But the teenager didn’t answer this question. “I’m not sure my dad will want to talk right now, unless he knows what it’s all about.”

“Well,” Ricky said carefully, “I think he might be interested in what I have to tell him.”

Timothy Junior absorbed this. Then answered: “My dad’s tied up right now. The cops are still here.”

Ricky inhaled swiftly. “The police? Is something wrong?”

The teenager ignored this question to pose one of his own. “Why are you calling? I mean, we haven’t heard from you in…”

“Many years. At least ten. Not since your grandmother’s funeral.”

“So, right. That’s what I thought. Why all of a sudden now?”

Ricky thought the boy right to be suspicious. He launched into his set speech. “A former patient of mine-you recall I’m a doctor, Tim, right?- may try to contact some of my relatives. And even though we haven’t been in touch in all these years, I wanted to alert people. That’s why I’m calling.”

“What sort of patient? You’re a shrink, right?”

“A psychoanalyst.”

“And this patient, is he dangerous? Or crazy? Or both?”

“I think I ought to speak about this with your dad.”

“I told you, he’s talking to the police right now. I think they’re getting ready to leave.”

“Why is he speaking with the police?”

“It has to do with my sister.”

“What has to do with your sister?” Ricky tried to remember the girl’s name and tried to picture her in his head, but all he could recall was a small blond-haired child, several years younger than her brother. He remembered the two of them sitting to the side of the reception after his sister’s funeral, uncomfortable in stiff, dark clothes, quiet but impatient, eager for the somber tone of the gathering to dissipate and life to return to normal.

“Someone followed…” the teenager started, then stopped. “I think I’ll get my father,” he said briskly. Ricky heard the phone clatter to a tabletop, and muffled voices in the background.

In a moment the phone was picked up and Ricky heard a voice that seemed the same as the teenager’s, but with a deeper weariness attached. At the same time the voice had a harried urgency to it, as if the owner were being pressured, or caught at a moment of indecision. Ricky liked to think himself an expert on voices, on inflection and tone, choices of words and pacing, all of which were telltale signals or windows on what was concealed within. The teenager’s father spoke without introduction.

“Uncle Frederick? This is most unusual and I’m in the middle of a little family crisis here, so I hope this is truly important. What can I do for you?”

“Hello, Tim. I apologize for barging in like this…”

“That’s all right. Tim Junior said you had a warning…”

“In a way. I received a cryptic letter from what might be a former patient today. It had what some might consider a threatening tone. That was directed primarily at me. But it also indicated that the letter writer might contact one of my relatives. I have been calling around the family to alert people, and to determine if anyone has already been approached.”

There was a deadly, cold silence on the phone that lasted nearly a minute.

“What sort of patient?” Tim Senior asked sharply, echoing his son’s query. “Is this someone dangerous?”

“I don’t know who it is exactly. The letter wasn’t signed. I’m only presuming it is an ex-patient but I don’t really know for certain. In fact, it might not be. The truth is, I don’t know anything yet, for certain.”

“That sounds vague. Exceedingly vague.”

“You are correct. I’m sorry.”

“Do you think this threat is real?”

Ricky could hear a harsh, hard edge lining the man’s voice.

“I don’t know. Obviously it concerned me enough to make some calls.”

“Have you spoken with the police?”

“No. Sending me a letter doesn’t seem to break the law, does it?”

“That’s exactly what the bastards just told me.”

“I beg your pardon?” Ricky said.

“The cops. I called the cops and then they came all the way over here to tell me they couldn’t do anything.”

“Why did you call the police?”

Timothy Graham didn’t immediately answer. He seemed to take in a long breath of air, but instead of calming himself, this had the opposite effect, as if releasing a spasm of pent-up rage.

“It was disgusting. Some sick fuck. Some slimy sick motherfucker. I’ll kill him if I ever get my hands on him. Kill him with my bare hands. Is your ex-patient a sick fuck, Uncle Frederick?”

The sudden outburst of obscenity took Ricky aback. It seemed dramatically out of the ordinary for a quiet, well-mannered, and unprepossessing history professor at an exclusive and conservative prep school. Ricky paused, at first a little unsure how to reply.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Tell me what has happened that has made you so upset.”

Tim Senior hesitated again, breathing in deeply, the noise making a snakelike hissing sound over the telephone line. “On her birthday, if you can believe it. On her fourteenth birthday, of all days. That’s just disgusting…”

Ricky stiffened in his seat. A memorylike explosion burst behind his eyes. He realized he should have seen the connection right away. Of all his relatives, only one by the greatest of coincidences, shared his birthday. The little girl whose face he had so much trouble recalling, and whom he’d met only once, at a funeral. He berated himself: This should have been your first phone call. But he did not let this observation creep into his own voice.

“What happened?” he asked bluntly.

“Someone left a birthday card for her inside her locker at school. You know, one of those nice, oversized, tritely sentimental cards that you buy at the mall. I still can’t figure out how the bastard got in there and got the locker opened without being seen by someone. I mean, where the hell was security? Unbelievable. Anyway, when Mindy got to school, she found the card, figured it was from one of her friends, and opened it. Guess what? The card was stuffed with disgusting pornography. Full-color, leave nothing to the imagination porn. Pictures of women tied up in ropes and chains and leathers and penetrated in every imaginable fashion by every conceivable device. Real hard-core, triple-X stuff. And the person wrote on the card: This is what I intend to do to you as soon as I can catch you alone….”

Ricky shifted about in his seat. Rumplestiltskin, he thought.

But what he asked was, “And the police? What do they tell you?”

Timothy Graham snorted with a dismissive burst that Ricky imagined had been used on slacker students for years and was likely to freeze them with fear but in this context spoke more of impotence and frustration.

“The local police,” he said briskly, “are idiots. Complete idiots. They blithely tell me that unless there exists substantial and credible evidence that Mindy is actively being stalked by someone, there’s nothing they can do. They want some sort of overt act. In other words, she has to actually be attacked first. Idiots. They believe that the letter and the enclosures are practical jokes. Probably upperclassmen at the academy. Maybe somebody I gave a lousy grade to last term. Of course, that’s not outside the realm of possibility around here, but…” The history professor paused. “Why don’t you tell me about your former patient? Is he a sex criminal?”

Ricky hesitated himself, then said, “No. Not at all. This doesn’t sound like him at all. Really, he’s harmless. Just irritating.”

He wondered if his nephew would hear the lies in his voice. He doubted it. The man was furious, flustered, and outraged, and was unlikely to have the ability to recognize a departure from the truth for some time.

Timothy Graham was silent for a moment. “I will kill him,” he said coldly. “Mindy has been in tears all day. She thinks there’s someone out there who wants to rape her. She’s just fourteen and never hurt a soul in her life and is impressionable as hell and she’s never been exposed to that sort of filth before. It seems like only yesterday she was still into teddy bears and Barbie dolls. I doubt she’ll sleep much tonight, or for the next couple of days. I just hope that the fright hasn’t changed her.”