The Pet

FIVE

Sunday’s dawn never showed the sun; there was rain instead, a driving downpour that filled the gutters swiftly and washed driveways into black rivers. Leaves dropped sodden into the streets and onto the pavement, the Ashford Day medallions on the boulevard lampposts were twisted on their wires in the wind that followed. The park was deserted. A handful of pedestrians ran from shop doorway to shop doorway, heading for the bakeries and their hot cross buns, their dinner cakes and breakfast rolls. Cars hissed. Buses sprayed the shoulders. Headlamps were weak in the not-quite-daylight.

And when the downpour was over, the drizzle remained. Colder somehow, more touched with gloom. It prevented the puddles from holding clear reflections, prevented the windows from seeing clearly outside; the wind was gone, but collars were kept up and umbrellas stayed unfurled, and when a church bell tolled on the far side of town, it sounded like a buoy heralding the fog.

In Don’s room the light was grey but he didn’t notice it at all. He sat against the wall, on his bed, and stared at the poster, eyes puffed and bloodshot, hands palsied at his sides. He wore only his shorts, and his chest barely moved.

His mother had checked on him shortly after breakfast, and he had stared at her until she had backed out and closed the door.

His father hadn’t come to see him at all.

He didn’t mind.

He was working on a new set of Rules.

The telephone rang.

Tracey bolted from the couch and raced for the kitchen, but by the time she got there her mother had already answered. An aunt, by the sound of it, and she waited until she knew it would be one of those long, Sunday conversations that mixed with the aromas of Sunday dinner and the quiet of Sunday afternoons, when the house was ordered peaceful, a fiat from her father.

Later, she thought; I’ll call Don later.

Brian was worried about the size of his neck. Several times before he left the house he checked himself in the hall mirror to see if it was getting too bulky, too thick. He didn’t want to end up like Tar or Fleet, with necks sticking out to the ends of their shoulders, looking like goofballs and sounding like they had cotton shoved halfway down their throats. He wanted to look as normal as possible. A thick neck meant you were dim-witted and stupid to those assholes out there, and he wasn’t kidding himself — once his professional career on the field was over he would have to make it in a real job, and you don’t get real jobs if you look stupid, or bloated, or like your face had been stomped on by a herd of elephants.

Now he adjusted the rearview mirror and pulled at the top of the sweater, just to be sure nothing had changed in the past five minutes.

“Jesus Christ!” Tar yelled, cringing back in his seat. “Will you for Christ’s sake look where you’re going?”

A bus horn blared. Brian yanked the wheel hard to the right, back to the left, and grinned as the car held on the rain-slick blacktop. “No sweat.”

“No sweat, fuck you, pal,” Tar said. He wriggled lower until he could prop his knees up on the dashboard, his head barely rising above the edge of the door.

“Chicken?” Brian asked with a grin.

“Careful.”

He laughed, shook his head, and swerved off the boulevard onto a street that took a sudden plunge down halfway along the block. They were headed for the flat below the school, and after checking his neck once again, Brian glanced into the backseat to make sure they had everything.

“I still think,” Tar muttered, “we should’ve made Fleet come, y’know? Hell, it was practically his stupid idea in the first place.”

Brian shrugged. He didn’t give a damn. Fleet Robinson had sort of dropped out anyway, ever since he picked up Amanda Adler and got into her pants. Not, he thought with a palm rubbing over his chest, that he wouldn’t mind it either. She wasn’t all that bad, considering she didn’t have much in the tits-and-ass department. He guessed Fleet was into something different, like that ass-long pony tail of hers. Maybe she whips him with it or something. He grinned. Maybe she does.

Tar was right though. The creep oughta be here, with them, driving into a place that looked like God forgot to clean up. The houses were ancient and falling apart; there was silt over everything now that it had rained, from the factories whose smokestacks rose glumly above the trees. You could hardly tell it was the same town, and he wondered why all the girls who came from down here had the best bodies.

“Jesus, what a dump,” Tar said, his chin hard on his chest. His hair was short, dark, cropped high over his ears; his face was pale in the late afternoon’s dim light. He sniffed, and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, lit it, and rolled the window down to let out the smoke. Brian hated smoke.

Another right, and Brian slowed to not much faster than a brisk walk. Since they’d left the boulevard they hadn’t seen a single car or a single person. Early dinner for the rubes, he thought. He snapped his fingers, and Tar groaned as he unfolded himself, reached into the backseat and pulled the two plastic garbage bags to the front. He stuffed them carefully into the well between his legs, and rolled the window down a bit more. Despite the ties that held the bags closed, he could still smell the crap, and he wiped his hands on his jeans.

“Beautiful,” Brian said.

“Fleet oughta be here.”

“Jesus, will you give it a rest, Boston? He ain’t, and that’s that, and besides, he’ll regret it when he sees the look on the Tube’s face tomorrow morning.”

Tar considered it and decided Brian was right. As usual. Even when he was wrong.

A left, a right, and Brian pulled to the curb on a deserted street, the homes here in considerably better shape than the ones they had passed. They were still old, and still looked as if their owners made less than a buck an hour, but the tiny lawns were well kept, the houses clean and painted, and no rusted hulks cluttered the road.

Water dripped from the leaves onto the roof, loudly.

Brian rubbed his hands together and leaned over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield. “There,” he said, pointing. “The green one, two in from the corner.”

Tar followed the finger’s direction and nodded. Then he checked the neighborhood again. “What the hell is he doing living down here, man? The way he talks you think he lived in fucking Scarsdale or something.” He peered at the nearest house. “Maybe we got the wrong address.”

“No,” Brian said, though he’d been thinking the same thing. “He probably lives in the same house he was born in. Too fucking lazy to move out.”

“Maybe he’s got a secret lab in the cellar, where he experiments on women.”

“The Tube? You gotta be kidding. If you were a girl, would you want that thing on top of you?”

Tar shuddered, and laughed, and took a deep breath. “Y’know, our ass is doomed if we get caught.”

“Shut up, Boston, okay? We’re not getting caught, and besides, we voted the fucker deserved it, right?”

Tar didn’t need to think about that one. “Right. But I still don’t get why we don’t just bash the Duck’s face in. That black eye of his would be the best thing left on his body.”

“Because,” Brian said, wondering why Tar had to think so much all the time.

“Because why?”

“Jesus, are you stupid or what?”

“I ain’t stupid. I just think—”

“Look,” Brian said, his hands kneading the wheel, “we bash up the Duck and everyone knows who did it, right? His old man comes down on us like we were killers or something, and we won’t see graduation from the ass end of a warden. But we do this, Tar baby, and the Duck gets creamed. His old man creams him, Hedley creams him, and maybe even if we get lucky the frigging cops cream him too. So what the hell’s the bitch?”

Tar didn’t know. He supposed it made sense. “All right,” he said. “But if we sit here much longer, someone’s gonna call the cops on us, not the Duck.”

Brian grunted his agreement and checked the green house again. “Okay. We’ll go around the corner. I’ll keep the engine running, and for Christ’s sake, don’t forget the other thing, all right?”

As Brian pulled away from the curb, Tar scrubbed a fist over a nose that’d been broken three times since he was a freshman. “I could use some help. That’s why Fleet was supposed to be here, in case you didn’t know.”

“I know, I know, okay?”

“So help.”

“So you run faster than me, okay?”

“Not that much faster,” Tar muttered as they rounded the corner and parked on the left, facing traffic.

There was no time for further argument. As soon as the car stopped, he was out with the bags and running hunched over back to the green house. He sprinted up the walk, turned once in a circle, and heaved them both against the front door. He was already back on the pavement when they hit, when they burst open, when they spilled dogshit and rotten eggs and vinegar onto the porch. There was a low hedge in front of the property, and just as he veered onto the sidewalk he dropped Don Boyd’s windbreaker onto it, dragging a sleeve until he was sure it had caught. Then he was back in the car, Brian pulling away before the door shut. He didn’t drive so fast as to leave rubber, but fast enough to have them out of sight by the time Adam Hedley responded to the thumps upstairs and left his basement, his plaid robe tied tightly around him, his nose already wrinkling in disgust before he took hold of the knob and pulled the door to him.

Brian didn’t laugh as he headed back up the hill. He just looked at Tar with a grin that never reached his eyes.

“Mission,” he said, “accomplished.”

Something moved in the rain.

It passed across streets without making a sound; it passed under streetlamps without leaving a shadow; it walked through a puddle and the water remained still; it brushed by a hedge and the branches didn’t move.

A dog on the porch next to Adam Hedley’s home began yapping, pulling at the leash that held it to the door, howling once, snarling, then cowering with a whimper against the welcome mat when it moved up the walk and fixed the terrier with a stare, turned around, and moved away; and the dog began trembling, snapping at its legs, growling at its tail, urinating on the mat and foaming slightly at the mouth.

Something moved in the rain, without making a sound.

The room was large and perfect. The furniture was new enough to keep its shine and already old enough to be comfortable when used: the bed was canopied just the way Chris liked it, the desk and chair were straight from Regent Street in London, the soft rainbow rug from India, the loveseat under the window from a little shop in SoHo she had discovered two years ago. The walls were papered in white and flocked gold, the ceiling freshly plastered, the alabaster lamps with just the right touch of frills but not so feminine that it looked like a room belonging to a girl who wanted only a husband and two kids to complete her life. In the far corner was an upright piano, sheet music piled on the bench and ready to fall.

Next to the desk was an open door leading into her private bathroom. It had been one of the requirements for her agreeing to leave Manhattan — that she have as much a private environment as possible to keep the rest of the house out of her affairs, if not out of her life; had she thought it possible she would have lobbied for a private entrance as well, but that would have been pushing it. Her father, indulgent to the point of easy manipulation, would have balked, no question about it, and might possibly have sent her to that damned fancy school in Vermont where all she’d have to look at were other girls, some trees, and herds of stupid cows.

Her mother didn’t care one way or the other; she spent most of her time writing ten-page letters to her two older children in Yale and Vassar, and flying down to Florida to visit her own mother.

It was, then, as perfect as she could have it, and whatever complaints she had she kept to herself.

She brushed her hair at the bathroom mirror, turning side to side, scowling at the thought of having to wash it again. She hated it — the washing, the drying, the constant brushing to keep it gleaming. She wished she could cut it off and dye her scalp blue like the Picts did for the Romans. But if she cut it off, she would look like a freak, and looking like a freak was not part of the plan.

The bath towel began slipping off her chest and she grabbed for it with an oath, held it while she flicked off the lights and walked into the dark bedroom. A reach for the wall switch was pulled back. Not yet, she thought. She wanted to stay in the dark a while longer, listening to the rain run down her window, listening to the blessed silence that meant she was alone. A sigh, contented, and she padded across the warm rug to the cushioned window seat, sat, and pulled her legs up so she could hug them and look out. There wasn’t all that much to see, not while it was raining, not after sunset, but the lights in the houses beyond the yard were still visible, and growing brighter as the leaves were pounded from their branches.

The towel slipped a bit more; she didn’t touch it.

She put a palm against a pane and shivered at the cold, pressed her head beside it, and tried to see the Boyds‘ backyard. It was too far away and blocked by too many trees, but she saw it, and she saw Don, and she saw his father.

She wondered if either of them would understand what she was doing, if Don would be very hurt if he knew he was included. Norman, she thought, wouldn’t be any trouble. Certainly not from the way he looked at her yesterday when she was walking away from his son, or the way he smiled at her whenever she could think of an excuse to talk to him in his office.

He wasn’t stupid. She damned well knew he knew the plan. He understood why she was going to stay in this damned dirty town until she graduated from its mediocre high school with the highest grades she could get, no matter how she got them; he sure as hell understood that a flower in a drab garden was brighter than a flower among her sisters, especially when the flower had the pick of the men who tended that garden — in a place like this, she was a goddamned champion orchid.

Her mother had chosen to be a shadow, and she had paid; her friends were too busy turning every job and love offer into political statements.

Chris, on the other hand, knew she was in a war, and only assholes and bitches didn’t use their best weapons.

Norman understood, she could see it in his eyes; Don would, eventually, but not before. Not before she was ready.

A shadow down in the yard.

She peered, wiped the pane, and peered again.

And sighed.

It wasn’t Don, and Norman wasn’t that stupid.

It was a cat, and she grinned at it while she stretched and purred and thought about how the next phase should open.

Something moved in the rain, and Sergeant Quintero in his patrol car heard it in an alley. He was waiting for Verona to get out of the John in the bar, declining to go in himself and wait because he knew he would see women there. On Sunday. Even on Sunday there would be a woman on a stool, having a drink, talking with the barkeep, waiting for her date to show up and take her home. It made him sick, and he refused to go in when Tom had decided he’d had enough of the car’s useless shocks. Jarred his kidneys, he said as he slid out and walked away; Quintero only grunted, and rolled down the window to breathe the fresh air.

And heard it in the alley.

He stared for a moment, figuring it was a rummy looking for a place to sleep, looked at the rain, and decided to leave the bum alone.

Then he heard it again, moving away, slowly.

It sounded like someone thumping soft dirt with a shovel.

He glanced at the bar’s closed door, then shrugged and pulled his jacket collar up over his neck. He climbed out and touched a hand to his left side to be sure the gun was there, then scowled at the drizzle and moved to the mouth of the alley.

It was dark.

At the back, he knew from rousting Saturday night drunks, was a broken-down wooden fence that led to a backyard. A kid could squeeze through; a grown man would have to swear and climb over.

Wood splintered then, echoing like gunshots, and reflex had him running, revolver in hand, eyes squinting through the mist. But despite the faint light from the street behind and the homes ahead, he could see nothing, not even when he reached the fence and saw the gaping hole.

A tank, he thought; someone’s driven a tank through it.

He searched for a culprit, in the alley and the adjoining backyard, and decided it was a drunk in a stumbling hurry to get home.

Another five minutes before he holstered his weapon and headed back toward the car.

And behind him, softly, something moved in the rain.

“It’s like going to the same funeral twice a month,” Tracey said to Jeff as they walked down the stadium steps to have lunch. “She lives in this really creepy apartment, a fourth-floor walkup in the middle of a block that looks like it’s been bombed. My father’s been trying to get her to move out since Grandfather died two years ago, but she says all her friends are still there and she just won’t budge.”

Jeff pushed a forefinger against his glasses to shove them back along his nose, and grinned as they sat, opening their lunch bags and taking out the food. They had bought cartons of milk in the cafeteria, and oranges for dessert, and when they didn’t see Don there, they thought he might be outside. Sunday’s rain was gone though the clouds had stayed behind, and the temperature had risen as if the sun were shining.

He sighed as he scanned the seats, still dark with moisture. “Don’t see him.”

“Well, he was in math.”

“Did he say anything?”

She shook her head, and a wide fall of hair slipped from behind her ear to cover her eye. “He looked like hell though. He looked like he hadn’t slept all weekend.”

They ate in silence, not close enough to touch, but close enough to sense they were alone out here.

“Trace?”

She looked at him absently, and wondered why he didn’t have a girlfriend. He wasn’t bad-looking in spite of the thick glasses, he kept his outdated long hair gleaming like a girl’s, and when he wanted to be, he was pretty funny in a sarcastic sort of way. She supposed it was because he was third string on the football team, which didn’t make him anywhere near a hero, and something less than the fans who crowded the stands at home games. A bad spot, she imagined, and a little silly too.

“Hey,” he said, rapping knuckles on her forehead. “Hey, are you in there?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

“Thinking about Don?”

She shrugged; not a lie, not the truth.

“You going to the concert Wednesday if it doesn’t rain?”

“I think so.”

“He ask you yet?”

That’s what her mother had asked her that morning, and yesterday night, and yesterday afternoon. But she wouldn’t let Tracey call him. It was not the way, she was told sternly; the proper way is for the boy to call first. Only, Maria Quintero didn’t know Donald Boyd. Tracey knew he had enjoyed their date as much as she had, and she knew, too, she should have said something to him when he had walked her home. But then there had been the kiss, and the running away.

And as soon as she had realized her mistake, up there in her room, she’d started out again, to stop him from leaving, and her father had walked in from the kitchen. He had been dressed in street clothes, explaining quickly he was working double shifts from now on with Detective Verona, hoping to keep the Howler from striking again in this town.

He hadn’t permitted her to leave.

She’d protested tearfully and was promptly ordered straight to her room; it was late, the boy was already gone, and there was the visit to abuela Quintero the following day.

What could she do? The last time she had defied him openly he had taken the strap to her and confined her upstairs for an entire weekend. Her mother, bless her, had snuck food up, and comfort, but could do nothing to gain her release. Luis Quintero had made up his mind.

“He hasn’t said boo to me all day,” she told Jeff sadly. “I don’t know if he’s mad or what.”

Jeff grinned. “I think he’s scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

He pointed at her.

“You’re crazy.”

Jeff debated only a minute before telling her about Don’s asking practically the whole school about her relationship with Brian Pratt. When she protested that there was none, never had been, and as long as there was a breath in her body never would be, Jeff assured her that that’s what everyone had told him.

“He was a total loon, you should have seen him.” He chuckled, and drained the rest of his milk in a gulp. “Put that on top of the detention he had and he was a Space Cadet the whole day.” His head shook in amazement. “I never saw him like that before. Never.”

“Really?” She didn’t bother to feign indifference. Jeff knew her too well. “Then I don’t get it.”

“What’s to get? I told you — he’s scared shitless.”

“Oh great.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, Trace. By the end of the day, if you wink at him or something, he’ll carry your books home in one arm and you in the other.”

She laughed, and felt a blush working on her cheeks. A swallow to get rid of it, a touch to her hair to hide it, and she jumped when the late bell sounded over the seats. Two minutes later she was in the hallway, on her way to Hedley’s lab, when she saw Don slumped against the wall outside his history class. She slowed, hoping he’d turn and see her, slowed even more, and finally walked right up to him and jabbed him in the arm. Startled, he pushed away and backed off a pace, his eyes wide, almost panicked, until he recognized her face.

“Hi!” she said brightly.

“Hi,” he replied, not meeting her gaze.

“You’re, uh, late for class.”

“Yeah. You too.”

“You going home right after school?”

He lifted a hand. “I … I think I’m going to run a little.”

A man’s voice called her name, and Don turned away, heading for the staircase.

“I’ll see you,” she called softly, and kicked herself when she saw the faces of the class as she rushed to her seat. They knew. She must have it written all over her, from her forehead to her knees. They whispered, someone giggled, and she felt the blush rise again; she cursed then for a full three minutes before the pressure left her chest and her cheeks felt cool again.

The class was endless. And her last class made her feel as if it were Friday and not Monday, and she was almost to the exit with her books cradled against her sweater when she stopped, turned, and collided with Chris Snowden.

Chris smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy,” she said quietly, her head inclined for privacy. “I saw him heading down for the gym.”

Tracey could only mutter her thanks and rush off, tears of embarrassment filling her eyes. My god, it was that obvious. And if Chris, who didn’t know if she were alive or dead, if Chris could see it, then the whole school knew it. And if the whole school knew it, then her freshman sister would too. Oh, god. Dinner tonight was going to be hell.

At the ground floor she was tempted to forget it and go home. This was ridiculous. She had never in her life chased a boy before; it was humiliating, and she had seen the blank look in his eyes when she caught him outside class — there was neither delight nor fear nor even a polite smile. There was nothing. She might as well have been a tree, or one of the wall tiles.

She stepped out of the stairwell and into the corridor. It was deserted, the lights already dim and made dimmer by the lack of windows, the drab paint, and the absence of doors. The gym and the stadium exits were on the other side. He said he was going to run, Chris’s comment confirmed it, so she walked slowly toward the doors that seemed a hundred miles away. Somewhere, a group of boys laughed raucously, probably the football team getting ready for practice. A higher voice trilled, choked, blew into laughter; the girl’s basketball team heading for the small gym opposite the main one.

And her footsteps on the hard floor, as if there were taps on her heels.

She hurried, feeling nervous, her shoulders lifting a little, her chin bringing her face down.

And behind her, when she slowed again to be sure this was really what she wanted, something followed.

Uneven steps, sounding hollow, sounding loud.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing, looked back and moved on. A boy, maybe one of the coaches, Gabby D’Amato dragging one of his brooms.

The idea that the grizzly custodian might be following her gave her the shivers and she moved faster. She didn’t like the old man; none of the girls did. They suspected he spent more time in their locker room than that of the boys, and they knew damned well he spent hours every day standing in the girls’ gym doorway, watching them in their shorts and T-shirts, intently.

Behind her. The footsteps.

She was thirty feet from the exit, and there was no other sound on the floor but her shoes, and her breathing, and the slow trailing footsteps that were hollow, and loud, and moving closer all the time.

Don’t look, she told herself; just get to the door and get outside, and get hold of Don and shake an invitation out of him even if you have to chop him in the throat.

Steadily, moving closer — the deep hollow sound of slapping against wood.

Don’t look, idiot; and she turned around at the corner.

The corridor was empty.

But she could still hear the footsteps.

And she could see a huge shadow spilling across the far wall.

It wasn’t a man; she was sure it wasn’t a man, because if it was, he was stumbling, drunkenly careening off the tiles, off the lockers. But there was no sound of anything like a shoulder striking metal, no sound of panting, no sound at all but the steady wooden thump of something moving down there.

Something much larger than a boy, or a man.

She blinked once, the books crushing her breasts, her mouth and throat dry, her lips quivering for a scream.

Then it started around the corner and she did scream, and spun through the door and raced up the steps, shouldering open the upper exit and running for the seats. She was halfway down to the field when she realized the stadium was empty. Don wasn’t there. No one was. She was alone.

The school loomed above her, and she hurried down to the track.

What was it?

She didn’t know. And she wasn’t going to be dumb enough to stick around just to satisfy her curiosity. It might have been a trick of the light, and it might have been her nerves gearing up to face Don, but whatever had started around that corner wasn’t human; it couldn’t be, unless, she thought so suddenly she stopped, it was the Howler looking for someone to kill.

She ran, then, and didn’t stop until she reached home.

The office door was closed, the secretaries dismissed early, and Norman stood at his window, frowning when he saw the Quintero girl race across the street as if a rapist were after her. He leaned forward to see if there was, in fact, anyone following, saw no one and grunted, and sat back at his desk.

“It’s a bitch,” he said, pulling his tie loose and unbuttoning his collar.

Harry Falcone was in the leather chair opposite, his legs crossed, his sport jacket open. “You can say that again.”

“Okay. It’s a bitch.”

They grinned, but not for long.

Norman picked up a pencil, turned it, tapped it on the blotter. “You can’t do it, you know. You’ll have every paper on your ass, and the board will just tighten theirs, and the parents of the seniors will be out for your heads.”

Falcone made a noise that might have been a grunt, or a groan, and leaned back until he was staring at the ceiling. “What choice do we have, Norman?”

“Accept the offer that’s on the table, for one.”

Falcone laughed sharply.

“Then what about binding arbitration?”

Another laugh; this one bitter.

“Well, then, what, for god’s sake?”

“Walk,” Falcone said without looking at him. “We’re going to walk. If the vote’s right tonight, we’ll walk on Wednesday after the last bell unless someone hands us a contract we can live with and live on.”

“Insane.”

“That,” said Falcone, finally sitting up, “is your opinion.”

Norman swiveled around quickly, looked out at the lawn, and ordered himself to relax.

“Do you have a statement you want me to read to the faculty tonight?”

“Read the last one,” he said sourly. “I’ve got nothing else to say.”

“Christ, Norm, you’re an ass, you know that? You’re a real jackass. You could be setting yourself up for life, you could be a hero and every teacher in this school would kill for you, but instead you’re insisting on cutting your own throat.”

You son of a bitch, he thought; you smug little son of a bitch.

He swung the chair back around, dropped the pencil, and leaned his forearms on the desk. Falcone was smiling.

He picked up Don’s test paper.

The teacher’s smile didn’t waver.

“I know what you’re doing,” Norm said evenly. “And it isn’t going to work. God knows, you’re not going to get to me through Joyce, and you’re not going to get to me through Donald either. It isn’t going to work, so lay off, Falcone. Lay the fuck off my son.”

“Oh, my,” the man said, rising, smoothing his lapels as he headed for the door. “Is that a threat, Mr. Principal?”

Norman considered a mild retraction, a half-hearted apology. He knew what the man would do if he didn’t — a statement to the faculty about the principal’s accusation, perhaps a judicious leak to the press. Norman becomes the instant villain, the board’s henchman in the streets. Norman is losing his cool because he’s lost control of his school, and would you want a man like that running this city?

“Harry,” he said, slamming the paper to the blotter, his fist planted atop it, “let me put it to you this way — I’ll kick your balls into your fucking mouth if you pull this stunt again. Trust me, Harry. I’ll ream your fucking ass.”

Falcone hesitated before he crossed the threshold, turned only slightly and stared back, not frowning. “I concede you the kid,” he said, just barely loud enough to hear. “But I’ll be damned, Mr. Boyd, if I know why you’re dragging your lovely wife into this.”

The door closed.

Norm was on his feet, ready to charge, when a restraining hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him back. There was no one there, but he felt it just the same, and began trembling when he realized how close he had come to throttling the man. He bit down on his lower lip, to feel the pain, to shock himself back, and when he did he muttered, “It isn’t fair. It just is not fair.”

Then he cleared his throat loudly, and decided he wasn’t going to bring any work home, the hell with the reports. He smiled, stood, and plucked his coat from the small closet on the far side of the room. Habit took him out the private door directly into the corridor, where he turned right and headed for the main entrance. And when he pushed out onto the concrete plaza and saw Gabby taking the flag down from the pole, he paused for a moment as if part of a ceremony, gave the custodian a two-fingered salute, and started walking.

Adam Hedley’s car sped past.

Norman watched it, praying the chemistry teacher wouldn’t spot him, stop, and demand to know if anything had been done about the windbreaker found caught on his hedge yesterday. The jacket Don had claimed he’d lost two days ago.

“I have not called the police,” Hedley had told him piously that morning. “The school certainly has enough trouble these days with that maniac on the loose. Not to mention the horrid scandal it would cause at the celebrations this week.”

“I appreciate that, Adam,” he’d replied, too stunned by the evidence in hand to say anything more.

“I’m sure you do.” Hedley had shaken his hand then, and had held it just a second too long. “I only want your assurance that you will take care of this, Norman. It wouldn’t do to have it get out. It would be rather disastrous, wouldn’t you think?”

Norman had agreed mutely. He knew exactly what the man meant, what Falcone could do with something like this — that the principal couldn’t even manage his own son, and the teachers were expected to manage an entire school of kids like him.

He knew. And he still refused to believe, despite the jacket, that Don had done such a stupid thing.

But there was the vial in his top drawer, and the coat, and there was Don’s recent, increasingly odd behavior.

Maybe, he thought, I’ll have a word with him tonight.

And maybe not. Maybe tomorrow.

He thought: rope — give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself and I won’t have to be the accuser.

“Jesus,” he muttered, “you’re a bastard, Boyd.”

But he didn’t change his mind.

When he reached his corner, he paused and glanced over his shoulder. The street was empty, the sun dropping rapidly and filling the spaces under the trees with twilight. A look to his house, then, hidden back there under the trees and shadows, and it struck him with a twinge of guilt that he didn’t want to go home. If Joyce wasn’t there, waiting to talk, Don would be, hiding in his room.

He had seen the boy only twice during the day; once in the corridors before lunch, looking like hell and walking like a zombie, and then again just before the final bell, heading for his locker. Norman had almost called him into the office, but changed his mind when he saw Fleet Robinson stop, whisper something into his ear, and slap his back heartily. Don had turned and grinned, nodded once, and moved on. But he still looked like hell, and it wasn’t just that damnable black eye; it was the way he looked at people — blankly, as if he were little more than a shell, his body making the rounds through habit. It was the way he had been most of yesterday, according to Joyce. He still smarted from the boy’s backtalk and wasn’t about to yield just yet. The kid had to learn that breaking the rules meant taking the consequences.

And if he had anything to do with that nonsense at Hedley’s, he was going to pay much more than he thought.

A breeze kicked at the leaves piling up in the gutter, and he hurried, hands deep in his coat pockets, head down, skin feeling damp. As he passed the Snowden home, Chris backed out of the driveway in her car, the top down in spite of the weather; she smiled and waved when he looked up at the sound of the racing engine. He mouthed a hello, she winked and drove away, and he stood there a moment, watching her hair fight with the wind.

She wants to go to bed with you, old fella.

He swallowed, looked quickly side to side before realizing the leering voice he had heard was his own, and silent.

But it was true, no question about it. He had been in the business long enough to know the difference between a harmless flirtation and one designed to produce better grades. Chris was definitely the willing type, and as calculating as any he had ever met. He hastened, then, to pat himself on the back for not once having fallen into the ultimate trap. Returning a flirtation was nothing; it was painless, and no one much cared. And it was a kick to do it knowing full well he wasn’t about to grant an A just because the girl had a fine figure or a lovely smile or a pair of eyes that made him restless at night.

This, on the other hand, could be serious. He suspected that if she didn’t get him compromised on the mattress, she would somehow find a way to compromise him by implication. Either way, he was going to have to be careful with that one.

A laugh, bright and genuine, put a bounce in his step as he headed for the front door. Calculated or not, it was still nice to know he wasn’t considered too disgustingly old for her to make the effort. In a backhanded way it was rather flattering.

A second laugh, that was strangled when he stepped over a puddle on the walk and turned around sharply.

The water lying on the sagging brick was clear and unrippled, and along one edge was a shadow that was neither the tree in the yard nor the eaves nor himself crossing over.

He stared at it, drawing out a hand to hold the coat’s collar closed around his neck.

The shadow didn’t move.

It suggested something much larger, much darker, than he had first imagined, but when he examined the street, the sidewalk, the yard, the stoop behind him, he saw nothing.

The shadow was still there, and when he kicked at the water to rough it and scatter it onto the grass, it remained unmoved.

“Jesus,” he said.

It grew larger.

Darker.

He stamped a foot into the puddle and watched the shadow slip over his toes.

The shoe yanked back and he looked up quickly, then sighed his relief aloud. A cloud. It was a black patch of cloud in the overcast made unnervingly substantial by the failing light below. Nothing more, Norman, nothing more.

He had his hand on the doorknob then when he heard the noise behind him.

Soft. Hollow. Slightly uneven, stones dropping lightly onto a damp hollow log.

It was coming up the walk.

He did not turn around. Deliberately he turned the knob, pushed open the door and stepped inside. He closed it behind him without looking over his shoulder and stood in the empty foyer for several long seconds before taking off his coat.

He was listening while a silent whisper irrationally insisted the cloud hadn’t made that shadow.

A shuffling, and Don appeared at the top of the stairs.

A muffled hollow sound, and something thudded heavily against the door at his back, just before the door slammed open.

Joyce scowled as she pushed inside, grocery sacks unwieldy in her arms and her purse starting to slip maddeningly off her shoulder. But instead of the stinging, remark that came to mind, she blinked when she saw the look on her husband’s face. He was pale, and moving away from her as if she were a corpse newly risen from the grave.

“God,” she said, “I hope to hell I don’t look that bad.”

Norm managed a wan smile after wiping his face with a palm, and quickly relieved her of one of the bags. Trailing after her into the kitchen, he asked about her day, helped her place cans and boxes in the cupboards, and finally wondered aloud what was eating their son.

“So ask him,” she said, snatching a saucepan from under the sink. “You speak the language of the young, the last I heard.”

“Hey, touchy today, aren’t you,” he said, but without his usual bitterness.

She watched him drop into a chair, light a cigarette, and stare at the smoke until it had vanished. “My day was shitty, but yours must have been hell.”

“To put it mildly,” he said.

And as she prepared them a quick meal, something they could eat in five minutes and have no complaints about not feeling full, she listened while he told her about Hedley’s bitching about a prank someone had pulled at his place over the weekend, about the coaches whining about the teachers who were in a conspiracy to hold back their best players and ruin the Big Game coming up Friday night against Ashford North, and about the teachers themselves and that sonofabitch Falcone and his threat to take the faculty out for a walk in only two days.

She said nothing because a single wrong word would set off his temper. The signs were there. And she knew he had deliberately held back the news about Harry until he’d reached the end of his weary tirade. Maybe he’d thought to catch her off guard; maybe he thought she would fly to the man’s defense and reveal herself as his not-so-secret lover.

And maybe he didn’t think anything of the sort and was only rambling, hoping to get this day off his chest before he could relax and start thinking about tomorrow.

Three cigarettes later he was done, and the silence made her nervous. She turned from the stove, and he was staring at her.

“Sorry about dinner,” she said, waving toward the soup and sandwiches. “There’s a—”

“Committee meeting tonight,” he finished for her. “I know.”

“Well, there is,” she insisted without wanting to. “My god, things start on Wednesday, you know.”

“I know.”

“And as long as you’re here, I might as well tell you that that so-called bandmaster of yours is being a real prick, Norm. He acts like he’s in charge of the New York Philharmonic, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like we’re asking for his blood, for crying out loud. And he’s even talking about extra pay!”

“I know.”

She slapped at the counter. “Will you please stop saying that? If you know so damned much, why the hell don’t you talk to him like I’ve asked you a hundred times already?”

“Three hundred, but who’s counting,” he said.

“Jesus.”

She put her back to him and stirred the soup, her free hand pulling her ponytail over her shoulder to stroke it, to calm her, to figure out a way to get him to talk to Donald — right, Joyce, his name is Donald. She couldn’t do it herself. When she’d looked in on him on Sunday and he had looked at her that way, she knew she couldn’t have a decent conversation with him without running from the room.

It was horrible.

It was unnatural.

But after seeing him like that, not sick but something else, she was ashamed to admit that she was afraid of him.

“Did you talk to Don?” she asked at last, her voice sounding too small, making her clear her throat and ask the question again.

“No. I just walked in the door when you came.”

“Then will you?”

“When I’m ready.”

The spoon clanged against the side of the pot.

“If you want to know the truth,” he said, sounding less angry but no less tired, “I think the kid needs a spanking, but he’s too big for it. If I tried it, he’d probably bash in my teeth.”

Last year, last month, last week, she would have turned on him furiously for even suggesting such a thing; tonight, however, she only nodded without letting him see her expression.

“Actually, I think he’s in love.”

She lifted the spoon from the soup, tested for warmth, and returned to her stirring. “You think so?”

“Yep. I think he has the hots for the Quintero girl. The cop’s kid.”

“Norman, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

“Like what?” Perfectly innocent, and uncaring.

“Like saying Don has the hots for someone. If he’s in love, he’s in love, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with having sex with the child.”

But he isn’t in love, she thought, half-hoping he would read her mind. He isn’t. I know. I’m his mother, and I know.

“Well, maybe,” he conceded. “And another thing.”

“What?”

“If you don’t let up on that spoon, we’re going to have butter for supper.”

It wasn’t all that funny, but she laughed anyway as she went to the foyer and called up to her son, telling him supper was ready and he’d best get down here before it got cold. There was no response. She called again and wished he had turned out more like Sam, who had never had to be called twice, never got into trouble.

“Donald!”

She heard the door open, heard his footsteps in the hall, and smiled as well as she could when he appeared on the landing.

“I’m not really hungry, Mother,” he said.

“Well, you’d better come down and eat what you can. It can’t hurt, and I don’t want you sick for all the fun this week.”

“Yeah,” he said, looked back up toward his room, and started down. Slowly. His hand dusting the banister until he was less than a foot from her. The smile held, but she could see his eyes now, could see the look in them, the dark look that made her feel as if she were an ant to be stepped on, or not, at the whim of a perfectly ordinary and inexplicably terrifying young man.

“Come on,” she said brusquely and walked away. He followed and she walked faster, and barely suppressed a relieved sigh when she saw Norm still at the table. Even a fight, now, would be better than nothing.

But Norm only nodded, and Don only nodded back, and during the meal they exchanged words so polite, so noncommittal, so infuriatingly inane that she wished for the first time that Harry were here. He would know what to do. He was, despite his dress and his manner with his students, an old-fashioned type when it came to dealing with children, and he would know how to handle this stranger who was her son.

And when the meal was over and she was piling the dishes in the sink, Don said, “Are you two getting a divorce?”

She spun around, a bowl clattering to the floor unbroken. “My god, Donald, what a thing to say!”

“Go to your room,” Norman ordered in a strained voice.

“Just asking,” Don said with a shrug. Then he rose, folded his paper napkin, and walked out.

“Jesus,” Norm said, pulling a beer from the refrigerator.

“Norm, what are we going to do?”

He looked at her, drank, and forced himself to belch. “Seems to me,” he said as he headed for the TV room, “that’s your problem. You’re the one who doesn’t think I love you, remember?”

“But—”

And she was alone, hands tangled in a dishtowel, lips moving soundlessly, her dream of running away with Harry for some remote paradise suddenly more the dream of an old woman still a spinster.

Then she saw the clock and knew she was going to be late. Oh, shit, she thought, threw the towel on the floor, stomped to the doorway, and said, “I’m going. I’ll be back around eleven.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Talk to Don, okay?”

He lifted a hand — maybe, maybe not.

Damn you, she thought, and managed to get behind the wheel before she started to cry. Not long, and not loud. Just enough to prove she could still do it, and still cared enough to want to in spite of the daydreams and in spite of Falcone. It wasn’t easy; she had admitted weeks ago he meant nothing to her, not even as a port in her private storm. He meant, if she were going to be honest, even less than that lawyer she’d taken up with shortly after Sam had died. That episode had been a search for meaning, or so she claimed, and so Norman said he believed in his forgiving; this was a search for something else, something she couldn’t define and was growing weary of trying. What it probably was, she thought bitterly, was a woman on the verge of menopause, looking for her teenaged self in a mirror that lied.

She snorted a laugh at the image and backed out into the street, driving off with the resolve to get home as soon as possible. Maybe then they could talk, the three of them, about what was going on, and what they could do, and how much they really loved each other. They had to. Don’s question tonight proved it.

Something moved in the shadows.

“You know my father’s gonna kill me,” Tracey said, walking as fast as she could, her shoulders lifted against the cold that had come with Monday’s dark.

“God, you’re not that late,” Amanda told her. Her long black hair was tied back with a black ribbon, her school jacket open to the night’s chill. “God, you’d think, he was your keeper or something.”

“Sometimes he thinks he is,” she said, though with a smile that made Amanda frown and shake her head. “It’s just a pain how old-fashioned he is sometimes, you know? But … well, he’s just afraid for me, that’s all. Because of the Howler.”

“Well, for god’s sake, that slime’s probably a million miles away by now. He can’t be stupid enough to hang around, right? Christ, he’s probably all the way to Ohio or someplace.” She giggled. “Damned fuzz can’t find the lint on their shoulders.”

“Hey,” Tracey said softly.

“Oh. Sorry.” Without regret, only a shrug and a lengthening of her stride.

“Sure.”

“No, I mean it.”

Tracey waved off the weak apology and readjusted the notebooks she carried in her hand.

Amanda began humming, and cut herself short. “I wonder if old Tube’s gonna be up all night again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, sure. Didn’t you hear Brian today? He said the old fart was up all night yesterday scrubbing his porch. He had one light, a flashlight, and when Brian drove by, he turned it off. I guess he didn’t want anyone to see what he was doing. I’ll bet he used some of that crap from his lab, y’know? Homemade bleach.” She giggled and mimed a scientist pouring a solution from one beaker to another. “Maybe he drank some of it. Maybe he thinks it’ll give him more hair.”

“All night, huh? No kidding?”

“I’ll tell you,” Amanda said, moving closer and lowering her voice. “I’m glad Fleet wasn’t there. With his luck they would have been caught, suspended, and thrown in jail.” She sniffed and looked behind her. “The old fart had it coming though. He’s been busting our asses since school started. I don’t think he wants us to graduate.” A laugh, and a slap at Tracey’s arm. “He really hates it that Fleet’s getting straight A’s, y’know? He thinks Fleet oughta be dumb just because he plays football. Maybe he has the hots for him, y’know?” She laughed again, harder, when Tracey looked away, embarrassed.

The boulevard was empty of everything but its streetlamps and shadows, and it wasn’t hard for Amanda to hear footsteps behind her. She looked, and saw nothing.

Tracey saw the move. “Me too,” she said, and they moved closer to the curb, ready to dash across to the other side should they need to run.

“Dumb.”

“What?”

“This,” Amanda said, nodding to the way they were almost tightroping the curb. “He’s a million miles from here.”

“Sure,” Tracey agreed.

“Besides, I’d kick his balls in if he tried anything with me.”

Tracey nodded, patting the purse she held close to her side. “I’ve got a piece of pipe in here. I’d bash his brains in.”

“Pipe?” Amanda was impressed. “No shit?”

“Dad makes me carry it.”

“Well, hell, sure he does. He’s a cop.”

“I don’t know if I could use it though.”

“What?” Amanda stopped, staring her disbelief. “You’re nuts, Trace. You’re … nuts! Of course you can use it! You think you’re gonna die, you’ll bite the bastard back if you have to.”

Tracey considered, then nodded. “I guess.”

Another block, and the chill deepened, sharpening the sound of their feet on the sidewalk, giving the light from the streetlamps a sharp, shimmering edge.

They walked arm to arm.

The boulevard was still empty.

“You know what?” Amanda whispered.

“What?”

She looked around and lifted her head. “The fucker is dumb, that’s what!” she said loudly.

“Dumber!” Tracey yelled.

“Dumber than shit!” Amanda screamed.

“Dumbshit!” Tracey shouted, and broke into a fit of giggling that soon had her choking.

And Tanker laughed with them silently, watching as they rushed along the pavement, almost running as they headed toward the park and the shops’ lights beyond and keeping themselves brave by daring the dark. He knew that method well, had used it himself a number of times when he was tramping through enemy territory and didn’t want to die.

The difference here was simple He hadn’t died.

And they were going to.

He kept to the treed islands in the middle of the wide avenue, staying almost directly opposite them, herding them with his presence though he didn’t show himself, didn’t make a sound, only curling a lip when they almost broke into a headlong dash once the shorter girl stopped choking.

It was tempting, taking two whores on at once, and the shakes were on him bad enough to make his legs cramp and his hair feel as if it were being torn from his scalp. It hadn’t been this bad in a long time, and he was glad the clouds had thinned a little, to let out the moon; he was glad, too, of the rain over the weekend. It had kept his friend hidden while he was in that pissant jail, him and a handful of other men, Burns picked up on Saturday night by two cops in plain clothes, one of whom, a dark little creep who looked like a snotty spic, actually looked more frightened than stern. Tanker hadn’t tried to run away though, because they didn’t know what he looked like, didn’t know who he was, didn’t know what he had done. He had gone along, acting like he was weak and smaller than he was, saying “sir” every time he spoke, giving them a phony name, sleeping on their damned cots and eating their damned food, which wasn’t all that bad, all things considered.

But this morning he had been released, and cautioned not very gently not to hang around anymore, not at the food joints, or the movie house, or the park, or even the goddamned churches. Babyfuck reasons to run him out of town. Two of the other guys headed directly for the city limits, one for the nearest bar, and Tanker had smoothed and combed and neatened himself up as best he could and stood at the bus stop right in front of the station. He knew they were watching him, and he gave them a little wave when he stepped into the bus and let it take him as far as the park.

Shitheads didn’t even check to see where he had gone.

It was close. God, how he’d wanted to howl when he walked out the station door, to see them shit in their pants at what they had missed.

But he had been strong because the shakes were coming on, and he needed to do it, and he figured they figured he was halfway to California by now, just like those assholes in Yonkers, and New York, and Binghamton had figured he was someplace else when he was right there all the time.

Idiots. True and real idiots, and he had helped them get that way.

One of the whores laughed again, nervously, and finally he couldn’t take it anymore. They were exactly where he wanted them to be, and so he drew himself up and ran out into the middle of the deserted street.

The shorter bitch saw him first, screamed, and started to run, her notebooks falling onto the sidewalk; one popped open, pages tumbling toward the gutter. The other one turned and gaped at him, heard her friend’s frantic call and began to run a few seconds later.

But she was too far behind, and Tanker angled to position himself in front of her, pushing her closer to the park wall, closer, grinning as he loped until she shrieked a name and darted through the open gates.

The first whore stopped when she saw Tanker race for the opening, but a feint and snarl had her off again, her voice shrill and laced with tears. He didn’t care. By the time she got help the shakes would be gone.

He ran. Easily. Up on his toes. Silently. Ducking into the brush as soon as he was through the gates, following the babyfuck whore by the sound of her shoes and the sound of her breathing and the sound of her tremulous prayers for someone to hear her.

At the oval pond he broke out and grabbed her.

She screamed so loudly he winced, and before he could stop her she had raked the side of his face with her nails. Shrieking. Kicking, aiming for his groin. Screeching when he slapped her, and clawing at him again until he grabbed her wrists and pulled her forward, spun around once and dumped her into the water.

She gasped as she struggled back to the surface and stood, water dripping from her eyebrows, from her jaw, backing away as he stepped calmly in to join her.

“No,” she said.

He only grinned and moved in.

Amanda leapt for the apron and fell when her wet soles slipped out from under her. Tanker was on her back before she could regain her balance, and with a sad shake of his head he slammed her face into the concrete.

“Whore,” he said, baring his teeth.

Amanda groaned and coughed blood.

He drove her facedown again, his hands snarled in her wet hair, one knee jammed in the small of her back.

“Whore.”

She groaned again, and fell silent.

“Whore,” he said a third time, and dragged her by the hair into the bushes. Then he tore off her jacket and tossed it aside, rolled her onto her back and stood over her. He was right, as usual — a whore. He could tell by the way the sweater clung to her breasts, the way the tiny gold cross on the fine gold chain around her neck mocked the religion she supposedly believed in; he could tell by the way she bled from the gouges in her forehead and chin.

She was a whore, and Tanker was hungry, and with a grateful look to the unseen moon he dropped beside her, put a hand to her cheek, and licked his lips twice before tearing out her throat.

The stadium held over fourteen hundred people in the concrete stands alone; the wooden bleachers on the opposite side added three hundred more. Don imagined every seat filled now with people in black, weeping for the loss of the butchered Amanda Adler.

Weeping. Wailing. Demanding retribution.

But as he ran, the cool wind stinging his eyes into infrequent tears, there was only the sound of his soles on the cinder track, and in the stands there were only about two hundred students and less than a handful of teachers. He had counted them, or tried to, but each time he made a new circuit someone had moved, or new faces appeared and old ones vanished. Some of the kids just sat there, staring at nothing; others milled about, talking softly, tugging at arms, shrugging at leaving.

It had happened just after third period — an announcement by his father over the P.A. system. Amanda Adler was dead, murdered in the park, and the school would close now in her memory and would remain closed tomorrow so that her friends might pay their respects in their own private ways.

After a respectful pause he added that the Ashford Day park concert tomorrow night would not be canceled as rumored, but would be considered a memorial for the two students who had recently lost their lives so senselessly and violently. Then he asked the teachers to end classes and dismiss their charges as soon as possible.

Brian Pratt had said, “All right! Freedom!” and Tar Boston had punched him in the stomach;

Adam Hedley sat with Harry Falcone in the faculty lounge and groused about the closing, obviously one done not in sincerity but with a clear political eye out for preventing a teacher’s strike from getting much play in the papers. It was, he claimed, a cynical and effective move for which Boyd ought to be given credit; and one that might be countered. When Harry asked for an explanation, Hedley told him about the jacket;

Jeff Lichter cleaned his glasses fifteen times in ten minutes, trying to get rid of the elusive blur on the lenses;

Fleet Robinson was absent;

After shutting down the P.A. system, Norman sat behind his desk, and stared out the window, thinking that Harry was going to be pissed, Joyce was going to be understandably upset at the solemnization of her opening celebration, and the newspapers would probably cut his statement in half and make him look like just another politician — all in all, a hell of a day;

Don immediately put his books into his locker and headed for the track. On the way he met Chris, who flung her arms around him and mumbled something about just talking to Amanda the other day. He was stunned and stroked her back absently while trying not to seem embarrassed as students passed around them, trying not to feel the soft tickle of her hair against his chin. No one seemed to notice. Then she stepped away, smiled, kissed his cheek, and thanked him. It was several minutes before he was able to move on, not bothering to change, needing the fresh air and the quiet, and something else to think about, except that even with the feel of Chris’s thin blouse on his palms he couldn’t think about a thing except Amanda, with the long black hair, hanging on Fleet’s hip and taking his crude macho teasing with remarkable good grace.

He had already known about the killing.

Last night, Sergeant Verona had called just after Joyce had returned from her meeting. Don overheard the Boyd end of the conversation, and was prepared when his father told him what had happened. Then the phone rang again, and continued to ring for hours while reporters and god knew who else asked the principal for his official, his private, his off-the-cuff reactions. Norman handled it well, Don thought, and Joyce was right there, drafting a quick statement at the kitchen table for him to read or expand from after the first twenty minutes.

During a pause Norman had turned to him and asked if he’d known her, if she was a good friend. He had only nodded and had gone unhindered to his room.

He was angry because he wanted to do more than just nod his head. He wanted to say that it didn’t make any difference whether she was a friend or not. She was seventeen and he was seventeen-and-a-half, and now she was dead and in some goddamn morgue lying under a dirty sheet. She was dead, and nobody else was. This wasn’t some poor unknown sucker from another school; this was Amanda, Mandy, Fleet’s beautiful dark-haired lady, and he knew her and she was dead and she was only seventeen and strangers may die even younger, but not Amanda because Don knew her and people he knew just didn’t die. And they sure didn’t die because some maniac was out there, getting away with murder while kids were damned dying on the damned streets and who the hell cared if he knew her or not; she was dead, and she was only seventeen.

That morning he had promised not to say a word until the official announcement had been made. It didn’t matter, since most of them knew it anyway through the macabre reach of the grapevine, and those who didn’t were soon filled in after school closed and a quiet had sifted over the grounds.

But he had kept the promise, and when classes were dismissed, he took off for the track.

Seeing the same faces move about, seeing different ones take different places, seeing some of the kids smiling because of the time off, and some of them grim and staring blindly at the grass that rippled as the wind came up.

There was no one in the bleachers.

On his third lap he saw a flickering under the wooden seats, and he slowed, peered into the shadows, and sped up again. It was nothing. A trick of the light. A trick of the sky and the sun that didn’t give a damn that a seventeen-year-old girl had been mangled because the cops couldn’t catch one lousy killer.

And that, he decided, would be part of the new order he had devised: no one, not even adults, would die at the hands of a crazy bastard who obviously thought he was some kind of animal.

He walked the next lap, head down, arms limp at his sides. His shirt was stained with perspiration, his trousers damp and clinging. Tracey wasn’t in school. He didn’t blame her. From the garbled story he’d heard last night, she had practically been killed herself, and the first thing he was going to do when he got home was forgive her for not getting in touch, and call her.

Someone called his name.

He ignored it and started around the front turn, heading for the bleachers again. Once there, he would take one more lap, then go home and shower. After that he would call. And after that he would try to figure out what had happened to his best friend.

On Sunday, when he was finally able to examine the poster more closely, he realized that in one respect he had been wrong, that no one had attempted to mutilate the picture — a finger touched the paper and he saw that the flaw was in the picture itself. There were no raised edges, no indentations. Just a static screen of white lines that made no sense at all. Flaws like that didn’t come with time.

Someone called his name.

He scowled and looked around, saw Jeff at the railing at the bottom of the stands. A glance to the bleachers, a brief wondering what he had seen there, and he decided he had had enough. With one hand massaging the back of his neck he walked over to the nearest steps and hauled himself up, dropped onto a seat and waited for Jeff.

“Hey,” Lichter said without much enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” he said, passing a sleeve over his mouth.

“What a bitch.”

Don rested his forearms on his knees and leaned over, still trying to get his wind back. Thinking about Amanda. A drop of sweat landed on his shoe.

“I mean, they don’t even know what this dude looks like, for god’s sake! What the hell kind of thing is that? This makes what, seven? And they don’t even know what he looks like!” He took off his glasses and pulled out a shirttail to clean them. “Tracey’s practically ready to move in with her grandmother, and I tell you, Don, I don’t blame her.”

He covered his face with his hands, drew them down an inch at a time, and looked up at the sky. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she and Mandy were walking back from the library, minding their own business, and all of a sudden this crazy guy runs out at them, and the next thing Tracey knows, Mandy and this guy are gone into the park. She — Trace, I mean — she screamed so much she’s hoarse, and she ran all the way to Beacher’s to use the phone. Her old man was there, but she says she could hardly talk she was so scared. Some doctor was supposed to go over to their place and give her something so she could sleep.” He replaced the glasses, pushed back his hair. “I bet she didn’t though. I bet she didn’t sleep a wink.”

Don pushed back on the seat until he could lean his elbows on the one behind. Then he squinted at Jeff. “She called you?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, and felt a wall begin to crack somewhere inside him, a fissure splitting the wall in half.

“She cried a lot, believe it.”

The wall fell to dry, colorless dust. “She called you.”

“Yeah, I said she did.” Jeff started to smile, then found something to look at intently on the gridiron. “She said she had to talk to someone, and your line was busy. She said she tried for nearly an hour, but she had to talk to someone, and when she couldn’t get you, she tried me.”

“You were home.”

Jeff’s laugh sounded almost genuine. “Sure! You think my father would let me out that late on a school night?”

“Well, it just goes to show you,” Don said, rising and dusting at his trousers.

“Hey, Don, I told you she tried to call.”

“I know, I know.”

“But your line was busy.”

“My father,” he said. “Reporters and all, and the police.”

“Oh. Well, look, you oughta call her when you get home, you know? I mean, it was you she wanted to talk to, not me.”

“Sure.” He started for the stairs; he had to run again in spite of the stitch that lingered in his side.

“Hey, Don, damnit,” Jeff called.

He didn’t look around.

“Hey, it ain’t my fault.”

He started to run.

“Well, fuck you too, pal.”

And when he came around again, Jeff was gone.

The burning in his left eye he blamed on the wind, and he lowered his head so his vision would clear, and so he could watch the out-and-back rhythm of his feet gliding over the track.

Out. Back. The cinder so smooth he imagined he wasn’t moving at all.

He felt it then — the slipping away, letting anger stiffen his muscles and labor his breath, color his mind until he couldn’t think, could barely see, made him stop, panting, hands hard on his hips while he gulped at the sky for air to calm him.

He was back at the bleachers, blinking the tears away and trying not to scream Jeff’s name at the sky. Trying not to chase after his friend, slam him against a wall and demand to know what he thought he was doing, talking to Don’s girl when it was Don Tracey wanted, Don she had tried to call and could not reach because his goddamned parents were too busy trying to lessen the blow of Mandy’s death. Not soften. They were hunting for ways to let life go on with a minimum of disruption: the school and the celebration. Ashford. One hundred and fifty years. And Mandy was only seventeen and he was only seventeen-and-a-half and he would be damned if he was going to let it happen to him.

He bent over and let his arms hang loose. His hands shook wildly but the tension wouldn’t drain; his knees felt like buckling, and he was ready to give in, to collapse and try to make sense of this new thing when, from his right, he heard a noise.

A shuffling, a sniffing, something moving under the seats.

He turned his head and peered into the shadows. A dog, probably. That’s what he had seen before — a glow from its eyes, or something in its mouth. A claw, or the color of its fur.

He listened, and heard nothing.

He stared back at the track, shaking himself all over to loosen up and drive the red from his eyes. When he was finished, he took several deep breaths he released explosively, then walked over and leaned down, supporting himself on his palms while he looked between the seats.

He overcame an initial rush of surprise and said, “Hey, who are you?”

But the man cowering against the brick wall only lifted a filthy hand to wave him away. A man of indeterminate age, in fatigue pants and tweed jacket, with grime on his face and dark stains on his fingers and unshaven chin. A man who pushed himself back against the wall and waved him away a second time, a third, without saying a word.

“Are you all right, mister?”

Again the dismissal.

“Hey, if you need help or something …”

The man glowered and Don backed off, looked to the stands for someone to call, looked back and blinked. Once. Slowly.

The red vanished, and he could see again with a clarity that hurt his eyes. But he felt nothing. He only returned to the bleachers and smiled at the man hiding under the seats.

“Fuck off, kid,” the man said.

Don continued to smile, but there was no mirth, no humor, just a grim, silent message that he knew who the man was; he knew, and he didn’t approve.

“Damnit, fuck off you punk creep,” the man snarled.

He nodded and walked away, across the grass and up the steps and around the side of the school toward home.

Fantastic, he thought; this is fantastic.

If he wanted to, he could be a hero. He could go right into the kitchen and call the police and tell them that he knew where the Howler was. And if the killer had fled by the time they arrived, he would be able to give them more than just one lousy clue, he could give them a complete description. The first one. The only one. And the Howler wouldn’t be so safe anymore.

But when he came into the foyer, he saw his jacket draped over the newel post. He poked at it, then hooked a finger under the collar and flung it over his shoulder.

Boy, he thought, this is a great day. My jacket’s back and I could be a hero if I wanted.

He went to the kitchen to get a can of soda and stopped in the doorway. His father was at the table, scribbling on a yellow legal pad, looking harried and tired, and not at all pleased.

“Found your missing jacket, I see,” Norman said after a glance up.

“Yeah. Who brought it back?” He opened the refrigerator, got his drink, and hook-shot the pull tab into the garbage.

“Mr. Hedley.”

“Who?”

Norman dropped his pen onto the pad and leaned back. “Mr. Hedley. You remember him, the teacher? He brought the jacket to my office yesterday morning.”

He didn’t understand, and stared at the man until, at last, he began to see.

“You think I did it, huh?”

Norman shook his head. “No, not really.”

Red again, this time like a wave.

“What do you mean, not really? I didn’t do it, if you want to know.” He slammed the can on the counter, ignoring the soda foaming over the sides. “Jeez!”

Norman puffed his cheeks and blew out. “Donald, I don’t have time to argue. You say you didn’t dump that crap on his porch, but he did find the coat on his hedge. And he does think you emptied that bottle in his classroom. He puts two and two together and decides to be a nice guy and come to me first, not to the police.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“And you say you didn’t do it. Even after all the grief, and the detentions, you still didn’t do it.”

“My god!” he exploded. “What do you want from me, a written confession? You want me to take a lie detector test?”

“Donald, that’s enough.”

Don almost told him that they were father and son, and there ought to be a little trust in a guy’s word now and then.

But he didn’t.

He said, “You’re right, Dad. It’s enough.”

He walked stiffly to the foot of the stairs, hesitated until he was sure he wouldn’t be chased, then hurried up to the bathroom. He filled the basin with cold water and splashed it over his face, soaked a washcloth and ran it around his neck.

But the red wouldn’t go away.

It spread across the mirror and faded to a pink pale enough for him to see his reflection; it thumped through his chest until he thought he would explode; it poured into his ears with a roaring like the ocean just after a storm; it swirled around him, drew him in, spun him out and vanished so suddenly he had to grab the edge of the sink before he fell to his knees.

He was sweating, and he was cold, and he draped a towel around his neck and went into his room, closed the door, and stood in front of the poster.

The trees were still there, and the ground fog, and the road.

And the stallion was still partially hidden behind a screen of white lines.

“What’s going on?” he whispered nervously, reaching out a cold hand to touch the space where the stallion was fading. “What’s going on?”

Then he sat on the bed and clamped his hands to his face. Quite suddenly he was afraid. Not of what was happening to the horse, but of the madness that must be taking hold of him to make him think it was slowly disappearing. That had to be it. He had to be going crazy. There wasn’t a poster in the world that had a picture that disappeared by stages, and there wasn’t another kid in the world who talked to a stupid photograph and called it his friend and told it his secrets and asked for its advice. There wasn’t anyone like him at all because he was going crazy, and he couldn’t even tell Tracey because she had called Jeff and not him.

Jeff was scared.

There was some maniac running around town killing off the people he knew, there was a feeling deep inside him in a place he couldn’t find that he’d lost his chance to have Tracey, and there was a madman, an unknown person or thing or something else that was taking over the body of who used to be his best friend.

As soon as Don had walked away from him at the stadium, he’d stomped up the steps and back into the school. For a while he stood helplessly in the team locker room, knowing there’d be no practice, but not knowing where else to go. Home was out of the question because his dad was at work; Beacher’s was out because he didn’t have any money.

What he wanted to do was go to Tracey’s. What he wanted was someone to talk to. What he wanted was someone to tell him — as she would, he just knew it — that it was all right to cry when a friend of yours dies.

And he did.

And when Tar Boston came in, whistling, he wiped his face without taking off his glasses.

“Christ Almighty,” Boston said, “she wasn’t your damned sister, you know.”

Jeff turned away.

“Fuck,” Boston said, and kicked at the wall. “It ain’t right, you know? It ain’t right.”

Jeff waited, heard nothing more, and snapped his lock shut and headed for the door. As he reached for the knob, he thought he heard a sniffling behind him. A muffled sobbing.

Jesus, he thought, and turned around.

Tar was leaning against the wall, grinning while he made the sounds of weeping. “Four-eyes,” he said, “you ain’t half bad, but you sure ain’t a man.”

Jeff walked over to him, and Boston laughed, lifting his hands to ward off the expected blow. He laughed so hard he didn’t see Jeff shift his weight to his left foot, and he didn’t have time to duck when Jeff kicked him in the balls.

The yell was strangled, and strangled with it were threats that made him smile as he left, striding across the gym to a martial tune in his head. He was going to pay for that. Boy, was he ever going to pay for it. But the look on the bastard’s face was worth every broken bone he was going to get.

Worth it, in spades.

So why the hell, he thought then, couldn’t he get the same courage up to ask Tracey out?

The smile widened. Well … maybe he could. Maybe he really could. And then maybe he could walk over to Don’s and find out what the hell was wrong with the guy’s head.

Don heard his mother drive up, heard the front door close, heard muffled voices in the kitchen. The telephone rang. Someone answered. He shifted to lie on his back, hands behind his head. He sniffed, made himself shudder, and heard footsteps outside his door. A soft knocking. The door opened.

“Darling,” Joyce said, “are you all right?”

She was beautiful, her hair unbound and flowing over her shoulders, a brightly colored blouse unbuttoned at the throat, a skirt not quite matching and not quite snug around her hips.

He nodded, but only once.

She gave him a tentative smile and sat at the foot of the bed. “It’s been rough. I guess, huh?”

He nodded.

She laid a sympathetic hand on his leg and rubbed it absently, looking around the room at the empty shelves, the neat desk. She said nothing about the poster. “It isn’t easy, I know. You know someone, and they have to … to die like that. It isn’t easy, believe me.”

He knew she meant Sam, and while Sam was his brother, he was only a kid. Mandy wasn’t really his friend, but she was seventeen and he knew her better than he’d ever known his little brother.

Joyce cleared her throat, and her smile was sad, then brave, then gone altogether.

He watched her, and felt sand in his throat. “Mom,” he said before he could think and stop himself, “there’s something I have to tell you. Over at the school this afternoon I saw—”

“In a minute, dear, please,” she interrupted in the way she had that told him she wasn’t listening at all. “That was Tracey Quintero on the phone before.” She patted his knee, rose, and went to the door.

“What?” He sat up, hands splayed to the sides to give him balance. “Tracey? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, dear, this is kind of hard for you to understand, but she needs someone to talk to, and I think it best she talk to her parents first, don’t you?”

“What?” he said, so softly she didn’t hear him.

“Grown-ups, they have experience, and they know, most of the time, how someone your age is feeling, like about … well, like something like this.” The smile returned, briefly. “I think, right now, Mr. Quintero will help her more than her friends.”

He dropped back again. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her you were sleeping. That you were disturbed by what had happened, and you were sleeping.”

“Thanks,” he said tonelessly.

Joyce winked at him and left, closing the door behind her.

The room filled with a silence that breathed, in and out, over the beating of his heart, the muffled creak of the bedsprings, the voices that slipped uninvited under the door.

What, he thought to the afterimage of his mother, do you know about what I need, huh? What the hell do you know about Tracey? Jesus, you didn’t even know she was Spanish, for god’s sake.

“Oh, hell,” he moaned, “oh hell, oh hell.”

And the hell with them, then. He had given them a chance to help him be a hero, and maybe save some kid’s life, but they didn’t care. They didn’t care at all. One thought he was an asshole who dumped shit on people’s porches, and the other thought he didn’t know how to help his own friends feel better.

They looked at him and they saw baby Sam.

The hell with them then.

He closed his eyes and felt the nugget still buried in his chest. Warm, red, and every inch of it his.

If they didn’t want to help him, if they didn’t trust him, then he would do it on his own. He was the one who knew what the Howler looked like; he was the one who could put the killer behind bars for the rest of his life; he was the one who knew it all, and they could all go to hell for all he cared.

How, something asked him then, do you know he’s the Howler?

For the space of a heartbeat he blinked in confusion, and for the space of a long breath he didn’t know the answer.

Then his eyes narrowed, and his breathing came easy, and it didn’t bother him at all when he thought: birds of a feather.

Because in a way it was true. That creep under the bleachers worked under his own rules, and Don had written some new rules of his own. He couldn’t speak them aloud, but he knew them just the same — they were written on that nugget, in red, just waiting.

He rolled onto his side, head propped on one hand.

He looked at the poster, and a sigh changed to a whimper. He was on his feet, across the room, gripping the edge of the desk and staring through a fall of perspiration from his brow.

The black horse was gone.

The static scratches had vanished, but the stallion was gone.

He touched the paper, traced the boles of the trees, the swirl of the fog, ran his palm over it, pressed his forehead to it, lifted a corner to check behind it.

The road was empty.

It was gone.

A panicked step took him halfway to the door, but he heard movement outside and ran to the window. The yard was dark and fringed by moonlight, and in the middle of the grass was a shadow. At first he thought it was Chris, coming the back way to see him for some unknown reason; then he squinted and pressed his palms to the pane and felt the glass. It wasn’t — it was the same visitor he had seen last week when he’d run, the one who had watched him from the tunnel in the stadium wall. Unformed. Black. And watching him as surely as if it had a perfect set of eyes.

A drop of ice touched his nape;

His head whipped around and he looked at the poster.

The horse was still gone.

When he looked back, the shadow was gone too.

Suddenly, inexplicably weeping, he backed away from the window, from the poster, and fell onto the bed. He tried to swallow, and couldn’t; he tried to call for help, and couldn’t; he tried to tell himself that he wasn’t crazy, not really crazy, but posters didn’t change and black ghosts didn’t walk across his backyard at night.

“Help,” he whispered. “Somebody. Help.”