“No reason to think he’s a homeboy,” I said.

“But what if he’s a stoner, man?” said Ramon. “Or a cholo.”

“Who is he?” asked another girl, chubby, with black Shirley Temple ringlets and a quiver in her voice.

Twenty faces, waiting.

I said, “I don’t know yet. No one does. But he’s gone. Forever. You’re safe from him.”

“We should kill him again!” said Ramon.

“Yeah! Kill him! Shoot him with a twenty-two!”

“With a Uzi!”

“Push his face inna pizza so he don’t breathe no more!”

“Push his face in ca-ca!”

The teacher started to say something. I stilled her with a glance. “How else could you hurt him?”

“Kill him!”

“Cut him up and feed him to Pancho- that’s my dog!”

“Shoot him, boom, inna balls!”

“Ay, los cojones!”

Laughter.

“Boom!”

“Cut him up and grind him up and feed him to my dog!”

“You don’t got no dog, Martha!”

“Do so! Got a real mean pit bull and he’ll eat you!”

I said, “Shoot him, stab him, push his face down. Sounds like you guys are really mad.”

“Yeah, man,” said Ramon. “What you think, man? He try to kill us, we gonna kill him back!”

“We can’t kill him,” said the chubby girl.

“Why’s that?” I said.

“Because he’s big. We’re just kids. We got no guns.”

“That’s dumb,” said Tranh. “We can’t kill him ’cause he’s already dead!”

“Kill him again!” shouted someone.

“Find out where he lives,” said Ramon, “and kill his fuckin’ house!”

The teacher said, “Language!”

The chubby girl didn’t look reassured. I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Actually,” she said, “we can’t do nothing. We’re kids. If people wanna be mean to us all the time, they can.”

“Honey, no one wants to be mean to you,” said the teacher.

The chubby girl looked at her.

“Everyone likes you, Cecelia,” said the teacher. “Every-one likes all of you.”

The chubby girl shook her head and began to cry.

By the time I finished, the rain had abated. I made a stop at Linda Overstreet’s office, but it was locked and no one answered my knock. As I left the building I saw Milo in the yard, near the cordoned storage shed. He was talking to a slim, dark-haired man in a well-cut blue suit. He noticed me and waved me over.

“Alex, this is Lieutenant Frisk, Anti-Terrorist Division. Lieutenant, Dr. Alex Delaware, the clinical psychologist who’ll be working with the kids.”

Frisk checked me over and said, “How’s it going, Doctor?” in a tone that let me know he didn’t much care.

“Fine.”

“Good to hear it.” He flashed a barrel cuff and consulted his Rolex. He was young and tan, the dark hair permed in a neat cap, and wore a mustache that had taken a long time to trim. The blue suit was expensive, the shirt Turnbull & Asser or a knockoff. The tie that bisected it was heavy silk patterned with dancing blue parallelograms on a background of deep burgundy. His eyes matched the parallelograms; they never stopped moving.

He turned to Milo and said, “I’ll let you know. After-noon, Doctor.” He walked away.

“Spiffy dresser,” I said. “Looks like a TV cop.”

“Young man on the way up,” said Milo. “Masters in public administration from S.C., good connections, D-Three by the age of thirty, promoted to loot three years later.”

“Is he taking over the case?”

“You just heard- he’ll let me know.”

We walked across the schoolyard.

“So,” he said, “how’d it really go?”

“Not bad, really. I managed to meet briefly with all the classes. Most of the kids seem to be reacting normally.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning lots of anxiety, some anger. It’s the anger I tried to harness- get them to feel more in control. I told the teachers to contact the parents and prepare them for possible appetite loss, sloop problems, psychosomatic stuff, clinginess, some school phobia. Some of the kids may need individual treatment, but a group approach should work for most of them. The important thing was getting to them quickly- you done good.”

He said, “What’d you think of Ms. Principal?”

“Feisty lady.”

“Texas lady,” he said. “Cop’s kid- daddy was a Ranger, brought his work home. She knows this scene by heart.”

“She didn’t mention any of that to me.”

“Why should she? With you she probably talked feelings.”

I said, “Her main feeling right now is anger. Plenty of it simmering beneath the surface. It’s been building since she got here- she’s been dealing with lots of crap and getting very little support. She tell you about the vandalism?”

He frowned. “Yeah. First I’d heard of it. The School Board reported it directly to downtown- it never went any further.”

“Bad P.R.?” I said.

“Perish the thought.”

“Sounds like the school’s been embroiled in politics since they brought the kids in. Think the sniping was political?”

“At this point, who knows?”

“Latch or Massengil have any theories? About being targets themselves?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Kenny Frisk and the ATD boys did all the interrogation. Hush-hush behind closed doors. Afterwards Kenny comes out and informs the rest of us peons that official policy is tight lips. All press re-leases to emanate from ATD. Informational infractions will be severely dealt with.”

I searched his face for signs of anger. All I saw was a big, white mask.

A few steps later he said, “Though with politicos, good luck keeping their lips from flapping.”

“So far Latch seems to be complying,” I said. “I ran into him in the hall as he was leaving. Tried to get some information from him and received zip.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “What kind of information?”

“Some sort of basic description of the sniper. Who he was. Anything tangible. The kids need to form an image of their enemy.” I repeated the rationale I’d given Linda and Gordon Latch. “They’re already asking questions, Milo. It would increase my effectiveness to be able to answer some of them.”

He said, “Just basics, huh? Who he was.”

I nodded. “Of course, any details you can tell me would be useful. Short of an ‘informational infraction.’ ”

He didn’t smile. “Details. Well, first thing I can tell you is that you’re operating on a false premise.”

“What’s that?”

“It wasn’t a he. It was a she.”

The restaurant was dim and mock-English: collections of tankards and heraldic shields displayed on rough-textured dun walls, dartboards in “Ye Olde Pub Room,” lots of distressed crossbeams, the tallowy, sweet smell of seared meat. A catacomb jumble of small dining rooms. A respectful maitre d’ had seen to it that ours was empty.

Milo looked up from his T-bone, put down his knife, and took something out of his coat pocket that he slid across the table.

A piece of white paper, folded double. In the center was a photocopy of a driver’s license.

The photo was dark and blurred. A young female face, oval, unsmiling. A little weak-chinned. Thin neck. White blouse. Dark straight hair, cropped short. Straight-edge bangs hovering above arched eyebrows.

I searched the features for something- some harbinger of violence. The eyes looked a little dull. Sullen. Heavy-lidded, shallow as rain puddles. But that could have been the poor quality of the copy or weariness at waiting in line at the DMV. Other than that, nothing. Average. A face you’d never notice.

I read the ID data.

HOLLY LYNN BURDEN

1723 JUBILO DR

OCEAN HEIGHTS CA 90070

SEX: F HAIR: BRN EYES: BLUE

HT: 5-05 WT: 117 DOB: 12-12-68

RSTR: CORR LENS