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 wh.o.r.es 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 p.i.s.sant jail, him and a handful of other men, Burns picked up on Sat.u.r.day 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 142.

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 d.a.m.ned cots and eating their d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned churches. Babyf.u.c.k 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.

s.h.i.theads didn't even check to see where he had gone.It was close. G.o.d, how he'd wanted to howl when he walked out the station door, to see them s.h.i.t 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 a.s.sholes 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 wh.o.r.es 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 143.

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 wh.o.r.e 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 babyf.u.c.k wh.o.r.e 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 ap.r.o.n 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.

"Wh.o.r.e," 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.

144.

"Wh.o.r.e."

She groaned again, and fell silent.

"Wh.o.r.e," 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 wh.o.r.e. He could tell by the way the sweater clung to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 wh.o.r.e, 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.

145.

Six.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.

146.

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 cla.s.ses 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 clearpolitical 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 gla.s.ses 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 p.i.s.sed, 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 h.e.l.l 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 embarra.s.sed as students pa.s.sed 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 147.

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 G.o.d knew who else asked the princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n morgue lying under a dirty sheet.

She was dead, and n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned dying on the d.a.m.ned streets and who the h.e.l.l cared if he knew her or not; she was dead, and she was only seventeen.148 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 cla.s.ses 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 gra.s.s 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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.

149.

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 ma.s.saging 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, pa.s.sing a sleeve over his mouth.

"What a b.i.t.c.h."

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 G.o.d's sake!

What the h.e.l.l kind of thing is that? This makes what, seven? And they don't even know what he looks like!" He took off his gla.s.ses 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 hoa.r.s.e, and she ran all the way to Beacher's to use the phone. Her old man was 150.

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 gla.s.ses, 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 st.i.tch that lingered in his side.

"Hey, Don, d.a.m.nit," Jeff called.

He didn't look around.

"Hey, it ain't my fault."

151.

He started to run.

"Well, f.u.c.k 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned 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.

152He 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 ..."