"Uh-huh."

"Man, you just started working tonight. How could you have anything on him?"

"Yeah, but I've been following some things very closely. That's one thing they taught us at the Academy. To watch things that don't seem to be related."

"Like what?"

He didn't say anything for a time. Just drove. His uniform gave him the right to be mysterious.

The mercury vapor lights made the glowing snow purple. No other cars were on the street. The town looked doomed.

"You been following the robberies?"

"What robberies?" I said.

"Eight convenience stores in little towns all within fifteen miles east and west of here."

"Guess not." Of course not. Why would I follow anything like that?

The radio squawked. He picked it up and checked in and then ten-foured.

He looked over at me and grinned. "I do that s.h.i.t pretty good, don't I?"

"Yeah, Conan couldn't have done it any better."

He laughed. "That'd make a great movie. You know, fish-out-of-water. Conan gets transported forward in time and is a cop."

It really was a pretty funny idea.

Then, "Three weeks ago, in one of the robberies, two store clerks got murdered."

"That's right. I forgot about that." Then, realizing his implication, I said, "G.o.d, you think Myles had something to do with that?"

"Maybe. But if you tell anybody, I'll deny I said it."

"Why would he rob convenience stores? His old man's rich and he's a football hero."

"Have some fun, maybe. Who knows?"

"Anyway, how could you tie him to it?"

"Hamstring."

"Huh?"

He shook his head. "Maybe I'll explain someday."

He pulled up in front of my house. All the lights were on. Mom and Dad and Josh would be waiting up. Nervously.

Just as I was getting out of the car, I said, "You could've let her drive me home."

"I know. But I figure the less time she spends with you, the better my chances are."

At least he was finally being honest about it.

"Man, who would've thought that two comic book nerds like us would be going after the same beautiful girl?"

I suppose I felt sorry for him again. At the moment I felt that Cindy was completely mine. I could afford to joke with him.

"Too bad she doesn't have a twin," he said, and then put the car into gear.

"Yeah," I said, "too bad."

And then I closed the door.

And then he was gone.

Richard Mitch.e.l.l, KNAX-TV: "Another problem they had with the last execution here at the prison was that one member of the execution team snuck in a tiny camera to the death chamber and secretly snapped pictures of the prisoner while he was dying. He then sold the photos to one of the tabloid TV shows for a lot of money. So tonight, before the execution team enters the chamber, every member is going to be searched. The warden doesn't want a repeat of last time."

Tape 21-D, August 14. Interview between Attorney Risa Wiggins and her client in the Clark County Jail.

A: The alien was controlling your mind?

C: Absolutely.

A: Tell me about the headaches again.

C: You mean the ones I got right before it would take control of me again?

A: Yes.

C: Well, I'd see it for what it was. I'd have these blinding pains in my head and then I'd see the alien, what it really looked like, I mean. It was horrifying.

A: You do admit that you took LSD a few times several years ago?

C: Yes.

A: Could all of this have been some kind of flashback?

C: No way, no.

CHAPTER NINE.

It was sort of like being sick when you were a little kid. Everybody was extra nice to you.

I spent the next morning sitting in the living room watching Repo Man, one of my favorite science fiction movies, and sipping the honey-laced tea my mom made for me.

Josh came home for lunch from school, something he didn't do very often. He brought me a paperback he thought I might like. Josh didn't know anything about science fiction but he had heard the name Heinlein. The Door Into Summer, the book he'd bought me, just happened to be one I hadn't read in a long time. It was a great book. I hated to call anything "sweet" but that's just what the book was.

By now, the headache was pretty much gone. The st.i.tches still hurt, and I was moving pretty slowly, but I felt much better than I had when Garrett dropped me off last night.

Dad came home for lunch, too.

He handed me an envelope. Inside was a check for twenty-five dollars.

"You don't need to do this," I said. My parents weren't exactly rich.

"I should've done a lot more when you were a little kid."

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." He smiled. "Spend it on that Brasher girl."

"Thanks, Dad."

Josh spent a few minutes with me before he left.

"You're the big news at school."

"I am?" I said.

"Sure. You broke Cindy and Myles up for one thing."

"They were already breaking up."

"Yeah, but you look like a heartbreaker."

"I'm not even sure what a 'heartbreaker' is."

He grinned. "A heartbreaker is a stud."

"Yeah, that's me all right. A stud."

"And people are saying that it's also very cool that you're not pressing charges."

"I'm not?"

"Judge Sweeney will arraign him on Monday for the traffic violations, but will let him play today since you're not pressing charges. People're saying it's cool that you put the school's interest before your own. Those are the exact words our esteemed cla.s.s president said to me. 'It's cool that your brother is putting the school's interest before his own.' Then he said something else but I probably better not tell you what that was."

"Now you have you tell me what it was."

He smiled. He loved baiting me. Gave him a sense of power. Picking on me that way.

"He said, 'You know, it's funny. I guess I always thought your brother was sort of a dip-s.h.i.t, but I guess I was wrong about him.'"

I suppose it should have hurt my feelings but I laughed. There was an innocence about it that was funny.

"Tell him I still am a dip-s.h.i.t."

"Yeah," Josh said, rallying to my defense, "but you're not as big a dip-s.h.i.t as you used to be."

"Boy, that's comforting to know."

"Anyway, thanks for not pressing charges. We couldn't win the game if Myles didn't play."

I hadn't officially been asked to press charges anyway, but I figured I may as well play the forgiving hero. Now that I wasn't as big a dip-s.h.i.t as I used to be, I had to start doing n.o.ble stuff like that.

Around one, the house settled down again, Josh and Dad back to school and work respectively, Mom off for her Friday afternoon grocery shopping.

I watched an episode of Land of the Giants on the Sci-Fi channel. The first act was so bad it was good, but the second act was so bad it was just plain awful. I switched over to the beginning of High Plains Drifter, which is just about my favorite western because of the fantasy element, and I stayed with it through the first thirty-six killings, and then I kind of dozed off, I guess. They'd given me some extra pain medication to take home last night. The stuff made me groggy.

At first, I thought the phone was part of the dream I was having. In the dream, I was getting this call I knew to be urgent but every time I reached out to pick up the receiver, the phone moved away from me, further and further away until I knew I'd never be able to reach it, even though it was like this life-and-death call.

Then I woke up and grabbed the phone in reality.

"h.e.l.lo."

"You f.u.c.king go out with her, man, I'm going to f.u.c.king kill you. You f.u.c.king understand me?"

Apparently he'd been told to use "f.u.c.king" in every sentence he spoke today.

I hung up.

He called back.

"Last night was just the warm-up, a.s.shole."

"I'm not pressing charges, jerk-off. I'm doing you a favor."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t if you press charges or not. All I give a s.h.i.t about is Cindy."

"That's between you two."

"I want you to leave her alone."

I was scared, then I was angry, then, and this kind of surprised me, I was a little bit sad. For Myles, I mean. He was a bully and all but he was in great pain right nowa"in his way, I guessed he probably did love Cindya"and he didn't know what to do with it. All he could do was get angry, but he sensed that wouldn't get Cindy back. And that just made him angrier than ever. If that makes sense.

"Maybe you could try being nice to Cindy," I said.

"Don't give me any of your f.a.ggot bulls.h.i.t, Spencer."