Then I was alone and when I looked up at the light, I saw the first few whipping traces of snow.

I tried the engine again and this time it caught but just as it did, I saw a car pull next to mine, and a familiar face looked over at me.

He was out of his car and into mine in moments.

"You need a better car."

"Thanks for the tip," I said.

"I've got a lot of good advice for you, Spence."

"Yeah, I'll bet you do."

"Especially about Sat.u.r.day night."

I didn't say anything for a time, just sat there and looked out at the whipping snow. "The Chief talked to you, huh?"

"As far as I knew, he had a gun, Spence. That was why I shot him."

"Right."

"Don't f.u.c.k with me, Spence. I'm not that s.h.i.tty little punk you used hang out with. I'm a lot different these days."

I turned and looked at him. "Yeah, I noticed that Sat.u.r.day when you killed Myles."

"He killed Nancy Tumbler."

"That didn't give you the right to execute him."

Now it was his turn to pause. He let out a long, ragged sigh. "I want you to drop this, this whole thing, you understand?"

"You're safe, Garrett. The Chief believes that you didn't hear me say he was unarmed."

"I didn't hear you say it."

"Right."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t if you believe me."

"I noticed that."

"It's over and done with. There's going to be an inquest and an investigation, and then the Chief said it'll be over."

"Sounds like it's going to be a great investigation."

He opened the door.

The cold air felt good. Clean.

"He used to beat her up."

"Yeah, he did."

"And as I remember, he also beat the h.e.l.l out of you."

I didn't say anything.

"So what's the big deal? If I didn't kill him, he would have just rotted in prison the rest of his life anyway."

"You're rationalizing, Garrett. There wasn't any reason to shoot him and you know it."

Another sigh. "I don't want you talking to the Chief anymore, you hear me?"

"I hear you."

He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. It was a surprisingly gentle hand. "You're a nice guy, Spence. You really are. I've got a lot of good memories about you, Conan and all that bulls.h.i.t. So I'm asking you, don't push it anymore, all right? I did what I had to do Sat.u.r.day night, and it's that simple. If you want to believe that I murdered him, that's up to you. But I'm trying to be a good cop for this town and I don't want that kind of rumor undermining me. So I'm asking you to keep your opinions to yourself." He paused. "I really didn't hear you say he was unarmed, Spence. I really didn't."

I almost liked him right then. He was almost the geeky kid I'd hung out in bookstores with. Conan and all that bulls.h.i.t, as he'd just said.

And I almost believed him, too. Maybe there'd been wind and he hadn't heard. Or maybe it was as simple as the Chief had said. Maybe when you were approaching a car with a dangerous man inside, your mind was totally fixed on that moment, and you just tuned out everything else.

I guess I wanted to believe that right then, guess I wanted to believe that the world was a safe and sane and trustworthy place after all, and that a cop wouldn't shoot somebody without justification, and then lie on top of it.

Not in this nice old world of ours, he wouldn't.

He took his hand away. "I still think we should go have a pizza sometime and then go have a few brews somewhere."

But then he said, "He didn't deserve her, Spence. She's a very special girl."

And then I knew he was lying.

And knew why he'd killed Myles.

Because of Cindy.

"You going after her now, Garrett?"

The smile was almost a smirk. "You're a little behind the times, Spence. I've already been seeing her."

"What the h.e.l.l you talking about?"

He got out of the car and started to shut the door. Just before he did, he said, "She asked me to take her to the Christmas dance, Spence."

The smirk was still there.

He closed the door quietly, and walked away.

I let him pull out before I tried the motor again. It was twenty minutes before the engine turned over.

CHAPTER THREE.

Thanksgiving came and went in the usual way. Mom slaved away in the kitchen all morning, we had our feast, then Dad, Josh and I settled in to the living room to watch some serious football.

I had trouble concentrating though. All I could think of was what Garrett had said to me about Cindy asking him to the Christmas dance.

The next day, I became a criminal.

There was a new state law that prohibited one citizen from following another citizen. The anti-stalker law had been voted in after two women, in the same week, had both been killed by stalkers.

I was a stalker.

The first night, I only followed her for an hour. She led me out to the mall. I waited thirty, forty minutes for her to reappear but then got so bored that I just drove on home.

The second night, I got more adventurous. She went to a movie with three girlfriends. Once she was inside the Cineplex, I drove over to a tavern, drank two slow beers and played a little b.u.mper pool, and then eased back out to the movie house just about the time the film was ending.

Cindy and her friends went to get a pizza. I guess I was mostly trying to see if she met up with Garrett any place. She didn't, not in the half hour I sat down the street from the pizza place.

The third night, I knew right away something was going to happen.

She drove straight from her house to a city park that had been closed down for the winter. The temperature was just barely 20. The snow flurries were starting to get serious.

Following her wasn't easy.

The park was heavily forested and the roads narrow. Even if I hung back as far as a half mile, she'd be able to see me in her rear view.

The park looked lonesome, all shorn tree limbs and empty tennis courts and battened-down concession stands.

Where was she going?

She went all the way through the park and then turned down a short gravel road that led to the boat docks.

A few houseboats bobbed darkly on the cold water. A stray dog, hungry and sad, sniffed around the rusty door of one of the boats.

She parked and got out of the car and walked down to the dock.

She looked small and vulnerable against the winter night, bobbing up and down with the turbulent water.

I'd parked my car behind a copse of trees on the hill above and looked down on her now with my binoculars.

The car appeared without warning, headlights garish in the darkness.

As it pa.s.sed me, going down the steep slope to the docks, I could see that it was a police car.

The car stopped right at the waterline. He cut the beams down to the fog lights.

When he got out, he stretched lazily, not seeming to acknowledge her in any way.

Then he strolled over to the walk and started across the bobbing boards toward her, a kind of lazy insolence in his step. In just a month on the force, Garrett had already become the worst sort of cop.

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

It was that sudden.

He walked up to her, slid his arms around her, brought her to him, and kissed her.

For a long moment, they were one in the night, two darknesses fused.

Then they separated and started walking together toward the far end of the dock, their bodies finding the rhythms of the chopping waters, undulating in a way that was almost comic.

They didn't seem to be looking at each other as they conversed. They just walked and talked. No touching. No more kisses.

When they came to the end of the boards, they stopped and stared out across the water to the bluffs silhouetted on the far side of the river.

This time, she took him in her arms. I could almost feel the smooth touch of her fingers on the back of my head as she pulled me to her for a kiss. I could taste her mouth again, her s.e.x, see the way the moonlight painted her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the back seat of the car. It had been like a s.p.a.ce capsule, my little car, us all snug and warm inside of it, her loving me as she'd loved no others even if she had given them her bodya"a s.p.a.ce capsule blissfully lost in s.p.a.ce, just the two of us, for all eternity.

And now she was bringing Garrett to her as she'd brought me to her.

That queasy mixture of rage and grief worked through my stomach again.

I leaned against the cold black tree and thought how foolish and pathetic I must looka"spying on a girl who no longer cared anything about me.

I left.

Got in my car and left.

She could have him, then.

There was nothing I could do about it anyway.

By the time I got home, a bitter wind had swept down from the hills. In my room I pulled out the skin magazine and tried to interest myself in that but I was beyond the lonely solace of masturbation.

I couldn't read, either.

I just lay there with the light out wanting to cry but I couldn't even do that.

She was lost to me, forever.

"Oh, Lord," Mrs. Myles said, and started crying.

In high school we studied a playwright named Henrik Ibsen. He believed that there is a good kind of lying and a bad kind of lying. The good kind is when you keep something from someone so as not to hurt his feelings. Or you invent something to tell him so he'll feel better.