want to be made into a freak.”

“Oh, Andy, you’re no freak. You’re special.”

“I’ve been special before.”

“You’re not even six years old, Andy. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’ll see to that.”

Andy nodded his head in discouragement. He saw that Ellen was halfway through her sandwich. “Ellen, do you want an apple juice?”

“That would hit the spot. This peanut butter has me just a little stuck up.”

She giggled and held up her right hand while she held onto the sandwich with the thumb, index and middle fingers of her left hand, holding onto the steering wheel with the ring finger and little finger. Andy handed her a carton of juice, the pointed straw still stuck to the carton’s side. Ellen raised her knees until the tops of her thighs pressed against the steering wheel, keeping it from turning. Still holding the steering wheel and sandwich with one hand, she pulled the straw loose with her teeth and began maneuvering the carton so that she could push the straw into the carton. As she did so, Andy reached around her head with both hands and ground a handful of animal cracker crumbs into each of her eyes.

She screamed, dropped everything, and grabbed for her eyes as the car veered into the oncoming lane of traffic. As it did so, Andy fell to the floor of the car, pulled the blankets and pillow down on top of himself, and began screaming. He didn’t know if he’d remember to scream after the collision. On the floor, under the blankets and pillows, they might miss him. He didn’t think he’d want to burn.

He heard a squeal of air brakes, the blast of an air horn, then everything went dark as he felt his body slam into the back of the front seat.

Andy suffered only a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder and was home the next day. The truck Ellen’s car plowed into suffered a bent grill and crumpled left fender. The truck driver, a long time white line veteran named Donald Washington, was not injured at all. In fact it was he who was responsible for dragging Andy and Ellen’s dead body out of the vehicle before the leaking gasoline caught and the car went up in flames. He and his cargo of plumbing fixtures continued on their way two and a half hours later. Ellen Draper was killed as she took a header through the windshield before she was thrown back into her seat. It was mentioned on the news that Mrs. Draper had lost control of her car while she was trying to drive and eat at the same time. It was also mentioned that she was speeding and hadn’t had her seatbelt buckled.

For the next two days Andy kept to his crib and stared at the nightlight on the dresser. It’s face would fade into other faces; Ellen, the faces who had made him suffer, the faces of those he had killed, imaginary faces of those who he might become if only he were allowed to be a little boy.

In another two days he was up. For breakfast his mother made him blueberry pancakes. Later, when his father asked him if he wanted to talk to another counselor, he said no. He desperately wanted to talk to someone, but those he could talk to would either believe him or they would not believe him. If they did not believe him they would be useless. If they did believe him, well, that would be a kind of death in itself. However he would manage, he decided, he would have to manage it on his own.

A month later, on the thirteenth day of November, things in the house were somehow different. At breakfast his parents seemed uneasy. That made him uneasy. He wanted to ask if something was wrong, but he was afraid of the answer. He didn’t eat much breakfast. He tried to talk to his mother after his father drove off to work, but she was baking something and almost ordered him to his room.

What was it?

For an hour or two he tried to kid himself out of his feelings, but then he noticed strange things going on outside. At nine-thirty in the morning Andy noticed a state police cruiser pulling up in front of the house. He hid behind the curtain, his back against the wall, his mind racing to arrive at answers to questions yet unasked, his eyes searching frantically for a route of escape as hushed conversations took place downstairs. By ten o’clock he glanced again from his room’s window, and there was another state police cruiser and a city police cruiser parked behind the first.

Across the street was parked a brown and yellow cruiser from the county sheriff’s department, and behind it was parked a plain gray no frills Plymouth. Behind the wheel of the Plymouth was retired Detective Sergeant John Draper. He opened the car’s door, stood, and leaned one elbow on the roof of the car and the other on the top of the still open door. The man was looking at the house; at Andy’s window; at Andy.

Andy continued to stand in the window and look at the man who was looking at him. John Draper closed the door of his Plymouth and began walking toward the door of the house. He lifted a hand, waved at Andy, and the boy waved back. He watched until the man walked out of view and the doorbell rang.

There seemed to be something in the back of Andy’s throat, choking him.

Fear.

Things were so much simpler when he could feel nothing. Deadly barren, but simple. No joy, but no fear. No happiness, no love, but no fear.

Andy went to his closet, opened the door, and seated himself on the floor in the back where it was quiet, dark, and smelled of mothballs. He wrapped his arms around his knees and closed his eyes.

What could they do? What could they really do?

They couldn’t prove anything. Even if they did believe he was Billy Stark, what could they do? He was a little boy. A child. They couldn’t put him in prison, or even in a reformatory. Maybe they could lock him up in a psycho ward. But it wouldn’t be anything like that for Andy Rain. No hospitals, no prisons. He was just a little kid. If he believed that and acted like that, no one could believe anything else. He couldn’t talk like he talked to Ellen. Almost six years old. That’s what he needed to remember. Almost six.

Maybe they were just there to follow up on Ellen Draper’s death. Something didn’t fit. There was always something that didn’t fit. The cracker crumbs. An easy explanation for that: They got mashed, and when the accident happened, they flew everywhere—

“Andy?” called his mommy’s voice. “Andy, please come down to the living room.”

Cracker crumbs. But how did Ellen wind up with so many of them in her eyes? The crackers were in the back seat. The impact might have thrown some of them into the front seat, but they had to be going in the other direction to get in Ellen’s eyes. Even if they could have gotten into her eyes, why not her mouth or nose? There was no explanation for the cracker crumbs. There hadn’t been time to wipe his hands in the car. Did the police see if he had crumbs on his palms? There must have been some residue.

His throat closed and he held his breath as he rubbed his hands together to remove the imaginary evidence; the blood pounded in his temples. What was it? What could it be? What else could it be?

He stood, entered the nursery, his eyes searching frantically for a weapon, a disguise, a route of escape, a place to hide forever.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then again and again. Panic would kill him, if he let it. He looked again at the nursery. On the top of the dresser. There was a disguise, something with which he could hide himself. He reached up with both hands, picked up the little brown teddy bear, and held it by one arm as he left the room and walked to the head of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, waiting for him, were his mommy and daddy and a state police lieutenant, a man.

“Come down, baby.”

Step by step, Andy came down the stairs, hugging his teddy bear. When he finally made it to the bottom, he felt light-headed as he looked up at his mommy. She touched his cheek with the palm of her hand as his daddy said, “I bet you thought we’d forgotten all about it.”

Andy said nothing as his mommy placed her hands on his shoulders and turned him around toward the living room. “Surprise!” shouted a dozen voices. There was a computer printed banner stretched across the entrance to the living room. It said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDY.”

And Andy cried. He cried, his mommy knelt and hugged him, and everyone else laughed.

Birthday party.

Billy Stark was born on December seventh. Andy Rain was celebrating his birthday on August 13th. He filed away the unasked question. He could have asked Ellen, but Ellen was dead. Perhaps it had something to do with the experiment or when his mommy and daddy adopted him.

Andy could never remember having a birthday party before. It’s a number of family friends and their children gathering to celebrate a special person’s special day.

Presents.

He had never had birthday presents before; so many wishing him well; honoring him. Captain Rain had old friends from his days as a police officer with the city. Lt. Bill Pace and Trooper Mickey Parsons of the state police. Sheriff’s Deputy Claudia Hayes. Detective Mick Arnold of the city police. Det. Arnold and the state troopers brought their wives and the sheriff’s deputy brought her husband. They all brought children ranging in ages from eight months to seven years old. There were small presents for each of the children. John Draper didn’t have any children.

When Marnie Rain brought in the birthday cake, there were seven burning candles: one for each year and one to grow on. “Make a wish, Andy, and if you can blow out all the candles, it’ll come true.”

He closed his eyes, made a wish, blew out all the candles, and everyone applauded. “What’d you wish, honey?” his mommy asked.

“He can’t tell you, Mrs. Rain,” said Gloria Pace. “His wish won’t come true if he tells what it is.”

Andy was grateful to Gloria. He didn’t know the rules and he didn’t want his wish rejected over a technicality. He had wished to grow up to do good for others. It was what Billy Stark had wanted.

The party progressed, but only a little of it was playtime for Andy. He spent most of the party studying his peers. The Arnold boy was eight months old, Jason Pace was five and a half. His sister Nina was seven. Mickey and Wendy Parson’s son Roy was three years old and their twins, Larry and Ted, were six. Lettie Hayes was six, as well, and her sister Gloria was seven. Andy was officially six years old, and he narrowed his observations to Larry, Ted, and Lettie. Soon he, too, talked about football, hating school, and the silliness of girls.

When the party broke up, leaving only John Draper who was staying for dinner, Andy Rain was concerned. Why was he there? At the table John Draper sat facing Andy. The boy stayed quiet, unless he was asked a direct question. Mostly he just listened and looked at his plate. He didn’t know why John Draper was there, but he did not believe in coincidence. He had spent too many years as the fox. He knew the smell of the hounds.

That night, from the conversation, Andy learned that Mr. Draper was Gary Rain’s old partner in the city police. He retired, he said, because the bad guys were winning. He talked some about his writing and the visits to schools where he did writing clinics for children to introduce them to writing. They kicked around old times, reminisced a little about Ellen, then Mr. Draper said to Andy’s daddy, “Did Harry tell you about trying to track down the Shadow Snatcher? They’re bringing in Molly Warton.”

“The psychic? I didn’t think Harry believed in that sort of thing.”

“He doesn’t. Neither do I. But before I took retirement, we used Molly Warton to identify and take down Dick Ritter.”

“I remember Ritter,” said Andy’s father. “Wasn’t he that serial sicko who went after truckers sleeping in their rigs on the interstate?”

“That’s the guy.”

“I didn’t know you people resorted to the supernatural to find him.”

“Well, John, what happened?” asked Marnie.

“I took Molly to one of the crime scenes,” John Draper answered. “She soaked up the atmosphere, had a couple of hot flashes, then picked Ritter out of a line up. He wouldn’t say a word, but once we tossed his place we found enough to hang him. He had trophies from at least two dozen—”

John Draper saw Andy’s mommy frowning and shaking her head. The former detective shrugged and continued. “Anyway, once we showed him what we had on him, he started singing. We eventually nailed him for eleven murders.” John Draper faced Andy’s daddy, but kept his gaze on Andy. “That’s eight on Billy Stark’s total. What do you think of that, Andy?”

Andy concentrated on looking dull-eyed as he thought to himself. Ellen’s widower had set bait and dangled the hook. John Draper knew that Billy Stark had claimed over eight killings. Maybe Ellen had told him everything and he hadn’t believed it then. Now that she was dead, though, he might be willing to take another look. The trap was set. The boy decided not to step in. “I don’t know.” He then began playing with the peas on his plate.

There was a little more talk on the subject of murder and why John Draper had taken retirement when he did. After dinner, while Andy’s parents finished doing the dishes, Andy was left alone with Mr. Draper in the living room. Andy played with one of his presents, a wooden toy truck. The man looked at the boy for a long time, then asked, “Andy, did you ever hear of Billy Stark?”

Andy nodded.

“Who was he?”

“A bad man.”

“That’s right,” said Draper. “Billy Stark was a bad man. Ellen tested him years ago. Did you know that?”

Andy shrugged.

“Ellen tested you, Andy.”

The boy thought quickly. This was not the time to go into a rage about the violation of his confidence. Instead he shook his head. “Oh no she didn’t. We played games, and drew pictures, and talked a lot.”

“Those were tests.”

Andy felt tears come to his eyes and he wiped them away with his fists. “Ellen used to talk to me.”

John Draper sighed, slowly nodded and said, “I know, boy. I know.”

Later, in his room, Andy dressed for bed, brushed his teeth, climbed into the chair, and wrapped the blanket about himself. Right then he didn’t feel like being inside the bars of the crib.

John Draper suspected him, that was clear. All Andy could do was to insist on being a little boy. If he was perceived to be a little boy, he could not be a killer, even to John Draper.

His door opened and his mommy looked into the nursery. “Sleeping in your chair again tonight, baby?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

She came in and was followed by Andy’s daddy. Marnie sat next to Andy on the chair and lifted him to her lap. Andy’s father stood next to them, his large hand squeezing the boy’s shoulder. His mother, with her arms around him, asked, “Did Mr. Draper frighten you, dear?”

“A little.”

His father touched Andy’s cheek with his hand. “He’s been going through a rough patch, Andy. Try and understand.”

“I understand. I miss Ellen, too.”

His mommy hugged him, kissed his cheek, and pushed some hair back from his forehead with her hand. “Honey, what would you think if we put your old crib up in the attic and got you a real bed? Would you like that?”

“That would be great.”

Gary Rain grinned broadly, went into the hallway, and brought in a wooden frame already assembled. Pushing the crib aside, he set up the frame, returned to the hall and came back with a box spring and mattress. His Mommy put him in the chair and helped his father make the bed. The sheets were deep blue and dotted with stars and planets. Andy jumped into the bed before they spread the bright red blanket on it.

“Thank you. Thank you, Mommy. Thank you, Daddy.”

She kissed his cheek and said, “We love you, Andy. We love you very much. Happy birthday, son.”

“Happy birthday,” said his father.

Andy Rain hugged and kissed his mother, then turned and allowed himself to be picked up by his father. Another hug. Another kiss. He loved them. He loved them both so much and his feelings seemed a terrible threat.

Next month Andy would be enrolled in first grade, but for the next week or two things went along just the way they were supposed to. Gary Rain would take his son out to play catch, swim, go canoeing, even fishing. When winter came, his daddy promised, he would teach Andy how to ski. The whole family would go to see movies on Saturdays, and only once was there a problem with a baby-sitter. It was a girl named Tammy Saulter, and the only problem was that, after Andy was put to bed, she disappeared. Andy, upon questioning, could add nothing to that. He had a bruise on his back and shoulder and his mom asked him about it. Andy had shrugged and said it must have happened when Dad had taken him to the playground in the park where he played some pretty rough games with Larry and Ted.

The police never did find Tammy Saulter. She was listed as a runaway and forgotten. Six weeks later the garbage disposal in the Rain household had to be replaced. It had simply burned out. That was two days after the equally mysterious disappearance of teenage neighborhood bully, Toby Yuker. Toby had been the terror of all the neighborhood kids. Even the parents in the neighborhood were afraid of him. Everyone assumed, and prayed, that Toby had run off the same as Tammy Saulter. Some suspected that they had even run off together.

In a few days he would be at school. Andy had made up his mind that school was going to be different for him than it had been for a distantly remembered Billy Stark. Billy had spent what seemed like hundreds of years in school, unprepared, unable to concentrate, feeling inadequate, and like an unwanted stranger. He had quit school when he was in his second year of high school. Each failing grade had been a judgment on himself that seemed to reflect what the universe had been dishing out, and reflected as well his view of himself. Andy Rain, however, had a different view. He also knew how to read, write, do numbers, and lots of other things. He wanted to experience doing well in school; to be the one who got the gold stars and medals.

Around him there were other things in the news. There was a new president, an entire world in the throes of momentous changes, and occupying the attention of the local law enforcement community, there was the capture, trial, and conviction of gang boss “Bear” Brandt. He had been sentenced to life without parole for complicity in the murder of his lawyer, thus becoming Captain Rain’s most celebrated guest.

They talked a lot about Bear Brandt around the Rain family table. Brandt was a very bad man, possibly responsible for as many as a hundred deaths, although all they could prove was one. His gang was one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful in the state. It was no coincidence that the guard staff at the prison had been beefed up by the addition of six more officers.

The first day of school came, and Andy’s mom drove him there and made sure he got to his first class. Andy Rain entered the room feeling apart from everyone, but eager to begin. He really was getting to do it all over again. The failure, fear, and despair were behind him. Here he could succeed.

In his class were the twins, Larry and Ted Parsons, and Lettie Hayes. The twins were very neat in matching yellow and brown jerseys and corduroys while Lettie had on a red and white dress with a tiny matching wrist bag. Andy’s teacher was Miss Douglas, a young woman with long brown hair and, to Andy, the world’s most engaging smile.

His desk was next to Lettie’s. There was penmanship, spelling, arithmetic, then lunch and recess. Andy went out to recess feeling very good about being able to answer the teacher’s questions, at being able to do all the work, to see his first gold star go up on the wall. He excelled, too, at the playground sports organized for recess. To his utter amazement, he found himself popular. It was glorious. Then he saw Lettie Hayes crying. She was by the swings, her dress filthy from the playground soil.

“What happened, Lettie?”

The girl looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. “That boy!” She pointed toward a third grader who was standing in the entrance going back to the classrooms. He was talking to two other boys and they were laughing among themselves. “I was on the swing playing and that boy pushed me so hard I fell out and hurt my knees. I hate him.” She lifted the front of her dress and looked at her scraped knees.

She looked at her wrist, then at the ground, and around beneath the swings. She turned and looked at the boy and the boy was looking back, dangling her wrist bag by a dirty finger.

Andy seemed to drift in and out of the past, images of a little boy being beaten up and robbed, the bully smirking at him, laughing.

“What do you want, kid?”

Andy brought his mind back to the present and saw that he was standing in front of the boy who had Lettie’s wrist bag. He held out his hand and looked up into the boy’s face “Give me the bag.”

The boy raised his eyebrows and laughed. “Get lost.”

Andy didn’t move. “Give me the bag,” he repeated.

Then the boy looked angry and shoved Andy, making him fall on his backside. “Get lost, kid, before you get hurt.”

Andy stood up, ironed all emotion from his voice, and said, “Hand over that bag, you ugly little bastard, or I’ll glide on you in the night and leave six inches of steel through your heart.”

The boy and his two friends looked stunned. Andy took the bag from the boy’s hand, turned, and walked away. Four steps, five, and Andy could hear Ted shouting at him from across the playground, trying to warn him. Lettie was also screaming. Andy, however, was listening to the footsteps, breaths, and grunts coming from behind. At the exact moment, he stooped over, turned, and drove his head into the boy’s groin.

The boy screamed and gasped as he writhed on the ground. Andy bent over the boy and said to him quietly, “This was just a warning. The next time, no warning. I just kill you.”

“What’s going on here?” demanded the teacher with the duty. He was a thin man with even thinner hair. He was peering through thick glasses at the boy on the ground. “Leon? What happened?”

“I think Leon tripped, Mr. Fontana,” said another teacher. It was Miss Douglas. “What about it, Leon?” Her eyes were narrowed and an evil grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. Leon was still clutching his crotch and writhing on the ground. She whispered at him, “C’mon, Leon. Did you trip, or should we take this little first grader in to the principal for beating you up?”

“I tripped,” he muttered. Leon struggled to his feet, dried his eyes with the back of his hand, and limped with tiny steps toward the building, still holding his crotch with both hands. Miss Douglas looked after him, then patted Andy on his shoulder, and headed back inside. Mr. Fontana scowled for a moment, then turned and resumed observing the children playing. Andy handed the bag back to Lettie and went into the academic building to get away from everyone.

Passing by his classroom, he heard his teacher saying to her aide, “I’ve waited for two years to see that bully Leon Colter get his. God, it was beautiful. My man Andy jammed that bully’s nuts up so far Leon can use them for ear plugs. It was inspirational.” Andy heard, thought about it, and still didn’t know how he should feel. He could still remember the words from Billy Stark’s book: It might be a chance to begin life all over again. If you make it, please don’t waste your life. Become somebody, do some good for others, do important things. I want you to have a good life. He couldn’t help but feel that he had somehow let down someone.

That evening after dinner, it took Andy a little over an hour to do his homework, most of the time spent preparing a notebook and thinking about what had happened during recess. He felt stupid. To risk everything to get back a dumb little bag for a silly girl. Now he was known as a trouble maker and Leon Colter was his still living enemy. Perhaps Miss Douglas thought him a hero, but Mr. Fontana had seen something he didn’t like.

What had possessed him? He didn’t even like Lettie Hayes all that much. His frown grew deeper. There was, however, someone he hated. He hated Leon Colter. He hated Leon Colter’s friends, too. He hated bullies; boys, girls, women, men who fed their demons by filling others with pain and fear.

Billy Stark had left Andy Rain a mission. Become somebody, do some good for others, do important things.

He wouldn’t be a victim. He didn’t want to see anyone become or remain a victim. But how does a very young child protect himself? How does he protect others? Anything less than death leaves an enemy bent on revenge. And all of the power, all the rules, favor the enemy. Uncle Herman would’ve punched and slapped him around some more; perhaps even killed him. Ellen would have had him in a spotlight from which he could never escape. And she had promised. What else could he have done and not be a victim?

There was a knock and Andy’s dad opened the door and looked in. “Andy?”

“Yes?”

“I just got a very strange phone call from Roger Colter. He’s Leon Colter’s father. He said you frightened his son very badly.”

Andy leaned back in his chair and studied his father to see what he would do. It was a test. “He stole Lettie Hayes’s bag. When I asked him to give it back, he wouldn’t. Then he shoved me and I told him that if he ever did that again, I’d hurt him.”

Captain Rain held up his hand. “Something about sticking a knife in his heart?”

Andy nodded. “Then I took the bag from him and walked away. He tried to jump me, I turned around, and he ran into my head and hurt himself.” Andy thought for a second, then decided to go for the truth. “I knew he’d run into my head and that it would hurt him. I told him that was a warning and that there wouldn’t be any warning next time, I’d just kill him.”

Captain Rain’s eyebrows went up and he grinned. “I guess that’s what scared him, huh?”

Andy laughed as he felt the heat come to his face. “I guess.

“How old is Leon?”

“He’s in the third grade. Eight or nine.”

His dad nodded. “I got another phone call from Deputy Hayes. Do you remember her?”

“Sure. Lettie’s mom.”

“Well, she called and then she put Lettie on the phone. She made you sound like the silver knight slaying fire belching dragons right and left. According to her you are quite a hero.”

Andy felt his face getting even redder. “Lettie’s silly.”

Captain Rain stood next to his son and squeezed his shoulder. “How’s the homework coming along?”

“Okay.”

He patted Andy’s shoulder and walked to the door. “When you’re done, come on down to the rec room and let’s watch the game.” His father closed the door behind him.

The game.

Andy didn’t know what game it was, or even what sport. But he had a father who believed in him and wanted to be with him. He felt himself begin to cry, and he didn’t understand the feelings or the tears. Before he cried out loud, he went to his bed and buried his face in his star scattered pillow. When he was done, he went down to the rec room to watch the game and eat popcorn with his father. It was baseball and his dad’s team won.

The next day at school, and the days after that, were shining gems set in a glorious crown of childhood. There were friends, a teacher who knew how to feed an eager mind, games, sports, and a widening feeling that life was good. The school still had bullies, of course. The change was that they kept their attitudes to themselves. There was a point, just before the Christmas break, when Andy realized that his memories of Billy Stark were very foggy. He was Andy Rain. He had some strange memories of another life, nightmares that would disturb his dreams, curious fragments of valuable knowledge, but he was Andy Rain.

On the last day before the beginning of the Christmas break, Andy’s mom got in the car to drive the boy to school as usual. There was a thin covering of slushy snow on the streets and Andy was daydreaming about the skiing trip to New Hampshire the family was giving itself for Christmas. At the corner of Lake and 5th, where Marnie Rain usually turned north toward the school, there was a stalled truck. Two police officers were directing traffic, and as a van pulled up behind Marnie’s station wagon, one of the police officers bent over and looked through her window. She rolled it down and asked, “Is there another way around this, officer?”

Andy saw the man grin, pull his weapon, and point it at his mom’s face. “Turn off the ignition and hand me the keys.” The policeman’s face was partly covered by a rubber mask.

She glanced to her right, saw the other masked officer pointing his gun at Andy. “Do as he says, Mrs. Rain, or you’re both dead.”

As she froze on the wheel, Andy recognized the voice of the cop on the right. He was no cop. Behind the rubber mask he was King Girard, the ruler of A Block back when nineteen year old Billy Stark was doing his six at Greenville. Andy saw the panic building in his mom’s face. He unclipped his seat belt, leaned over, turned off the ignition, and put the gearshift into park. After pulling the key from the ignition, Andy held it out to the man looking in the driver’s side. “Do as he says, Mom.”

“You heard the kid,” said the first officer as he took the keys. “Do as he says, Mom.”

Within seconds they were blindfolded, their hands and legs bound, and on the floor of the van headed somewhere. Andy’s mom was whimpering, and one of the voices said, “Keep it down, lady, unless both you and the kid want to die.”

“What do you want?” she cried.

“You’re not the negotiator, lady, you’re the goods. So shut up.”

They kept the blindfolds on Andy and his mom, even after they were indoors and locked away far from the traffic noises. Andy was tied up on the floor and he could hear his mother breathing. The kidnappers talked very little. When they did talk, their messages were brief and they used no names. Andy thought on it and reasoned that such precautions were not necessary unless the kidnappers really intended returning Andy and his mom back to Captain Rain.

In exchange for what? The Rains had no money; certainly not enough to interest someone powerful enough and wealthy enough as King Girard. Then Andy thought of something valuable his father had: Bear Brandt. Back at Greenville, everybody knew that Girard worked for Bear Brandt. Help the mobster to escape, and we’ll let you have your wife and kid back. If the yard captain is in on a prison break, how dangerous could it be? No cops, and when the dust settles, Gary Rain’s career will be ruined, but his family will still be alive.

Maybe.

The same precautions would be necessary if all they wanted to do was convince Andy and his mom that they would be returned so they could say the right things on the telephone.

Still, would Capt. Rain betray his trust to save his family? Back when he was running the Row, one thing every con knew was that Lt. Rain followed the rules. He took no bribes, shaved no corners, and was as fair as the cons and the system allowed. But Gary Rain also loved his family. Whichever way he decided to go, the decision would shatter him. Even if Andy and his mom were returned alive, his dad would be broken. The family would be destroyed.

Marnie Rain was still whimpering, crying beneath her breath, saying, “Why? What can they want? We don’t have any money.”

Andy knew there were others in the room with them so he kept his suspicions to himself. “Don’t cry, Mom.”

After awhile, she sobbed then the whimpering stopped. They were there for about an hour when one of the kidnappers turned on a phone and punched in a number. It was King Girard. He asked for extension 414, which meant that the man had called Andy’s dad at work. “Captain Rain?”

A pause.

“Captain, we have kidnapped your wife and son. You have fifteen minutes to verify that they are missing, then I will call you back. Do not call the police and do not attempt to either record or trace any of these calls. At the first sign that you have violated any of these instructions, your wife and son will be killed.” There was a beep as the phone was punched off.

“That’s it for now,” said Girard.

“What about the woman?” said a third voice. “You don’t want her weeping and wailing on the phone. Rain might freak.”

Another pause. “Okay. Take her in the other room. The kid’s cool. We’ll work with him.”

After Andy’s mom was taken from the room, it was quiet for a few minutes. The silence was broken by someone standing and walking across the floor. The person stopped in front of Andy and grunted as he squatted. “Your name’s Andy, right?” It was Girard.

“Yes.”

“Okay, Andy, I’m going to call your father in a couple minutes. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good kid. Okay, your old man’s going to want to talk to you to see that you’re all right. Can you do that?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Don’t worry about a thing. This whole business should be over in a few hours.” King Girard stood and then said, “Now.”

The sounds of a number being punched into the telephone. “Extension four fourteen,” said a fourth voice. A brief pause. “Yes, this is the call you’ve been waiting for. Have you verified that your wife and son are missing?”

A moment, then the voice continued. “Very well. In the center drawer of your desk, in the back, is a small blue envelope containing your instructions. As soon as you have complied with the instructions, and we have been notified that Mr. Brandt is safe, we will release your wife and son.”

Another brief pause.

“Here, I’ll put him on.”

Andy could feel the telephone being placed next to his head. “Dad?”

“Andy? Are you all right, son? Your mother?”

“I’m okay, Dad. Mom’s getting sick. You know. She’s upset. I don’t think she can talk.”

“Don’t worry, Andy. Take care of Mom, do what they tell you to do, and we’ll get you out of this before you know it.”

“I love you, Dad.” Andy wanted to say it, just in case. As soon as he said it, the phone was taken away from his head.

“Captain, you have your instructions. Perform them correctly and you’ll have your family back together before night. Fail, and you’ll never see them again. There will be no more calls.” The phone beeped as it was turned off.

“Well,” said the man who had been talking on the phone, “That’s that. That was a good move, kid, telling your pop your mom couldn’t talk. We don’t want anyone to freak and do something dumb.”

Said Girard, “You two might as well make yourselves scarce. We’ll take care of them if the captain doesn’t come through.”

Footsteps, a door closing, steps going down stairs, another door closing. “Okay, kid,” said the second voice, “do you want a drink of soda? Maybe you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Yes. I need to go to the bathroom.”

The man took Andy to the bathroom, stood behind him, untied his hands and removed his blindfold. “Andy, you keep your eyes to the front until I close this door. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

“When you’re done, stand in the center of the floor with your back toward the door and let me know. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“You seem like a smart kid, Andy. Don’t do anything stupid. You don’t want to see what I look like because it’ll mean I’ll have to kill you. You be good and you and your mom’ll be out of here in a little while.”

Andy heard the door close and he opened his eyes and squinted against the light. He checked to the left, the right, then turned completely around. It was a small bathroom, old and dirty, the mirror above the sink broken out long ago. The cracked, filthy sink was opposite the door. To the left of the sink was the toilet. In the same corner a plumber’s friend was leaning up against the wall. To the left of the sink, above the toilet, was a window with wire reinforced pebble glass. The window was too small, too high, and painted shut. To the right was a bath tub. The shower curtain was missing. There was a roll of toilet paper on the toilet tank, but there was no holder. No soap at the sink. The walls were covered with tan and pale green ceramic tile and the floor was covered with cracked white and gold linoleum. He opened the medicine cabinet and looked inside. Nothing; not even shelves. As he closed the medicine cabinet Andy noticed his hand was shaking.

He pulled down his pants, sat on the toilet seat, and relieved himself while he continued to examine the room. He couldn’t allow his father to be destroyed and he needed a weapon. What was there? He could’ve made a club out of the handle of the toilet plunger, but there was no way to hide it. Even if he could have hidden it, he didn’t think he could swing it or jab it with enough force to accomplish anything. Even if he had the strength, how was he to explain all the dead kidnappers? They took turns beating each other to death with a plumber’s friend?

“That’s silly,” he whispered in frustration.

He turned to grab the roll of toilet paper and his shifting weight caused the stool to rock slightly. He wiped himself, climbed off the stool, and looked at the floor behind the toilet. The floor was rotten there. Sweat from the tank, overflow from plug ups, perhaps burst pipes from some past winter. Whatever the cause, the floor beneath the linoleum was rotten, the floor covering easily lifted up. He got down on his hands and knees.

Lifting up a corner of the linoleum, he looked beneath. The wood was wet and black with rot. The head of an old square floor nail stuck up a quarter of an inch above the remaining surface of the wood. Andy grabbed it with his fingers and pulled. The nail didn’t move. He heard footsteps outside the door and he jumped to his feet, flushed the toilet, and faced the sink.

“Okay,” he called out, “I’m done.”

As the man replaced the blindfold and tied the boy’s hands in front, Andy wanted to cry he felt so helpless. He sniffed, and the man said, “Now, you hang in there, kid. You’ve been tough so far and you keep it up for a bit. I’m going to go downstairs and bring us all up something to eat. Maybe some pizza. That’ll make you feel better, won’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. I’ll take you in, drop you next to your mother, then get the stuff. Don’t do anything stupid, now, ’cause someone’ll be in there watching you. Understand?”

That was when Andy’s weapon made itself known. “Yes,” he answered, “I understand.”

Andy cuddled up to his mom, faced his back toward the wall, and strained against his bonds. The man who had gone to get the food must have taken pity on Andy’s rope burned wrists because this time they were not tied as tightly. When they had loosened a bit, Andy cuddled more closely to his mom and gently leaned his elbow on her bladder until she began squirming and timidly asked to go to the bathroom. King Girard took her there, and returned to guard Andy. The boy listened very hard. He heard the creak of a chair and the rattle of stiff paper. King Girard was reading a magazine.

Andy waited until he heard footsteps coming from downstairs.

It was all or nothing. The only chance Andy and his family had. Toss the grenade, stand back, and hope for an opening. “Mr. Girard,” said Andy, “will the food take much longer?”

The silence from King Girard was impenetrable. At long last he asked, “What did you call me?” His words had razor edges.

“Mr. Girard.” Andy cultivated his most innocent baby voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Why’d you call me that?”

“The other man. He said your name was King Girard. Did he mean someone else?” Andy could hear the other man’s footsteps reaching the top of the stairs.

The sound of disbelief in Girard’s voice reached towering heights. “He called me what?”

“King Girard,” Andy whimpered. “He said he and you worked for Bear Brandt.” He turned in a mock cringe that hid his hands and face from the room.

“What the hell?” Girard growled through clenched teeth as the door opened.

“Here’s the chow. You wanted the chicken salad—” began the other man. He was silent for a moment, then shock crept into his voice. “What in the hell are you doing?”

“You told this kid my name, idiot!”

“I never! What—”

“Then, how in the hell did he learn it? Answer me that? How did he find out who we worked for? Huh? Telepathy?” Andy heard the sound of skin being slapped. It was close to the time and Andy began pulling his hands free of his bonds as one of the men grunted and then there was the deafening sound of a shot being fired.

Immediately Andy’s mom began screaming from the bathroom. Andy shoved up his blindfold and saw King Girard drop his gun and fall to the floor where he came to rest, his head and shoulders propped up by a built in bookshelf. The other man was slouched against the wall holding his middle. His nose was bleeding and he had a smoking automatic in his hand.

“Daddy!” cried Andy as he ran to the side of King Girard’s body, fell to his knees, and threw himself over the corpse. “Daddy! You killed my daddy!”

“Whathehell?”

The other man’s confused frown turned to astonishment as Andy rolled off, pointed King Girard’s .357 Magnum at him and shot him through the heart, the roar of the weapon making his ears ring. The recoil was very strong, but he managed to hold on, his mother still screaming from the bathroom.

First things first. He got up, placed the pistol on the table, and grabbed the cellular phone. He placed a call to his father’s extension and waited. Soon his father’s voice came on the line. “This is Captain Rain.”

“Dad?” Andy responded, a genuine sob in his voice.

“Andy? Son, what is it? Where are you? What’s going on?”

“Dad, the men here had a terrible fight. It was awful. I think they’re both dead. Come and get me and Mom.”

“I will, son. My god, I will. Where are you? Do you know where you are?”

“I don’t. I’ll get Mom on the phone and then look outside.” Andy paused as he worked himself up to ask the question that frightened him the most. “Dad, did you let Bear Brandt go?”

“No,” his father answered. “I couldn’t let him go. Do you hate me for that?”

A great weight lifted from Andy’s shoulders. “No, Dad. I love you. I’ll go get Mom.” Andy took the phone with him to the bathroom and opened the door. His mother was sitting on the floor sobbing hysterically. When she saw Andy, she screamed again and held out her arms. He walked to her side and allowed her to hug and kiss him until it hurt. “Mom,” he said. “We’re all right, Mom. Here. Dad wants to talk to you on the phone. Take it and talk to him.”

“Your father?” she sobbed.

“Here. Talk to him. I have to find out where we are.”

“What about the men? What about the men out there?”

“They’re gone.” He handed the phone to her and disengaged himself from her arms. He handed her the phone and she placed it to her ear.

“Yes? Gary? Oh, Gary!”

Andy went back to the small living room and surveyed the scene. He cleaned the prints off Girard’s weapon, held the barrel by his shirt tail, checked to make certain how and where King hung his piece, then placed the weapon in the corpse’s right hand. He looked back to make certain that he had been unobserved. Returning his gaze to King Girard, he was dizzy for a moment and then a terrible headache hit him. It was like an ice pick thrust into his right eye. It was an old headache. A Billy Stark headache. In prison Ellen had said to Billy that the headaches were pain, rage, and guilt coming out sideways.

But Andy Rain wasn’t Billy Stark. Andy Rain had feelings. He could be angry and he had nothing to be guilty about. As the heat filled his face, Andy swung back his foot and kicked King Girard in the side. The man groaned, rolled back, lifted his weapon, and aimed it at Andy. Without thinking, the boy grabbed the barrel of the weapon with both hands, closed his eyes, lifted up, and twisted the barrel away from him with all of his might. The weapon discharged, Andy’s mom screamed, and King Girard shuddered from his toes all the way to his fingertips as he fell back, dragging Andy with him. Andy fell on top of King Girard and opened his eyes. He raised his head and saw that he was still holding onto King’s gun. He let go of the weapon, pulled himself off the kidnapper, and stood up. As his point of view rose, he saw that a good portion of King Girard’s forehead and scalp were missing. Pieces of them were splattered all over the living room’s off-white wall.

In a daze Andy turned around and saw his mom standing in the doorway, the phone in her hand. Her eyes were wide, frozen in an unblinking stare. Her mouth was open and a panicked voice was yelling from the phone’s earpiece. Andy led his mom to the couch, sat her down, and took the phone from her hand. “Dad? Dad?”

“Andy? What happened?”

Andy took a deep breath when he realized tears were running down his cheeks. “Mom’s sick, Dad. She’s real sick.”

“What was that shot?”

Andy assumed his mom had seen everything after he had placed the gun in King Girard’s hand. “I kicked him. One of the kidnappers. I’m so sorry. It was real stupid. I thought he was dead. I kicked him and his gun went off. I really scared Mom. I’m so sorry. Dad, I’m going to go find out where we are. I’ll be back in a minute.”

They had been on the second floor of a working class tenement, 1207 Beecher, only three houses down from Wayne Road. He stood there in the noon sun, looking at the faces on the street. A man washing his car. A woman carrying groceries. An old man sitting on the curb talking to himself.

He thought about running. There was so much to explain. Girard and his companion had been professionals. How had they suddenly gone stupid and shot each other? Questions and answers. Sooner or later the cops would have a lot of the first and would demand plenty of the second. They had to. The cops weren’t stupid. And what would his mom say when they questioned her? Andy Rain had saved the day, and he couldn’t have saved the day, so the answer had to lie elsewhere, and then what would happen? Perhaps no one would look at it that way. Perhaps he could talk them out of the truth. Perhaps all he had to do was keep quiet about certain things.

He couldn’t run. He couldn’t leave his parents, his home, his friends, his life behind him. He sighed and headed back into the building.

Over the next few days there were questions and more questions. Not only did the authorities want answers, the media did, too. During it all Andy refused to deny what his mother had seen. She was on a thin mental edge. Using that to explain away what she had thought she had seen would have pushed her through it. They both had to accept what had happened and deal with it. Her six year old son had wrestled a physically brutal notorious gangster for his gun and the man had blown off a fifth of his own head in the struggle.

In the Rain family living room, at the last of the questionings, were Andy, his parents, a Detective Lieutenant Tso of the city police, his assistant, Det. Sgt. Graham, John Draper, and a blond woman that Andy didn’t know. Mr. Draper introduced her as Molly Warton.

“Okay,” began Tso, “we aren’t recording this. We just want to clear up a few things. First, Mrs. Rain, Andy, we’d like to thank you for helping out in identifying the voices of the two other kidnappers. The two you identified both work for Boss Brandt. They aren’t saying anything right now, but that’s typical. Even without your IDs we have enough to put them away for a long time.”

“Will we have to go to court?” asked Marnie Rain with a timid voice.

“Chances are, no,” answered the lieutenant. “They’ll probably go for a plea, if they have any sense. All we really need to clear up is exactly what happened at 1207 Beecher. Mrs. Rain, can you add anything to what you’ve already said?”

“I don’t think so. I was blindfolded most of the time, except when they let me go to the bathroom. It was while I was in there that the shooting started.” Her voice caught and Andy held her hand. “Andy was in there all alone. I was sure he’d been killed.”

She wrapped her arms around Andy and the boy hugged her back. “Why don’t we do this some other time?” said Captain Rain. “Marnie’s too upset to go on with it.”

“No,” she said. “Let’s get it done this time. I couldn’t bear it if I had to wait to go through this again.”

Lt. Tso looked at Capt. Rain, got a nod in return, and looked at Marnie Rain. “I just have a couple of questions left, then Graham and I’ll be out of here. Did any of the men use names?”

“No,” answered Marnie Rain. “As I said, they called us by our names, but they didn’t use any names among themselves. They seemed to be very careful about that.”

Andy nodded his agreement.

Tso looked at him, fixing the boy with his fierce black eyes. “What were they fighting about, Andy? When the fight started, you were in the room with them. What did they say?”

Andy shrugged and held out his hands. “It didn’t make much sense to me. One of them said the other had used his name, the other guy said he didn’t, then it sounded like someone hit someone, then there was a shot.”

“That was when you got free of your bonds?”

Andy nodded. “I took off my blindfold and one of them was on the floor. He had on a police uniform. The other one was holding his tummy. Right then, though, the one on the floor picked up his gun and fired. He hit the other man and killed him. Then the man on the floor slumped down like he was dead. I thought he was dead.”

“What’d you do then?” asked Sgt. Graham.

“I went to the phone and called my dad to tell him we were all right. After that I went and checked my mom to see if she was okay and gave her the phone.”

“What happened then with the man in the uniform?”

Andy described it just the way it had happened. He thought the man was dead. In anger he had kicked the man, the kidnapper lifted his piece, they had struggled for the weapon, and the man had fired through his own forehead. Lt. Tso nodded for a few seconds and then asked, “Andy, you look afraid. Why?”

“Are you kidding?” said Capt. Rain, his eyebrows raised.

“Please,” demanded the lieutenant as he faced Andy. “What are you afraid of?”

“Did I kill him?” asked Andy. “That man. Did I kill him? That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Lt. Tso’s shoulders seemed to slump into a relaxed mode. “No, Andy, you didn’t kill him. That was his finger on the trigger, not yours. I wouldn’t worry about it, in any event. Did you ever hear of King Girard?”

“Sure,” said Andy. “He’s a big gangster.” He faced his father. “Dad talked about him when Bear Brandt was sent to the prison.”

“Well, that’s who that was, Andy. King Girard. He was a bad man. Dead is a good place for him to be.”

Andy’s mom leaned forward and wrapped her arm around her son’s shoulders. “I have a question, Lieutenant. If you knew his name, why have you kept it from us all this time?”

“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” said Capt. Rain.

“It was nothing.” The detective shrugged and shook his head. “We just wondered if somehow one of you might have mentioned one of the kidnapper’s names and not remembered it.” He smiled sheepishly and glanced down. “We have to explore every possibility. As is, we just can’t explain why these two smoked each other. King Girard and Tony Zara were old hands; pros. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t have any answers for you,” said Marnie Rain.

The lieutenant looked at Andy. “Do you have any good guesses, kid?”

The boy shrugged as his mouth went dry. “Crime makes you stupid?”

They laughed. Everyone laughed, including John Draper and the psychic. After a little, even Andy laughed.

Andy considered himself lucky that his dad’s friends in the city police leaned on the press to leave the description of Andy’s part of the saga to a single paragraph, playing down the struggle between the gangster and the little boy for the gun. No one really believed that anyway. Besides, it was a hot news week. A little war in the East, a little riot in the West. The media simply left the boy and his mother alone.

Just before New Year’s, though, there was a tabloid reporter for the National Investigator who was listed as missing by his paper. He had a reputation as a brutal journalistic blackmailer and he had been sent to the area to find something to sensationalize about the death of mobster King Girard. “SUPERBOY TAKES ON THE MOB” or “PRISON OFFICIAL PLANS BREAKOUT” kind of thing. The reporter’s name was Murray Gordon. Before he could really begin, he was found frozen to death in a snow bank. That was a week after he had left a local saloon at closing.

His wallet and money hadn’t been taken, hence it was decided Gordon had passed out and had died from exposure. The local reporter who tried to do a follow up on the story Gordon was doing questioned almost everyone connected with the attempt to break Bear Brandt out of prison. He learned that the tabloid reporter had failed to interview even one of the principals involved in the case, although he had been seen hanging around Andy’s school the day of his death.

Andy Rain himself had not been available for comment. He was in bed with a severe case of bronchitis.

Early the next April, Andy was in the school’s playground during the afternoon recess. He was standing by himself, outwardly interested in the game his classmates were playing. Inside, however, he was thinking about John Draper. His novel, Killer’s High , was a big success and had been optioned for a movie. But that wasn’t Andy’s concern right then. Instead he was thinking on the way John Draper kept looking at him. Ellen’s widower appeared to have a mission. It was either to understand his wife’s death or to nail Andy for it. Either way, Andy was certain John Draper had been gathering everything he could track down about Andy, about everything Andy had ever done, and everyone with whom Andy had ever met.

He looked at Lettie playing jacks with her friend Susan. Lettie had told Andy that John Draper had talked with Lettie about Andy on three separate occasions. Larry and Ted had also been questioned. None of the questionings had been overt. They had appeared as idle conversations at birthday parties, holiday visits, church picnics, and such.

Andy assumed that Mr. Draper, because of his contacts, knew everything that the police knew. Also he had been dating Andy’s teacher, Miss Douglas. He had also gone hunting with Mr. Capp, the school counselor, and was on the same church committee as Mrs. Pryor, the school principal. Andy’s dentist was Dr. Rhomer, and Mr. Draper’s dentist was Dr. Rhomer. And what did John Draper learn from Ellen before she died? On top of everything else, there was John Draper’s constant association with psychic Molly Warton. What did that mean? What did she truly know? Did she have special gifts? Special routes of knowledge?

He had read his father’s gift copies of John Draper’s murder mysteries, Midnight Walk, Ghost Flower, Killer’s High, and his newly released detective novel, Cops and Killers. In Cops and Killers, there had been, as part of the background, references to serial killer Billy Stark. Among the murders described had been the death of kidnapper Marci Baines. The description of her death had been inaccurate. Still, he was close. Too close for mere guesswork. He certainly knew why Billy had killed the woman who had been slapping the child. That was more than even Billy Stark had known.

The photos, code book, and clippings had burned in the fire when Ellen’s car went up. But what if Ellen had made a copy of Billy Stark’s coded book before she died? A copy that had fallen into her husband’s hands? He knew all about the experiment. He had helped Gary and Marnie Rain adopt Andy. And what would John Draper do should he convince himself that Andy Rain was more than an innocent refugee from a failed experiment, that he really was Billy Stark and that Gary Rain’s son had murdered his lovely Ellen?

Bring charges?

No. He would only look foolish.

Would he, instead, take it upon himself to murder Andy Rain?

Andy slowly shook his head. He couldn’t see John Draper as a killer. Perhaps he was blind to it, perhaps Draper had fooled him, but John Draper appeared to be all cop. The detectives in his stories were blue clear through. The rules were their gods, even when the rules made no sense; even when they defeated their own purposes. There were cops and there were killers. In a John Draper story, no one could be both. There were cops who became killers, but as soon as they crossed that line, they were no longer cops.

From the first Draper story he had read, Andy had admired the police officers who were the heroes. They were men and women of direction, principle, and conviction. Even when they lost, they didn’t cross that line that made them different from the killers and crooks. And they lost a lot. There were the endless cases of domestic pain and destruction about which no one could do anything. Battered women afraid to bring charges, abused children with no voice, no standing, only tears. And the cops hurt for those they couldn’t help. If he could be like the characters in John Draper’s books, Andy thought that it would be a good thing to be: a police officer. If he could be like the heroes in John Draper’s books, he would be somebody, he would be doing good, helping people.

The whistle blew signaling the end of recess. Andy returned to class, and spent the rest of the day writing a story in a clean, even hand. It was a mystery story titled “The Red Dot.”

That night he told his father he wanted to be a police officer and maybe a writer. He showed his father his story and Gary Rain took it to the living room to read it. When he returned, he said, “Andy, I don’t know what to say. I’m stunned. This is terrific. The dialog, the description, this character, the killer, trying to help the police find another killer without giving himself away, terrific.”

“Do you think Mr. Draper would look at my story and tell me what he thinks?”

Gary Rain looked back at his son’s neatly written manuscript and raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure he would.” He looked at Andy. “What about how you used to feel about John?”

“How I used to feel?”

“After you and Ellen were in that accident? You know, John’s wife. She died.”

Andy pursed his lips and shrugged. “I don’t really remember much of that.”

That night, while Andy wrote another story, Gary took the manuscript for “The Red Dot” and drove over to John Draper’s house. An hour later, Mr. Draper faxed a copy of the story and a letter to the editor of New Detective.

It was the next Tuesday. Andy sat on the couch before the fireplace facing the chair in which Ellen Draper had once held him, stroked his hair, and told him that everything was going to be all right. That was also where she told him that everything said between them would be held in the strictest confidence. In that chair now was her husband, John. He was wearing jeans, deck shoes, and a faded red sweat shirt. He studied Andy through pale gray eyes. He looked very tired. “You wrote a very good story, Andy.”

“Thanks, Mr. Draper.”

“Please call me John. If we’re going to be colleagues, we can’t work and keep all of this formality going. You called my wife Ellen. You can call me John. Do you remember Ellen?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the day she died? The way she died?”

“Yes.”

John Draper leaned back in his chair and frowned. “I got the impression from your father that you didn’t remember much about it.”

“I didn’t want them nervous about me seeing you.”

The former detective was silent for a long time. He nodded and when he at last spoke, he said, “So you wanted to see me?”

Andy nodded. “Ever since you were at my birthday party, I’ve felt there were some things you wanted to ask me.”

“So why did you wait until now?”

“I knew the questions. I just didn’t know how to answer them. I figure whatever we need to get settled we can do now.” Andy placed his hand on a folded sheaf of papers next to him on the couch. “I have another story here about a troubled little boy who had a terrible secret he wanted to share.”

The man seemed to freeze. In a whisper he asked, “What secret?”

Andy leaned his elbows on his knees. “His head was inhabited by a powerful evil spirit, although by going into his head the spirit was no longer evil. It became a good spirit; a spirit that protected the boy.”

“Protected him from what?”

“People who would hurt him.”

John Draper moistened his lips and fixed his gaze on the boy’s eyes. “People like who?”

“People like some of them in your stories. The stories about children.” Andy looked toward the blackness of the fireplace so he wouldn’t have to look at John Draper’s eyes. “Like an uncle who beat him.”

“How would this spirit protect him? How would it do it?”

“Let me ask you something, John. A technical thing.”

“Okay.”

“If the uncle beats the boy and by some miracle doesn’t kill him, what can the boy do?”

“Report him.”

Andy faced John Draper. “His word against the uncle’s? He’s only five and a half.”

John raised his eyebrows and held out his hands. “There’d be physical evidence. Bruises, cuts … welts on a face.”

“And then what? The uncle says he just slapped the kid for mouthing off. Would the cops take the uncle down for that? Would anyone take the child seriously? I really need this information for my story.”

The man nibbled on the inside of his lower lip and then shook his head. “Probably not.”

“And if the child refused to be beaten, what then? What could he do?”

John Draper shook his head.

Andy leaned back and clasped his hands on his lap. Looking at his intertwined fingers, he said, “If the boy was grown up, he could run away or defend himself. If the uncle tried to punch him, he’d have a right to defend himself, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“But if he’s five and a half, he can’t swing back, he can’t outrun a grown-up. He doesn’t have any rights, does he?”

“Not in the way you mean.” He waved his hand impatiently. “Where does the evil spirit come in?”

“Good spirit,” Andy corrected as he looked up at John. “It’s a good spirit.”

“If you say so.”

The boy looked back at his hands. “What if the good spirit showed the little boy how to open a locked drawer where there’s a gun, and what if the spirit knows how to use guns, and what if the boy had the gun and the uncle still wouldn’t stop and the boy shoots him dead? Is the boy a killer or was he just defending himself?”

John Draper stood, went to the mantelpiece, and took an empty pipe from a rack that was there. He played nervously with the dark briar for a moment, then replaced it. He glanced at Andy and said, “Stopped smoking last year. I ought to throw these damned things away.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know, Andy. Under the normal rules, it’s almost never legal to take the law into your own hands, self-defense being an exception. The boy being possessed by this spirit really places the situation outside the normal rules.”

Andy nodded and pursed his lips. “And that’s where kids are anyway, right? Outside the normal rules? All of this child protection stuff is a fraud, right? Three of them get on the talk shows to show the system works, then the thumpers and child molesters, killers, and kidnappers get to do whatever they want to the rest. Then, after the boys and girls are beat up, raped, tortured, or killed, then maybe one out of ten might be able to complain about it. How many of them ever get any justice?” Even though they were clasped together, his hands were shaking. There were tears in his eyes and he fought to keep them out of his voice. “How many of them get beaten or killed for trying to complain?”

“You made your point.” Draper returned to his chair and sat down. He propped his elbows on the arm rests and rested his chin on his clenched fists. “I’m wondering how the kid feels after killing the uncle. I assume he gets away with it.”

“He gets away with it. No one believes a five and a half year old boy can shoot someone down and make it look like a suicide. They don’t even consider it. But the boy feels terrible. All he wants to do is scream from guilt and terror, but who can he talk to?”

John Draper looked at Andy from beneath hooded eyes. “You tell me.”

The boy shrugged and held his head to one side. “A therapist, a friend of the family, is brought in. The boy needs help and the therapist agrees to keep the boy’s secret.” His eyes narrowed as an edge came into his voice. “She promised never to reveal anything about the boy, no matter what it was. She made that promise to him!” Andy looked away from Ellen’s widower. “Then it got to where she finally believed the boy about the spirit. She thought telling everybody about it, proving it, was a whole lot more important than keeping her promise to the boy.”

Andy quickly faced Draper. “What could he do? She was going to tell everyone — make him into a media freak. If he wasn’t going to be a victim, what could he do?”

John’s eyes were transfixed on a point in space. “Plead with her? Beg? Remind her of her promise?”

“He tried all that. It didn’t matter to her. She had a name to build. What was he supposed to do? I need to know … for my story.”

Suddenly John half rose, grabbed the front of Andy’s shirt, and bellowed, “Would it have been so damned unbearable? If the world knew, would it have been so bad?”

“Wouldn’t it?” Andy screamed back.

Bringing his hand back toward the ceiling, the man slapped the boy across his face, driving him back into the couch. The man stood there, flexing his fingers, his breaths coming out in ragged sobs as Andy held his face. Through his own tears, Andy saw the tears on John’s face. After a long time, John dropped into his chair and stared blankly at the floor. “So, he kills the therapist. How’d the little bastard feel about that?”

“He loved her. He loved her and she was the only person in the world he could talk to. After she died he never talked to anyone ever again about the things that were going on inside him. How do you think he felt about that?” Andy lowered his hand from his face revealing deep red welts. “She shouldn’t’ve broken her promise.”

“Yeah.”

Andy shrugged. “That’s my story.”

John Draper held his hands to his face for a long time. As the hands, at last, came down, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Did the kid ever take out anyone else?”

“Like who?”

John brought his gaze back to Andy’s face. “Oh, like a seventeen year old baby-sitter with a habit of punching on the kids she watched, a neighborhood bully, a couple of mob kidnappers, a reporter with more threats and deals than principles.”

Andy glanced down and bit at his lower lip. “Only if he couldn’t do anything else.”

“Jesus.” John Draper closed his eyes rolled his head back and slouched down in his chair. After a moment he shook his head and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His face looked different. His eyes were wide, his voice barely controlled. “Andy, I guess I have a story, too. It sounds a hell of a lot like yours. Want to hear it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s all from the point of view of a therapist’s husband. He’s a retired cop, but he keeps his toe in the water. You know, he drops down to homicide every now and then to visit his friends to see what’s going on. He calls himself a writer. He’s eighteen years older than his beautiful wife and he needs all the glamour he can get. That’s what he figures, anyway. He’s so head over heels in love with his wife he feels like a damned teenager.” John Draper looked toward the window to the right of the fireplace.

“She’s a good woman — a good person. She had this hard little ambitious streak, a need to make a name, but she was a good person. Kind, loving. They never let her do any real work at the prison, and therapy on the outside was beginning to look more and more like trying to stop a flood with a dish sponge.”

“The character in your story?”

“Yeah.” The man clasped his hands together, and let his gaze fall to the floor. “One day she gets a client,” he raised his eyebrows. “A little boy who thinks he’s killed his uncle. She believes he’s been traumatized by a suicide in his family, but as she learns more, she remembers an old project she was hooked up with a few years before; a project that involved trying out a youth drug on a death row prisoner. He was turned into a baby all right, but it was so much unfeeling protoplasm with no will or life of its own. The project was a flop, but suddenly she was wondering what happened to that baby.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Her friends years before had adopted a handicapped infant, a lump that did nothing but eat and fill up diapers for years. Then the boy suddenly awakened, no longer a vegetable. That was the boy who was in front of her saying that he’d killed his uncle. She was real excited about the possibility, but her husband thought she was going around the bend. He kept telling her she needed proof, otherwise she’d go down as some kind of nut. So, every spare moment she spent tracking down leads, interviewing subjects, collating research, and being with her client, of course. Then, one day she ran across something that backed up everything; a package the killer had left for his new self.”

John Draper faced Andy. “I didn’t have an ending for my story until now. Maybe it’s because I didn’t believe in it myself. But together we have a tale; maybe a tale no one would believe.”

Andy moistened his lips and felt an electric tingle across his skin because of what he was about to say. “Should we end it by having the retired cop kill the boy?”

“Kill the boy,” John repeated. “Too many things to explain.” It was a long moment until he continued. “Besides, there’s a complication. In my story, Andy, the therapist kept running into something strange. It was a curious lack of exact correspondence between the test results of her client and the tests she had done on Billy Stark. Her client wasn’t the killer. He was different. A new person. He had some memories belonging to the killer, but he had his own unique feelings. Her client was a little boy who would not be a victim and who could protect himself, regardless of the rules, regardless of what others think possible. More than that, he would protect others, as well. The boy couldn’t tolerate a bully.”

“My story, too.” Andy glanced down at his hands. “But in my story, the boy still feels awful. He feels like he owes something to the retired police officer. He doesn’t know what or how, but he’s got to settle it some way or he’ll die.”

“Settle it?” The man looked through the window again until he let his gaze drop to his lap. “Maybe our story needs some more work.” John stood and made a second visit to his mantelpiece. Instead of fondling one of his pipes, however, he turned and faced Andy. “You know, that story your father gave me was very good. I sent ‘The Red Dot’ in to New Detective. I got a call from the editor this morning, and he told me to pass on that you’ve got an offer to publish it. Twenty cents a word. That’s a pretty good rate. I gave him your address and you should get a contract offer in a couple of days.”

Andy frowned and looked down at his lap. “That’s great, John, but I still feel like I owe you. I mean, everything I know about writing I got from reading your stories. I feel like I owe you a lot. You know. For the stories.”

John Draper scratched his chin then clasped his hands behind his back. He seemed to be fighting something. At long last he appeared to cross some kind of internal line and reach a decision. He nodded and said, “Andy, every now and then I do these writing clinics in the local schools. Mostly sixth and seventh graders; sometimes high school. It’s a chance to introduce kids to fiction writing. If you want to do something for me, you could help.”

“How?”

“Well, as I said, you write very well. There’s this sixth grade girl I know who could use some help. Her name’s Sally Scott and she was in one of my clinics.”

“How can I help her? I’ve only been writing for a couple of days.”

“Go to her house and talk to her. She’s over on Addison. She has a story, too. Once you see it, I think you’ll know what to do. It’s about a twelve year old girl who is consumed with making herself ugly. She doesn’t wash, doesn’t change her clothes, and she’s eaten herself to almost two hundred pounds hoping that somehow, some way, she can make herself ugly enough to keep her stepfather away. Understand?”

Andy’s face was like stone. “I understand.”

“The stepfather in the story makes a great villain. He drinks, beats the girl and beats her mother, too. The villain is almost too good, though. Sally can’t figure out how her heroine can escape or eliminate the villain. She doesn’t have an ending for her story.” John Draper rubbed his eyes, lowered his hand, and looked at the boy. “I thought you might be able to help her work out something.”

Andy stood and faced the man. “If I do come up with a good ending, are we even?”

Draper rubbed his eyes and sighed as he shook his head. “I don’t know if we’re ever going to be even, Andy. I’m not real good at putting things behind me.”

“I’ve put some big things behind me.”

“Boy, I still haven’t convinced myself that this is something I should put behind me.” He shook his head and held out a hand. “Look, if you decide to help Sally with her story, do it because it’s something you want to do, not because you figure you owe me. I don’t know that you can pay off that one.” He lowered his hand and shrugged. “Maybe it’s just something I have to square away with myself. If you want to help, help. If you don’t, don’t.”

“I’d like to help, John. Sally Scott on Addison. What number?”

“Nine thirty-seven. It’s a gray duplex. The stepfather is an ex-boxer who runs a gym. A very rough character. He keeps guns in the house and likes to play with them.”

“The man in the story?”

“Sure. The man in the story.” John Draper smiled and raised his eyebrows. “He’s not as rough as King Girard used to be, but he has a lot of people scared. You look like you have a question.”

Andy nodded once and leveled his gaze on the man’s eyes. “I suppose if someone reported the stepfather, child protective services would take the kid away and the stepfather would be put into counseling.”

“That even happened once, Andy. The child reported her stepfather to the police, the mother refused to back up her kid, the stepfather was forbidden by the court to enter the home, but no one was watching him. So he went back home and beat the kid until she almost died. Broke five bones. The kid knows the score, so now she keeps her mouth shut. The ban was lifted and everything went back to normal. The kid writes a tough story.”

Andy picked up his papers. “John. If I like this, helping the kid from your writing clinic, can I help more kids?”

“There are a lot of them out there, Andy. An army. They can use all the help they can get.” John looked at his hand for a moment, then held it out. “It was good talking to you.”

Andy shook hands with the man. “Can I come and talk to you some more about my stories?”

“Yes Anytime.”

Del Scott took a long pull from his beer and squinted his eyes as he tried to read the sports page. He scratched beneath his armpit as he heard a whimper from upstairs and glared in that direction. That girl and her mother had been sniffling and whimpering ever since he had gotten home from work. How can a man relax with all the crying and fighting.

He balled up the newspaper and threw it against the kitchen wall. “Hell, if I can’t read in peace, then there are some that’re going to pay.” He pushed back the chair, lurched to his feet, and smiled as he took a swing with a massive fist at Kid Duggan’s memory. That was a fight. Six rounds and the Kid never did get up. “Killed him,” grunted Del, “with this!” He swung again, threw himself off balance and stumbled into the refrigerator.

While he was trying to remember why he was on his feet, there was a knock at the door. He leaned away from the refrigerator and peered through the kitchen door into the hallway. He could see the front door, the top half of which was cracked and taped glass. No one seemed to be there. Another knock and Del saw a movement toward the bottom of the glass. It was a little kid.

He launched himself from the doorway and staggered down the hall, coming to a stop at the door. Pulling it open, he looked down and saw a boy only six or seven years old. “Well?”

The boy smiled warmly. “Mr. Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Hi.” The boy walked around Del as he talked “I’m Andy Rain. I’m here to help Sally with her homework. You look like you could use a beer.”

“You’re just a little kid. Hey!” The boy was already inside and heading toward the kitchen. “Hey, kid! What the hell? Come back here!”

The front door closed.

Del Scott’s neighbors saw nothing, heard nothing. “Well,” one of them said several days later to the detectives doing a follow up investigation, “sure, there was some screaming, but there was always some yelling and screaming coming from that house. I can’t tell you how quiet it’s been around here for the past couple of weeks.”

One of the detectives wanted to know if the citizen had ever reported to the police any of the screaming episodes. The neighbor shrugged and shook his head. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

There were nothing but dead ends, the detectives concluded. Nothing really sat well, but there seemed little to do but regard Del Scott’s death as a suicide, although what could possibly possess someone to attempt suicide by sticking his head into an electric oven? The medical examiner had concluded that it must have taken Del Scott close to an hour to die.

As the detectives got into their car, they took a call to investigate a suspicious death six blocks away in an alley walkway just off Claremont. There they found neighborhood bully, wife beater, child molester, and drug dealer, Perry Wease flat on his back, his bulging brown eyes staring blankly at the crease of blue between the tenements that was the sky.

The death seemed on its face to be an accident. There was a pool of motor oil on the ground, a smear where young Wease slipped in it, the feet go up, the head goes down, and Perry Wease busts his crown. There were some unanswered questions. The oil was fresh, not used, and there were no oil cans in the alley’s rubbish. The alley was too narrow for a truck or car, so what would anyone be doing with oil in that alley?

Well, someone could have been working on a motorcycle. After adding the oil, the biker brought the can with him for, perhaps, environmental reasons. The concrete was smooth beneath the deceased’s head, and there was a wooden splinter in the back of his shaved head. Spruce, it later turned out. There were no pieces of lumber in the alley, either. Troublesome. The detectives finished up their notes, established that no one in the area had either seen or heard anything, and headed back to their car.

They took off their coats, looked at the trees lining Claremont, and laughed as they got into their car. Del Scott and Perry Wease both dead within two weeks of each other. It was spring, the sun warm, the sky clear, and the birds were singing.