He tried to fall asleep, but they called out to him. They wanted to play. He knew he couldn’t. It was against the rules. His Momma tried to stand up for him. “Let him play with his little things. What harm can it do?” But his old man had warned him. “Boys don’t play with dolls.” Action figures, maybe. But dolls? Never. Boys play sports, they play catch, they run, they hit. They don’t care about girls in pretty white party dresses or handsome young men in tuxedos or fancy table settings.

But his Little Things coaxed him to come and play. They didn’t care that he wanted to sleep. Why should they? They were selfish, making all that noise. Hadn’t he put them back in the trunk? They were locked up where no one would ever look for them, under the wedding clothes, the costumes that symbolized the vows that meant nothing to the old man and Momma.

There they were again, calling his name. He tried covering his ears, but he could still hear them. They would wake the old man if they kept at it, and no one wanted that.

The boy eased himself out from under the sheets, careful not to make any sounds. He slid his feet into his slippers and moved across the floor, gracefully. If the old man knew he had kept them, fished them out of the trash and stashed them away, the boy would catch a beating. He needed to get to them quickly and play with them until they were tired. Then he could put them back to bed. They needed their sleep, just like he did.

The boy knew where to place his feet on each step leading up to the attic so they wouldn’t creak. He wasn’t sure that it mattered, though, with all the noise they were making. He needed to hurry up and get to them. At the top of the stairs, he opened the door on the right, the room at the rear of the house. The room went quiet.

Absolute silence.

He closed the door behind him and listened for them. He whispered to them. There was no noise, no movement, no laughter. Where were they?

He reached to his right and felt along the wall for the light switch, but he instantly wished he hadn’t. They were in the room with him. Now they were like people, bigger, bigger than his old man. Giants, with doll faces. They came toward him, not laughing or smiling. They didn’t want to play. Maybe they were angry that he had left them in the trunk. But that wasn’t his choice. They had to understand that. It was the old man. He was to blame. He was the one they had to hide from. He was the one that needed to be punished.

The boy tried to scream. His lungs were full, as if he were drowning. He reached for the door, but something grabbed at his arm. They were too big, too strong. Somehow he managed to shake his arm free and make a move for the door. He didn’t get far, but his hand hit the light switch. Everything went black again.

SLEEP OPENED HIS EYES. There was no need to panic. He knew the dream. It was the same every time. He no longer wet his bed the way he did when he was a child.

But boy did he sweat. Sleep lay there in Momma’s bed, drenched, the morning sun shining through the sheer curtains. No need to worry about hiding them anymore. The old man wasn’t around. He could play with them whenever he wanted. He could leave them out, sitting at a nice café table, having a tea party or sitting on the grass having a picnic of wine, bread and cheese. But this was not the time to play.

Sleep scanned the room for the clock. It was after seven. He hadn’t had much rest, but it would have to do. It was time to get up and get dressed. He needed to maintain a normal schedule, especially on the morning after the young lovers were discovered by the detective, the morning after the couple had affirmed their eternal commitment to each other.

Today would have to be the same as any other day. He wiped the sleepy seeds out of his eyes and slid out from under the sheets. He walked into the bathroom, gracefully, back arched, his body held straight to an imaginary string running down his back.

Connie looked up from his notes as the jurors shifted their attention to the courtroom door, waiting for the arrival of the witness. Every three months a new set of grand jurors were sworn in. These jurors, seated for two months now, were a good group, very attentive. They asked the right questions and understood the big picture. Their job wasn’t to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt like a regular jury. Their duty was to determine if there was probable cause to indict.

As a prosecutor, Connie recognized that the grand jury was one of the most useful investigative tools available to law enforcement. The grand jury’s subpoena power gave prosecutors the ability to bring in witnesses, against their will if necessary, in order to lock in their testimony. His plan for today was to present the testimony of an uncooperative shooting victim, Tracy Ward, possibly a gang member himself.

Connie had been at the scene till early morning, showing the cops ways to get in and out of Franklin Park undetected. Still, they had found nothing. Now he had to focus. He was about to begin an inquiry into a shooting, a drug feud between rival gangs, he suspected. In the past year, a spate of shootings had commanded the headlines. The DA had responded by creating a Gang Unit with prosecutors who used the grand jury to help police investigations. Connie had a dozen investigations going, half his time spent trying to locate witnesses. Once he located the witnesses, the trick was getting them to cooperate.

That was the challenge he faced this morning.

He still couldn’t get the image of that couple dead at the ball field out of his head. It was eerie the way their bodies had been positioned, the way the male looked like he was spying on the young woman. The way she seemed to be teasing him with her pose.

The courtroom door swung open and Detective Mark Greene led the witness into the grand jury courtroom. Tracy Ward looked like a skeleton. Connie had seen an old booking photo from an arrest about a year ago, and the guy had been beefier, solid. Ward was living proof that a shot in the gut was a great weight loss program.

The jurors focused their attention on the witness as he entered the courtroom in his orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed in front of him and chained to his slim waist. He limped across the floor, his shackled feet shuffling along, six inches at a time. What the jurors couldn’t see was that he had a colostomy bag under the jumpsuit, courtesy of the bullet that had ripped through his abdominal cavity. He was lucky to be alive.

Tracy Ward had been easy to locate for today’s testimony, since he was serving a jail sentence for a probation violation. He was one unlucky bastard. Not only did he get shot, but he was out past his court-ordered curfew when it happened. The curfew violation triggered a probation surrender that landed him back in jail.

Ward’s attitude was pretty typical for a gang-related shooting victim. He hadn’t been overly cooperative with Connie and Mark Greene during their informal sit-down in one of the interview rooms. Connie was hoping to have more luck getting him to talk once he had him under oath, on the witness stand, in front of the grand jury.

Connie signaled to Greene that it was okay to leave Ward on the witness stand. The detective stepped out of the room, leaving only Connie, the witness, the twenty-four-person jury and the court reporter-no judge, no defense lawyers, not in the grand jury. Connie stood and approached the witness.

“Please raise your right hand, sir.”

Ward reluctantly raised his hand a couple of inches above his waist, as high as he could, his cuffed left hand trailing close behind.

“Do you swear that your testimony before this grand jury shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”