Collie looked at the boy lying facedown and dead on his lawn, his clothes already damp from the lawn sprinkler (and the papers that had spilled out of his carrysack turning a soggy gray), and then at the van. He raised the pistol, clamping his left hand over his right wrist. Just as he did, the van began to roll. He almost fired anyway, then didn’t. He had to be careful. There were people in Columbus, some of them very powerful, who would be delighted to hear that Collier Entragian had discharged a weapon on a suburban Wentworth street… a weapon he had been required by law to turn in, actually.

That’s no excuse and you know it, he thought, turning as the van rolled, pivoting with it. Fire your weapon! Fire your goddam weapon!

But he didn’t, and as the van turned left on to Hyacinth, he saw there was no license plate on the back… and what about the silver gadget on the roof? What in God’s name had that been?

On the other side of the street, Mr and Mrs Carver were sprinting into the parking lot of the E-Z Stop. Josephson was behind them. The black man glanced to the left and saw the red van was gone-it had just disappeared behind the trees which screened the part of Hyacinth Street which ran east of Poplar-and then bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath.

Collie walked across the street, tucking the barrel of the.38 into the back of his pants, and put his hand on Josephson’s shoulder. “You okay, man?”

Brad looked up at him and smiled painfully. His face was running with sweat. “Maybe,” he said.

Collie walked over to the yellow rental truck, noting the red wagon nearby. There were a couple of unopened sodas lying inside it. A 3 Musketeers candybar lay beside one of the rear wheels. Someone had stepped on it and squashed it.

Screams from behind him. He turned and saw the Reed twins, their faces very pale beneath their summer tans, looking past their dog to the boy crumpled on his lawn. The twin with the blond hair-Jim, he thought-began to cry. The other one took a step backward, grimaced, then bent forward and vomited on to his own bare feet.

Crying loudly, Mrs Carver lifted her son back out of the truck. The boy, also bawling at maximum volume, threw his arms around her neck and clung like a limpet.

“Hush,” the woman in the jeans and the misbuttoned shirt said. “Hush, lovey, it’s over. The bad man’s gone.”

David Carver took his daughter from the arms of the man lying awkwardly over the seat and enfolded her.

“Dad-dy, you’re getting me all soapy!” the girl protested.

Carver kissed her brow between the eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “Are you all right, Ellie?”

“Yes,” she said. “What happened?”

She tried to look toward the street, and her father shielded her eyes.

Collie went to the woman and the little boy. “Is he okay, Mrs Carver?”

She looked at him, not seeming to recognize him, and then turned her attention back to the squalling kid again, caressing his hair with one hand, seeming to devour him with her eyes. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “Are you okay, Ralphie? Are you?”

The kid drew in a deep, hitching breath and bellowed: “Margrit’s spozed to pull me up the hill! That was the deal!”

The little snot sounded okay to Collie. He turned back toward the crime-scene, noted the dog lying in a spreading pool of blood, noted that the blond Reed twin was tentatively approaching the body of the unfortunate paperboy.

“Stay away!” Collie called sharply across the street.

Jim Reed turned toward him. “But what if he’s still alive?”

“What if he is? Have you got any healing fairy-dust to sprinkle on him? No? Then stand back!”

The boy stepped toward his brother, then winced. “Oh man, Davey, look at your feet,” he said, then turned aside and threw up himself.

Collie Entragian suddenly felt tumbled back into the job he thought he had left behind for good the previous October, when he had been bounced from the Columbus Police Department after a positive drug test. Cocaine and heroin. A good trick, since he had never taken either drug in his life.

First priority: protect the citizenry. Second priority; aid the wounded. Third priority: secure the crime-scene. Fourth priority…

Well, he’d worry about the fourth priority after he’d taken care of one, two, and three.

The store’s new day-clerk-a skinny girl with double-coloured hair that made Collie’s eyes hurt-slid out of the truck and straightened her blue smock, which was badly askew. The truck’s driver followed her. “You a cop?” he asked Collie.

“Yes.” Easier than trying to explain. The Carvers would know different, of course, but they were occupied with their kids, and Brad Josephson was still behind him, bent over and trying to catch his breath. “You folks get in the store. All of you. Brad? Boys?” He raised his voice a little on the last word, so that the Reed twins would know he meant them.

“No, I’d better get on back home,” Brad said. He straightened up, glanced across the street at Gary’s body, then looked back at Collie. His expression was apologetic but determined. At least he was getting his breath back; for a minute or two there, Collie had been reviewing what he remembered of his CPR classes. “Belinda’s up there, and…”

“Yes, but it’d be better for you to come on in the store, Mr Josephson, at least for the time being. In case the van comes back.”

“Why would it?” David Carver asked. He was still holding his little girl in his arms and staring at Collie over the top of her head.

Collie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know why it was here in the first place. Better to be safe. Get inside, folks.”

“Do you have any authority here?” Brad asked. His voice, although not exactly challenging, suggested that he knew Collie didn’t. Collie folded his arms over his bare chest. The depression which had surrounded him since he’d been busted off the force had begun to lift a little in the last few weeks, but now he could feel it threatening again. After a moment he shook his head. No. No authority. Not these days.

“Then I am going to my wife. No offense to you, sir.”

Collie had to smile a little at the careful dignity of the man’s tone. You don’t diss me and I don’t diss you, it said. “None taken.”

The twins looked at each other uncertainly, then at Collie.

He saw what they wanted and sighed. “All right. But go with Mr Josephson. And when you get home, you and your friends go inside. Okay?”

The blond boy nodded.

“Jim-you are Jim, right?”

The blond boy nodded, wiping self-consciously at his red eyes.

“Is your mom home? Or your dad?”

“Mom,” he said. “Dad’s still at work.”

“Okay, boys. Go on. Hurry up. You too, Brad.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Brad said, “but I think I have pretty well fulfilled my hurrying quota for the day.”

The three of them started up the hill, along the west side of the street, where the odd-numbered houses were.

“I’d like to take our kids home, too, Mr Entragian,” Kirsten Carver said.

He sighed, nodded. Sure, what the hell, take them anywhere. Take them to Alaska. He wanted a cigarette, but they were back in the house. He had managed to quit for almost ten years before the bastards downtown had first shown him the door and then run him through it. He had picked up the habit again with a speed that was spooky. And now he wanted to smoke because he was nervous. Not just cranked up because of the dead kid on his lawn, which would have been understandable, but nervous. Nervous like-a de vitch, his mother would have said. And why?

Because there are too many people on this street, he told himself, that’s why.

Oh, really? And what exactly does that mean?

He didn’t know.

What’s wrong with you? Too long out of work? Getting squirrely? Is that what’s buggin you, booby?