"I don't remember." Corde was thinking of some film with creatures that had red eyes. "Oh, wait, was that the one with these snake things?"

"Yeah. The Honons. They were battling the Naryans in the Lost Dimension."

"But what's…" He lifted his hand and closed his fist.

"It's the Naryan salute." Kresge snorted a baritone laugh. "Don't you remember?"

"Nup."

"You mean you guys don't know?… About the knife? Back there in that bag."

The cult knife.

"I saw it on the deputy's desk…" Kresge pointed.

"That symbol on the knife. It's from the movie?"

"You really didn't know, did you?"

Corde lifted his fingers to his eyes. "I don't believe it!" He turned toward the department. "Hell, I gotta tell 'em."

But he stopped abruptly. Staring at the ancient Town Hall he sucked on the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Wynton, you want to go for a ride?"

"I guess. Can we go in the squad car?"

"Sure. Only I can't use the siren."

"That's okay."

They arrived at the toy store just as it was closing. Together the two large men strode to the door. Kresge stood awkwardly with his hands on his hips while Corde knocked. After a moment the owner appeared.

"Can you open up, Owen? Important."

"I'm closed, Bill. It's suppertime."

"Open her up. We gotta talk to you. Business."

"Couldn't you call me -"

"Official, Owen."

The heavyset, mustachioed man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans opened the door. The store was dim. Costumes and helmets and monster masks lining the wall made the place seem as eerie as a wax museum at night. Some toy at the far end of the store gave off red dots of light. Corde looked around and flicked on a light. He squinted and walked to a rack he spotted just behind Owen. He stared at thirty stilettos just like the one found under Jennie Gebben.

"What are these?"

"What do you think they are?" As if Corde had asked who was George Washington.

"Owen."

He said, "They're Naryan Lost Dimension survival knives."

"What's that symbol?"

Owen sighed. "That's the insignia of the Naryan Empire." He extended his hand the way Kresge had done. "'I come in peace, from -'"

Corde said, "Yeah, yeah, I know. The movie company makes 'em?"

"They license somebody in China or Korea to make them. They sell all kinds of things. Helmets, xaser guns, Dimensional cloaks, scarves… All that stuff in the movie."

Kresge said, "He doesn't remember the movie."

"He doesn't?" Owen asked. "Like Ninja Turtles a few years ago. T-shirts. Toys. Tie-ins they're called."

"How many of these knives have you sold?"

"They're a best-seller."

Corde glanced at Kresge and said, "I somehow figured they might be. How many?"

Owen said, "That's I think my third merch rack. Why?"

"Has to do with an investigation."

"Oh."

Corde pulled out a pen and handed it and a stack of blank three-by-five cards to Owen. He asked, "Could you give me the names of everybody you've sold one of those knives to?"

"You're kidding." Owen laughed, then looked at Kresge. "He's kidding."

Kresge said, "No, I don't think he's kidding."

Owen's smile faded. "Practically every kid in New Lebanon bought one. It'd take me an hour to remember half of them."

"Then you better get started."

"Aw, Bill. It's suppertime."

"The sooner you write the sooner you eat, Owen."

Bill Corde parked the squad car in the lot next to the five-foot-high logo of the Fredericksberg Register - the name in the elaborate hundred-year-old typeface as it appeared on the paper's masthead. He and Wynton Kresge got out of the car and walked into the advertising office. The girl behind the counter snapped her gum once and hid it somewhere in her mouth. "Hi, gentlemen. Help you?"

Corde said, "Last week I called about running an ad as part of an investigation down in New Lebanon."

"Oh, that girl that was killed. I heard there was another one too."

"Did I talk to you?"

"No, that'd be my boss, Juliette Frink. She's left for the day. But I can take the order. How long you want it run?"

"A week, I think."

"What size?"

Corde looked at samples of ads under a faded Plexiglas sheet covering the counter. "What do you think, Wynton?"

Kresge said, "May as well go pretty big, wouldn't you think?"

Corde pointed to one. "I guess that size."

She looked. "That's two columns by seventy-five agates." She wrote it down. "What section of the paper would you like?"

"Oh. I hadn't thought. Front page?"

"We don't have ads on the front page."

"Well, I don't know. What's the best-read section?"

"Comics first then sports."

Corde said, "I don't think we can run an ad like this on the comic pages."

Kresge said, "But sports, you might lose women, you know."

The clerk said, "I read the sports page."

"How about the same page as the movie ads?" Kresge said.

"That sounds good," Corde said.

She wrote it up. "Juliette said you get a public-service discount. That'll be four hundred eighty-four dollars and seventy cents. Then you want us to typeset it for you that'll be another twenty-five dollars. You have cuts?"

"Cuts?" Corde blinked. He was thinking of the thin slash the rope had made on Jennifer Gebben's throat, the fishhook embedded in Emily Rossiter.

"Pictures, I mean."

"Oh. No. Just words." He wrote out copy for the ad. Corde pulled out his wallet and handed her his Visa card. She took it and stepped away to approve the charge.

What is it," Kresge said. You pay then get reimbursed?"

Corde snickered. "I guess you oughta know, I was just relieved of duty."

Kresge frowned severe creases into his wide face. "Man, they fired you?"

"Suspended."

"Why?"

"They claim I took some letters out of Jennie's room."

"Did you?" Kresge asked, but so innocently that Corde laughed.

"No," he said.

"Hardly seems fair," he said. "You mean, you're paying for this ad yourself?"

"Yup."

He wasn't though, it turned out. The clerk, embarrassed, returned. "Sorry, Officer… They kind of said you're over the limit. They wouldn't approve it." She handed the card back to him.

Corde felt the immediate need to explain. But that would involve telling her a long story about two children – one with primary reading retardation – and a psychiatrist and a new Frigidaire and roll after roll of Owens-Corning attic insulation and a boy coming up on college in a few years. "Uh…" He looked for a solution in the back of the cluttered Advertising Department.

Kresge said, "Miss, Auden has an account here, right?"

"The university? Yessir. The student affairs office. Ads for plays and sports. I was to the homecoming game last fall. That third quarter! I'll remember that all my life."

"Yes'm, that was a game and a half," Kresge said. "Can you put these on the school account?"

"You work for the school?"

"Yes, ma'am," Kresge said. "I do." He pulled out his identification card. "I'll authorize it. This's official school business."

She rummaged under the counter and pulled out a form. "Just sign this requisition here. Fourth and twelve on the Ohio State forty. Did Ladowski punt? No sir. And it wasn't even a bomb but a hand-off to Flemming. Ran all the way, zippity-zip."

"While I'm about it," Kresge said, "run that ad for two weeks and put a border around it like that one there."

"You got it."

"That's real good of you, Wynton," Corde said. "I do appreciate it."

"People keep forgetting," Kresge said quietly, "they were my girls too."

Corde spent the evening talking to the parents of boys who'd bought Naryan Dimensional stilettos. He was easygoing and jokey and careful to put them at ease. No, no, we don't suspect Todd Sammie Billie Albert not hardly why he's in Science Club with Jamie…