Gray Matter

For Kathleen, Nathan, and David

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for providing me with medical, forensic, and other technical information.

From Northeastern University: from the Department of Counseling and Applied Psychology, Carmen Armengol; from the Department of Psychology, Joanne Miller and Harry MacKay; from the Department of Sociology, Jack Levin.

For their very generous time and expert insights, a special thanks to James Stellar, Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and John F. McDevitt, Assistant Professor, the College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University.

I am also grateful to Drs. Regis deSilva, Jason McCormick, David Urion, and Gary Fischer.

In addition, I am grateful to Dr. James Weiner, Associate Chief Medical Examiner of Massachusetts; Kenneth Halloran, Clerk Magistrate, Plymouth County, Massachusetts; Lt. Richard W. Sequin, Massachusetts State Police; Lt. Thomas J. Gelman and Chief John Ford, Bourne Police Department; Sgt. Peter Howell, Sandwich Police Department; and Dr. Carl M. Selavka, Director of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab.

Thanks also to Jean Hagen, Pamela and Malcolm Childers, Kemmer and Martha Anderson, George and Donna Megrichian, Alice Janjigian, and Kathryn Goodfellow.

I also want to thank Charles O’Neill and Barbara Shapiro for the brainstorms that made this a better story.

A very special thanks to my agent, Susan Crawford, my editor, Natalia Aponte, and my publisher, Tom Doherty, for their great support. You made this possible.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

PROLOGUE

THREE YEARS AGO

CAPE COD

“Mom, do clams have eyes?”

“I don’t think so, hon,” Jane replied, without glancing up from her magazine.

Her three-year-old daughter, Megan, was on her knees a few feet away, digging quahog shells out of the sandbar. Her back was to her, but Jane could see the impressive pile she had collected. If they were a smoking family, there would be big, white ashtrays in every room in the house. Megan had even found three intact quahogs, which sat underwater in her yellow pail. Jane’s husband, Keith, now asleep under an umbrella, would use the guts for bait. He liked to surf-cast for stripers and blues. And August was the season.

“You sure?”

Jane looked up from the magazine. The only other people within half a mile were a man with some kids on boogie boards skimming across the flats in the wavelets. Otherwise, the place was an open stretch of empty sandbar and beach under an outrageously clear blue sky. Except for some sailboats out at sea, the horizon made an unbroken azure arc across her field of vision.

“I’m pretty sure.”

The vastness was a wonderful relief from the claustrophobic clutter of their lives, which seemed to be spent in a series of boxes—house, cars, trains, and offices. And far from the horrors of the world that filled the pages of her magazine. One article told of a Pennsylvania teenager who had committed suicide because he was unhappy with his SAT scores.

God in heaven! How far from that they were, she thought.

The water was warm, and the tide was going out and exposing the huge flats of smooth featureless sandbar—featureless but for bright white shells.

“Well, I think this one’s different,” Megan declared. “It has eyes.”

“It has?”

Sagamore Beach. One of the best-kept secrets on the Cape. Not only were there no bridge traffic jams to contend with, but the beach was a strip of cozy postwar cottages that hugged grass-swollen dunes above the beach, stretching five miles from the White Cliffs east to the Cape Cod Canal. Not a motel, clam shack, or self-serve in sight. Just five miles of white beach with rarely more than a handful of people. The public beach, at the canal end, drew a crowd on weekends. But the rest of the strip was always wide open, and Jane loved it like that. It was their one concession to private living. They rented the same cottage for a week each year.

Even more special was how the beach was growing. While the rest of the Cape suffered perennial erosion, Sagamore Beach had become a natural shoring area for what washed down from the north. With every nor’easter, countless tons of sand washed up, expanding the bar and burying the ancient granite jetties that used to segment the beach.

“It’s a special clam.”

According to the article, the boy had been an excellent student—straight As, his teachers reported. “What’s that, honey?”

“I said, this one’s special. It’s big and has eyes.”

Jane glanced over her shoulder. Megan looked so cute in her pink twopiece and floppy pink hat. She was digging away with her hands now. Someplace behind them, a bunch of seagulls squawked over a dead fish.

Because of prevailing currents, the beach was a dumping ground of all sorts of “surf kills,” as Keith called them. Some mornings they’d wake up to find stripers and small sharks washed up with the night tide. About ten years ago, a forty-foot humpback whale was deposited in a storm down near the canal. Nobody was sure if it had beached itself or died at sea, but the Coast Guard had to come and haul it out to deep waters, because after four days the stench was unbearable.

“Guess I was wrong,” Jane said.

Apparently the pressure of college entrance exams caused the poor kid to underperform. His parents found him hanging in the garage. The sad irony was that his test scores could have gotten him into most colleges in the country.

“Does that mean they could see?”

The piece went on to argue that the growing number of student suicides can be linked to the pressure of standardized tests such as the SATs and AP exams.

“I didn’t think they could,” Jane said, half-consciously.

“We live in a stratified society, characterized by a tremendous and growing gap between the rich and poor, the successful and unsuccessful,” one educator lamented. “Not only do these kids equate SAT scores with IQs, but they see them as a forecast of how they’ll do in life …”

“I think this one is blind.”

“That’s too bad,” Jane said.

She yawned, as some child psychologist commented how the use of standardized tests was getting out of hand; how some top preschools even require admission tests for four-year-olds; how U.S. parents spend a billion each year for SAT prep courses.

Jane felt herself grow sleepy.

“And it’s bigger,” Megan continued.

Jane folded the magazine across her lap and closed her eyes. “That’ll make Daddy happy.”

“I think it has a nose, too.”

“Uh-huh.” Jane raised her face to the sun. The gentle lapping of the wavelets made an irresistible lullaby that seemed to be in cadence with her own heartbeat. In a matter of moments, she felt herself fade into the warm sac of sunlight encasing her body.

“AND TEETH!”

Jane’s eyes snapped open.

Megan was standing just inches away. Jane let out a hectoring scream.

In Megan’s hand was a human skull.

1

THE PRESENT

HAWTHORNE, MASSACHUSETTS

Dylan was in the middle of the chorus of “Bloody Mary” when Rachel Whitman turned into the lot of the Dells Country Club. Martin, Dylan’s father, loved show tunes and Dylan had learned many by heart.

“‘Now ain’t that too damn bad?’”

“Darn,” Rachel said and pulled into the shade of a huge European elm, trying to shake the sense of grief that had gripped her for the last several days. “Too darn bad.”

“But the song says damn, Mom.”

“I know, but damn is not a polite word for six-year-old boys.”

“How come?”

“It just isn’t.” She was not in the mood to argue.

“There’s Mrs. M’Phearson Jagger,” announced Dylan.

There was a time when she found the way he said things adorable—sweet baby-talk artifacts that she’d let go by. But the specialist had said that they had to work at this together, even if it meant correcting him every time.

“You have to keep after him. He has to hear the rules in action so they’ll sink in.”

“Jag-WHAR,” she corrected. “And it’s Mrs. MacPhearson’s Jaguar.” She emphasized the s.

“Jag-WHAR, but I like Jagger better. ‘Now, ain’t that too damn bad?’” he sang.

Rachel parked next to the green Jaguar alongside of the clubhouse, a sprawling and elegant white structure that appeared to glow against the emerald fairways that rolled away to the sea.

For a moment, Rachel stared through the windshield at the dappled sunlight playing across the gold-lacquered hood. Sitting in her big shiny Maxima, dressed in her white DKNY sundress and Movado watch and Ferragamo sandals, her sculpted raven hair and discreet black glasses, she would, to the casual observer, appear to be a woman who had it all—a woman blessed by fortune, a woman of rare privilege, a woman who saw nothing but endless blue skies above her head. And Rachel Whitman did have it all—health, a successful marriage, money, a beautiful new home in one of the flossiest North Shore suburbs, and an adorable little boy. Or almost all …

It wasn’t as if they’d found a dysfunctional kidney. Just a setback that they would make the best of.

“Mom, do I have to go?”

Dylan looked up at her with those gorgeous green eyes. So full of depth.

“But you like DellKids.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like her. I don’t wanna go.” His mouth began to quiver as he fought back tears.

“Who?”

He looked out his window and took a couple deep breaths to control himself.

“You mean Miss Jean?” Rachel asked. Miss Jean was one of the day-care counselors. Her yellow VW Bug was parked nearby.

“No, Lucinda. I don’t like her.” His eyes began to fill up.

“Lucinda MacPhearson?”

“I hate her. She’s mean.”

Lucinda was Sheila’s seven-year-old daughter—and one of the twelve kids in DellKids, a day-care center located in a separate wing of the clubhouse. Since school let out last week, Dylan was attending it full-time now. Because the waiting list for full club membership was years long, Rachel and Martin had purchased a social membership which allowed them dining, pool, and tennis privileges, as well as DellKids. That was fine with Rachel who didn’t play golf.

“How is she mean?”

Dylan didn’t answer nor did he have to. Rachel knew and felt the heat of irritation rise. Lucinda was a very bright child, but she was bossy and a knowit-all. Like an intolerant schoolmarm, she would hold forth with Dylan and the other kids on operating computer games or fashioning Play-Doh. Dylan was too proud to admit how the little brat had humiliated him.

“Do you want to tell me what she said?” It crossed her mind to speak to Sheila, though it would be awkward since Sheila had sold them their house and sponsored their Dells membership.

But Dylan didn’t respond. Something out the window had caught his attention. “What’s that man doing?” he asked.

One of the waiters, a big kid in his teens, was standing half-hidden behind a tree outside the kitchen and staring through field glasses at a girl sunning herself on a poolside lounge chair. While Rachel watched, the boy suddenly slapped himself in the face.

For a moment Rachel thought she was seeing things. But he did it again—he slapped himself in the face. Then again and again—all the while peering through the field glasses at the girl by the pool.

“Why he hitted himself?”

But Rachel didn’t have an answer. Nor did she correct Dylan. Nor was she sure if she should do something. She thought about getting out of the car and approaching him, but then what? “Gee, young man, you really shouldn’t be whacking your face like that.” What if he suddenly turned on her? The kid clearly looked disturbed.

And yet, there was something bizarrely purposeful in his behavior—the way he kept studying the girl between slaps, as if waiting for a reaction from her. Or maybe punishing himself for Peeping Tom thoughts. “I don’t know,” Rachel muttered and got out.

The sound of the closing doors alerted the kid. He shot them a look as they moved toward the clubhouse, then disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Rachel and Dylan wondering what that was all about.

“Is he a crazy man, Mom?”

“I don’t know, but I think we better get inside before we’re late.”

She hustled Dylan to their entrance, hoping that the waiter would be confined to the kitchen and not wander into the day-care center.

“You know what I think?” he said as they moved inside. “I think he a dummy.”

“Don’t use that word.”

Sheila was at their usual table beside the one-way windows through which they could watch their kids. The playroom was a large colorful open area with small tables and chairs scattered about, computer terminals, plants, books, posters, cages with turtles, and a huge brown rabbit. It had been carefully designed for a bright nurturing atmosphere. Miss Jean, like her assistant, was a former elementary-school teacher who had been hired full-time by the club. Together they made of DellKids an enlightened center for members’ children. And three years ago it was awarded full day-care licensing by the state.

Rachel watched through the window as Jean gathered the children around one of the several computers. While she explained the particular program, the kids listened. All but Dylan, that is. He was making faces at another boy to get him to laugh. A couple of times Miss Jean had to ask Dylan to stop his antics and listen up. After a few minutes, they broke up into groups of twos and, thankfully, he was teamed up with a sweet little girl named Shannon.

The boy from out back stepped through the kitchen door carrying a tray of food for people at another table. “I see we’ve got a new waiter,” Rachel said.

“Oh, that’s just Brendan LaMotte,” Sheila said. “His grandfather used to be the club plumber and got him a job as a caddy, but they moved him inside because they needed an extra body.”

Brendan was a large sullen-looking kid, probably from one of the local high schools. “Is he … okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he seems rather weird. As we were coming in, he was out back slapping himself in the face.”

“What?”

Rachel described the scene with the girl and field glasses.

“Hormones,” Sheila said with a dismissive gesture. “Actually he’s kind of a sad case. His parents were killed in a car accident a few years ago, and he’s living alone with his grandfather. He’s a little strange, but he’s perfectly harmless. So, how’s Martin’s new business venture doing?”

Rachel took the invitation to change the subject. “Fine, but I hardly ever see him.” Over the last two years, Martin’s recruitment business had expanded phenomenally, moving out of a cramped office in Hanover to a fancy suite just off Memorial Drive in Cambridge.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel saw Brendan approach their table. He was a tall, somewhat pudgy kid with a pimply round face, a shiny black ponytail, and intense black eyes.

“Hey, Brendan. How you doing?” Sheila chortled, trying to warm him up.

“F-fine,” he said curtly.

“Do you know Mrs. Whitman? She’s a recent member.”

He glanced at Rachel with those laser eyes. “I know who she is.”

Something about his wording sent an unpleasant ripple through Rachel.

“I’ll have the usual,” Sheila said.

“Whole wheat English m-muffin, split, toasted medium-well, a half-pad of margarine, fruit cup—no maraschino cherries—decaf hazelnut with skim milk, small glass of vanilla-flavored soy milk.” His slight stuttering disappeared as he rattled all that off, while the braces on his teeth flashed, adding to his robotic delivery.

Sheila smiled. “You got it.”

He turned to Rachel. “You?”

His manner was so blunt and his expression so intense that Rachel was momentarily thrown off. “I’ll have a cappuccino and a bagel, please.”

He made an impatient sigh. “We have p-plain, sesame, raisin, poppy seed, sunflower seed, salt, egg, sun-dried tomato, onion, garlic, four-grain, and everything which includes garlic, onion, poppy and sesame seeds, and salt but not the other ingredients.” It was like being addressed by a machine.

“Raisin.”

“Cream cheese?”

“Yes, please, on the side.”

“Regular or fat-free, which is thirty calories for two tablespoons versus a hundred for regular, and five milligrams of cholesterol, but of course you get the xanthan and carob-bean gums plus potassium sorbate and sodium tripolyphosphate and all the artificial flavors and colors. Suit yourself.”

Rachel began to smile, thinking that he was joking—that he was doing some kind of Jim-Carrey-waiter-from-hell routine the way he rattled that off with edgy rote. But nothing in his expression said he was playacting. His face remained impassive, the only thing moving was his mouth and that bizarre tic: While he spoke his left eyelid kept flickering as if trying to ward off a gnat. Rachel also noticed that he had no order pad or pen to record the orders.

She preferred the fat-free but didn’t want to set him off. “I’ll have the regular.”

“Toasted?”

“Yes.”

“Light, dark, or medium?”

She did not dare question the options. “Medium.”

“Orange juice?”

“Yes, please.”

“It’s fresh squeezed, not from concentrate, but it’s Stop and Shop not Tropicana premium. You still want it?”

“I guess. Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, please, thank you,” Rachel gasped.

He then turned on his heel and slouched back into the kitchen.

Rachel saucered her eyes. “My God! I feel as if I’ve just been interrogated.”

Sheila chuckled. “He is a tad intense.”

“A tad? Someone get him a straitjacket.”

“It could be worse. He could be your caddy. Ask him for advice on a club and he’ll cite everything from barometric pressure and dew point to the latest comparative test data on shaft technology. He’s a walking encyclopedia. He also has a photographic memory.”

“I noticed he didn’t write down our orders.”

“He never does.”

A kid with a photographic memory who smashes himself in the face while ogling girls through field glasses.

“He can also recite Shakespeare by the pound. In summer stock last year they did Romeo and Juliet and he ended up memorizing every part. He’s amazing.”

“Where does he go to school?”

“He dropped out.”

“Lucky for his teachers,” Rachel said, and looked over Sheila’s shoulder through the one-way glass.

Her stomach knotted. Lucinda had wandered over to Dylan and Shannon’s computer and parked herself at their desk, explaining something that they apparently couldn’t get right. As she watched, Rachel felt a wave of sadness flush over her resentment. While she wanted to go in there and shake Lucinda, the girl’s confidence had clearly left poor Dylan in the shadows. While eager to be with it, his frustration had reduced him to making goofy faces and sounds to deflect attention—a measure that pained Rachel for its desperation. Some of the nearby kids laughed, but not Lucinda, who chided Dylan so that Miss Jean had to come over and ask him to settle down. She then took Dylan and Shannon to a free terminal and reexplained the procedure.

Rachel tried to hold tight, but she could feel the press of tears. Dylan was out of his league in there. He had a great singing voice, and she had thought someday to enroll him in a children’s choir, but he was not one of those “cyberbrats,” as Martin called them. Dylan was adorable and sociable and funny, but he lacked the focus of these other kids. Yes, she chided herself for making comparisons even though every other parent did the same thing—gauged their own against the competition: OPK, as Martin labeled them—“other people’s kids.” Yes, she reminded herself that what mattered was his happiness.

But in a flash-glimpse down the long corridor of time, she saw how hard life was going to be for him, especially being brought up in a community that thrived on merit.

“Was it something I said?” Sheila asked, noticing tears pool in Rachel’s eyes.

“No, of course not.” Rachel paused to compose herself as Brendan delivered the coffees then moved off to adjust the dinnerware at a nearby table.

She took a sip. “It’s Dylan. He’s fine … just fine … healthwise, thank God. It’s just that he’s got some learning disabilities.”

“He has?”

Rachel had known Sheila for only a few months, but she felt comfortable confiding in her. It was Sheila who had helped them get settled in town. Besides, all of Rachel’s old friends were fifty miles or more from here; and her mother lived in Phoenix, and her brother Jack, in San Diego. “He’s having difficulty reading,” she said. “He tries, but he has problems connecting written words to sounds.”

“Give him a break! He’s only six years old. Some kids start later than others.”

“I guess, but he’s a bit behind.” The reality was that the other kids in his class were miles beyond him. She and Martin had hoped to get him into Beaver Hill, a well-respected private elementary school where Lucinda was enrolled, but he didn’t pass the entrance tests. So they enrolled him at Marsden Public Elementary. Only a month into the school year, and his teacher had alerted Rachel to his language difficulties and problems following simple instructions.

“Have you tried those phonics books and tapes?” Sheila asked.

“We’ve got all of them—books, tapes, videos. You name it. We even have a language therapist. He’s got some kind of blockage or whatever. He doesn’t get it.”

“But he will. All kids do. He’s just a late bloomer. In ten years he’ll probably be a published author like Vanessa Watts’s son, Julian. Didn’t talk until he was four, and at age thirteen he wrote a book about mazes. I don’t know anything about them, but I guess there’s a whole bunch of maze freaks out there. Whatever, he got it published and had all this press.”

Rachel nodded but felt little consolation.

“You know, you could have him evaluated to see what his skills and problems are.”

“We did all that already.” She had even arranged an MRI scan the other day, although she did not mention that to Sheila. In fact, she hadn’t even told Martin.

“I see.”

Rachel could sense Sheila’s curiosity, wondering how he had tested. But Rachel would not betray him. Although Rachel questioned the validity of IQ tests, there was something terribly definitive about them—like fingerprints or Universal Product Codes. Once the number was out, a person was forever ranked. Hi, my name is Dylan Whitman and I’m an 83, seventeen points below the national average.

“I know I’m being foolish,” Rachel said, struggling to maintain composure. “It’s not like he has some terrible disease, for God’s sake.”

“That’s right, and you keep telling yourself that. Test scores aren’t everything.”

Easy for you to say with your little whiz kid in there, Rachel thought sourly.

Sheila was right, of course—and were they still living in Rockville, she wouldn’t have been so aware. But this was a town of trophy houses and trophy kids—a town where the rewards for intelligence were in-your-face conspicuous. Hawthorne was an upscale middle-class community of professional people, all smart and well educated. To make matters worse, Dylan was now surrounded by high-pedigree children, bred for success by ambitious parents who knew just how clever their kids were and where they stood against the competition: which kids were the earliest readers, who got what on the SATs, who ranked where in their class, who got into the hot schools.

Suddenly Rachel missed Rockville with its aluminum-sided Capes and pitching nets, tire swings, and kids who played street hockey until they glowed. Where the only scores that mattered were how the Sox, Bruins, and Celtics did, not your verbal and math; where the pickup trucks sported Harley-Davidson logos and bumper stickers that said KISS MY BASS and SAVE THE ALES unlike all the high-end vehicles outside with stethoscopes hanging from the rearview mirrors and windows emblazoned with shields from Bloomfield Preparatory Academy, Harvard, and Draper Labs, and Nantucket residency permits.

She looked out the window onto the splendidly manicured course with its two pools and tennis courts and showplace clubhouse. She felt out of place. The Dells was one of the most exclusive country clubs in New England; and now that Martin’s company had taken off they could afford the privileged life for their son. How ironic it seemed, given their expectations and presumptions. Rachel and Martin had both graduated from college so Dylan’s limitations were as much of a surprise as they were distressing. Even worse, they made her feel that the perimeters of their lives had been irrevocably altered.

You did this to him, whispered a voice in her head.

No! NO! And she shook it away.

Outside a green Dells CC truck pulled up with two greenskeepers. The men got out. They were dressed in jeans and the green and white DCC pullovers. One of them said something that made the other man break up. As she sipped her cappuccino and watched them unload a lawnmower, Rachel could not help but think how she was glimpsing her son’s destiny—a life of pickup trucks, lawnmowers, and subsistence wages.

“I guess I just didn’t do enough,” Rachel said.

“Like what?” Sheila said.

“Like when he was a baby. I guess I didn’t give him a rich enough environment. But I tried. I read all the zero-to-three books about brain growth and early childhood development. I talked and sang to him, I read him stories when he was two months old—all that stuff.” They had bought him Jump-Start Toddlers and other computer games, Baby Bach, Baby Shakespeare and Baby Einstein toys. When he took a nap, she played classical music. From his infancy, she read him poetry because the books said how babies learn through repetition, and that repeated rhymes, like music at an early age, are supposed to increase the spatial-temporal reasoning powers. She breast-fed him because of a Newsweek story on how breast-fed babies scored higher on intelligence tests than those formula-fed—as silly as that had seemed.

Newsweek. The very thought of the magazine made her stomach grind.

No! Just a coincidence, she told herself. Not true.

Tears flooded Rachel’s eyes. “And now it’s too late. He turned six last month.”

Sheila laid her hand on Rachel’s. “Pardon my French, but those first-three-years books are bullshit. All they do is put a guilt trip on parents. I bet if you took twins at birth and played Mozart and read Shakespeare around the clock to one for three years and raised the other normally you wouldn’t see a goddamn difference when they were six. You didn’t fail, Rachel, believe me.”

Rachel wiped her eyes and smiled weakly. “Something went wrong.”

“Nothing went wrong.”

Something terribly wrong.

Rachel nodded and looked away to change the subject. They were having two different conversations. Sheila did not understand.

Through the window, Lucinda was explaining something to the girl next to her. Sheila took the hint. “By the way, Lucinda’s having a birthday party a week from Saturday. It’s going to be an all-girl thing—her idea. But, in any case, I’m getting her a kitten.”

“Oh, how sweet.”

“It’ll be her first pet. I think kids need pets—don’t you? Something to, you know, love unconditionally?”

“Yes, of course. Dylan has gerbils and he’s crazy about them.”

At a nearby table, Brendan was arranging the dinnerware. To distract herself, Rachel watched him without thought. He was putting out dinnerware, all the time muttering to himself just below audibility—his mouth moving, braces flashing, his eye twitching. He looked possessed. “The poor kid’s a basket case,” she whispered to Sheila, thinking that it could be worse. At least Dylan was a happy child.

“I guess,” Sheila said vaguely. She checked her watch. There was another hour and a half of day care, so Sheila was going to go to her office in the interim, while Rachel would sit outside with a book until Dylan was out.

As they left the building, Rachel’s cell phone chirped in her handbag. The call was from Dr. Rose’s office. The secretary said that Dylan’s MRI results were back. “He’d like to make an appointment to see you and discuss them.”

Rachel felt a shock to her chest. Discuss them? “Is everything all right?”

“I’m sure, but he can see you tomorrow at ten.”

“Can I speak with him?”

“I’m sorry, he’s out of the office on an emergency and probably won’t be back for the rest of the day. Is ten tomorrow good for you?”

“Yes, ten’s fine,” she gasped and clicked off.

Oh, my God.

2

It was only three-thirty when Martin Whitman left the office. He had canceled two meetings and let all the calls and e-mails go unanswered because he wanted to buy some flowers on the way home as a prelude to taking Rachel to dinner at the Blue Heron—a chichi restaurant perched majestically on the cliffs overhanging Magnolia Harbor. Wine-dark sea, sunset dinner, candlelight, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Just the kind of romance-shock they needed.

Because something wasn’t right. Martin couldn’t put his finger on it, but for the last few weeks Rachel had lapsed into a black funk. She was distracted much of the time—moody, as if plagued by a low-level anxiety. She would become petulant when he questioned her and lose patience with Dylan when he misspoke or had trouble doing things. Without warning, she’d tear up, then withdraw. He hadn’t seen her like this since her hysterectomy which, three years ago, had left her in a dark malaise, like a slow-acting poison.

His first thought was that something was wrong with her—that her doctor had discovered a lump in her breast. But, surely, she would have told him. Then he wondered if there was another man—that while he spent up to fourteen hours a day at the office, Rachel had found somebody else. She was attractive, witty, warm, and easy to be with. But there had never been any reason to suspect her of cheating. Not until her recent shutdown—sex, of course, being a foolproof barometer. Overnight she had lost all interest in intimacy, going to bed early and falling asleep by the time he slipped beside her. When he brought it up, she said that it was just a phase she was going through—that it would pass. But so far it hadn’t.

Perhaps it was the move to Hawthorne. But she seemed to have adjusted well, making new friends and joining the Dells. They had a great house, and Dylan was a happy and healthy kid. He had some learning problems, but he was probably a late bloomer as Martin had been.

No, it was something else, he told himself. Maybe she needed to go back to work. For six years she had been an English editor of college textbooks at a Boston publishing house. She enjoyed it and had done well. Now she was housebound. More space was what she needed—and to get back into life.

Martin pulled the black Miata down Massachusetts Avenue and onto Memorial Drive heading north to Route 93, which would connect him to Interstate 95. Across the Charles River, a thick underbelly of clouds made a rolling black canopy over Boston, lightning flickering through it like stroboscopes. The forecast was for afternoon showers that would clear out by evening.

This particular strip of Memorial from Massachusetts Avenue to the Sonesta was his favorite sector of Cambridge—even more than scenic Brattle Street with its august six-generational mansions or funky Central Square, or even Harvard Square which, unfortunately, had lost its renegade soul to mall franchises—the Abercrappies and Au Bon Pain in the Asses. Across the river lay Boston in red brick stacked up against Beacon Hill and surmounted by the gold dome of the State House. On the left were the grand old trophy buildings of MIT—interconnecting classical structures in limestone that emanated from the Great Dome, designed after the Pantheon of Rome, and forged with the names of the greatest minds of history. He loved the area.

By the time he reached 95 North, the rain was heavy and remained so until he reached the Hawthorne exit. Just outside of Barton, a couple towns southwest of Hawthorne, the rain stopped and the clouds gave way to blue. The streets were puddled, but it would be a clear night after all. Dining under the stars.

Barton was a working-class town, the kind of place that tenaciously held on to reminders of its fisher-family heritage. The houses were mostly modest Capes and ranches, a few trailer homes that had intended to move elsewhere but had burrowed in. The center was a strip of fishing-tackle shops, a small used-car dealership, a marine-engine-repair place, doughnut and pizza shops, a dog-clipping service, and Ed’s Lawnmower and TV Repair.

Halfway down Main Street, Martin shot through a puddle that was a lot deeper than it appeared. Instantly, he knew he was in trouble. Water had flashed up under the hood and doused the wires. Thinking fast, he turned into the lot of Angie’s Diner and rolled into a parking space just as the car stalled out. He tried starting it, but the engine didn’t turn over. There was no point calling Triple A since jumping the battery wouldn’t do any good. In half an hour the wires would dry out and he’d be on his way. And a wedge of apple pie and a coffee would go down well.

Angie’s Diner was the epicenter of Barton—a greasy spoon with homemade panache whose brash owner was part of its no-nonsense charm. Martin headed across the lot, which consisted of pickup trucks and some battered SUVs, and a Barton Fire Department car, probably from an off-duty firefighter heading home.

The place was half-full, some people in booths, a few at the counter including the fireman, a middle-aged guy still in uniform. Martin took a seat at the elbow of the counter at the far end, giving him a full view of the booths against the front windows and the staff working the counter. He liked the blue-collar ambiance. The booth radio boxes, red Naugahyde spin-top stools, the gleaming stainless steel and Formica-the place was a 1960 tableau.

In a booth across from him sat a pretty teenage girl and an older guy with bushy hair, talking intensely over cake and coffee. In the next booth, another kid in a baggie black pullover and ponytail thumbed through a book of cartoons while picking on a garden salad. He was probably an art student somewhere.

Martin ordered pie and coffee and opened his copy of Wired. He was partway through an article when he noticed the ponytail kid shift around in his seat. At first Martin thought he was trying to get more comfortable, until it became clear he was craning for a better view of the couple, whose conversation had taken a turn for the worse. The bushy-hair guy was quietly protesting something, while the girl, a cute blonde in a black tank top, coolly pressed her case.

Meanwhile, Ponytail slid left and right for a better view. At one point, he got up to go to the toilet—or pretended to—and walked by them without taking his eyes off the girl. When she looked up expectantly, he marched off. A few minutes later he returned still staring intensely at her. She caught his eye and he scooted into his booth. The girl whispered something to her companion, and they got up and left as Ponytail tracked them through the window to their car.

Martin went back to his magazine, thinking that maybe Ponytail was Blondie’s former suitor. Whatever, a few moments later, a small commotion arose when the boy asked for pancakes and the waitress said that they were no longer doing breakfast.

“Can you m-m-make a special order?”

“I’ll ask Angie,” the girl said and went into the back.

A moment later Angie came out. She was a short blocky woman about forty-five with a wide impassive face and a large head of red frizz held in place by jumbo white clips. She was not smiling. “We stop serving breakfast at eleven,” she declared.

“You can’t m-m-make a s-s-special order?”

“No, we can’t.”

The kid dropped his face into the menu pretending to find an alternative, but it was clear there was nothing else he was interested in.

“You want more time?”

He shook his head. “I r-r-really wanted p-pancakes.”

Martin began to feel bad for the kid. Not only was he getting the cold shoulder from the proprietor, but also he was a stutterer. Martin had stuttered painfully in grade school.

“Then come back in the morning.” She yanked the menu out of his hand. “We open at s-s-six.” She winked at the fireman at the counter and started away.

“What’s the big deal?” he asked good-naturedly. “Cup of mix, some milk, and a pan. It’s not like he asked for a turkey dinner from scratch.”

“Freddie, do I tell you how to put out fires? Huh? Right! So don’t tell me how to run my diner.”

“Take you two minutes, Angie. Give the kid a break,” Freddie said in a low voice.

Then he added, “Looks like he just woke up anyway.”

Angie glowered at Freddie, then appeared to soften. She turned to the kid. “It’s gonna have to be plain,” she hollered. “No blues or strawberries. They’re back in the freezer.”

“That’s f-fine,” the kid said in a thin voice, and returned to the cartoons.

Martin watched the kid. The book was a large hardbound tome of Walt Disney animations, and he was flipping through the pages rapidly as if trying to find something.

A few minutes later, Angie delivered the pancakes and a small rack of syrups. Out of the corner of his eye, Martin noticed the kid remove the tops of the syrups and sniff each one. He was not casually taking in the aromas but deeply inhaling and processing the scents like a professional perfume tester. Dissatisfied, he then poured a little of each into his coffee spoon and continued smelling then testing each with his tongue. It was bizarre.

This went on until Angie took notice and marched up to the kid’s booth, her large red face preceding her like a fire truck. “You got a problem here?”

The kid looked up, startled. “Oh, no. N-no problem.”

“So what are you doing with the syrups?”

“Well, I’m just trying to find the … I’m just w-w-wondering if … Do you have any others … other syrups?”

“You got five different syrups right there. What else do you want, tartar sauce?”

“Do you have any ma-ma-ma-maple syrup?”

She pulled one out of the rack and turned the top toward him. “Whaddya think this is?”

“Well, I meant, you know … real maple syrup?” He sniffed the small carafe. “This is actually corn syrup with water and artificial f-f-flavors. Also, c-caramel coloring. I mean real m-maple syrup, one h-hundred percent, no additives.”

Angie took a deep breath and let it out very slowly, working to steady herself, aware that the whole place was watching and wondering if she were going to blow. “No, I’m sorry, sir,” she said in a mock-apologetic whine. “We don’t have real m-m-maple syrup, so I’m afraid you’re gonna have to settle for the cheap imitation shit.” She spun around and huffed away.

The kid looked around to notice everybody staring at him. He put his hand to his brow and began nibbling on his pancakes, pretending to lose himself in the cartoons. He only ate a mouthful, occasionally sniffing the different syrups when Angie wasn’t looking.

He was clearly disturbed, Martin told himself, and operating on another level of reality. Every so often he would snap his head around as if picking up a stray scent like an animal. When he got up to go to the toilet, Martin could see that he was a tall overweight kid with a boyish face and a confused lumbering manner. He loped his way as Angie stood behind the counter wiping coffee mugs and watching him with that flat red face. On his return, he rounded the far end of the counter when something stopped him in his tracks: Blondie’s half-eaten cake in the next booth. In disbelief, Martin watched the kid slip onto the seat and lower his face to the dish, sniffing like a dog screening leftovers on the dinner table.

“Shit!” Angie muttered as she rolled past Martin toward the kid. “You gonna eat my garbage now, huh?”

The kid straightened up, and the whole place held its breath. “What kind of cake is this?” His face was intense, his pupils dilated. The earlier deferential manner had hardened into some weird purpose.

She pulled the dish away and walked around the counter and dumped it into a bin without a word.

“I said, what kind of cake is that?” The kid rose from the booth. His eyes were fixed on the woman.

The fireman at the counter sat straight up. Everybody in the place was now looking at the big bear-bodied boy pressing Angie for an answer. She seemed taken aback by his intensity. “Butter almond cake.”

“Butter almond cake,” he said as if taking an oath. “Like real almonds?”

“Yeah, real almonds and real almond extract,” she said sarcastically.

“Do you have any more?”

Angie looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, one piece.”

The kid’s eye clapped on the display case where the cakes sat. “I’ll have it.”

“What about your pancakes over there?”

“I’m finished. I want some butter almond.”

“You want it with a fork, or you gonna inhale it?”

“A fork,” he said. “And a knife.”

The kid returned to his booth, not taking his eyes off Angie as she got the cake, walked to his booth, and clanked the dish down in front of him with a fork and knife. Then she left, moving her mouth in wordless anger.

Like rays in a magnifying class, all lines of awareness had focused on the kid, who appeared to be in a trance, looking at the cake as if it were a strange and wondrous specimen.

Carefully he scraped off the white icing, then with the knife slit the cake down the middle and butterflied it open as if he were performing surgery. With a little gulping “ahhh” he lowered his face to the splayed-open piece until his nose appeared to disappear into it. From where he was sitting, Martin could hear the kid inhaling deeply and letting out little moans and gasps, then inhaling deeply again and again. Then, incredibly, he closed his eyes tightly and testing the cake with the tip of his tongue he whispered: “Almond, almond, almond …” Then with little gasps: “Almost … almost …”

That was all Angie needed. “Aw, shit!” she cried and stomped the length of the counter and shot around to the kid’s table. “You’re outta here!” She grabbed the kid by the collar and yanked his head up.

His eyes were wild. “Almond,” he said as if coming out of a dream. A piece of cake was stuck to his nose. “Almond!” he repeated, his eyes beaming as if he had just had a beatific vision.

“Get the hell out of here!” She yanked him to his feet.

Freddie got off his stool. “Okay, cool it,” he said.

But the kid didn’t struggle as Angie pulled him bodily out of the booth.

“Cool nothing,” Angie said. “He’s a friggin’ sicko!”

The boy struggled against Angie’s arms to get his hand into his pants pocket, but she pushed him toward the door, probably fearing he had a knife or a gun.

Freddie tried to separate them. “What do you have in there, son?”

“I want to pay,” the kid said, suddenly snapped into the realization that she was throwing him out.

“I don’t want your friggin’ money, and I don’t want you in my place again. Got that?” Her face huge and red, Angie pushed open the door with her foot, still holding on to his shirt. “I know who you are, kid. I know about you. And I’m telling you, I don’t want to see you in my place again, or I’ll call the cops. Now beat it!” And she shoved him through the inner door.

But the wet from the outside made a slick floor, and the kid tripped over a newspaper dispenser and came down headfirst against the glass of the outer door.

“Shit! Now the bastard broke my door.”

The kid’s head had hit the glass squarely, instantly splintering the panel in a starburst. He fell on his knees, holding his head as blood seeped through his fingers.

“Nice going,” Freddie said to Angie and went to the kid’s aid.

“He tripped,” she protested. “I didn’t push him.”

Martin pulled a wad of napkins out of the dispenser and pushed his way to Freddie who was kneeling beside the kid with his arm on his shoulders. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car,” Martin said.

“I’m all right,” the kid said. He looked at his hand and groaned at the blood.

Freddie dabbed the kid’s head. “I’ll take him to the ER.”

“I d-don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Just to make sure you don’t have a concussion. You also got some splinters that’ll have to come out,” Freddie said, inspecting the bloody scalp.

The boy got to his feet, holding the napkins on his head. He looked around but he didn’t seem dizzy or confused. He looked at the glass door. “S-s-sorry …”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Freddie said and opened the door to take the kid to his car. Before he left, Freddie turned to Angie and gave her a damning look. “I should report you for this.”

“For what? He slipped.”

“For assault.”

Angie was about to protest, but she thought twice. When Freddie left, she turned to the rest of the patrons staring at her in stunned silence. “He did that himself,” she said. “He threw himself into the glass because he’s a schizo creep, is all. Someone should put him in a nuthouse where he belongs. And now I got a freakin’ busted door.” And she clopped her way into the kitchen.

Martin had no clue what the history was between Angie and the kid, nor what his problems were, but he was certain the kid had not been playacting to put down Angie, her cake, or her diner. Nor had he thrown himself into the door.

It was getting late, and Martin had to find a florist. He laid some money on the counter and left, thinking how he and Rachel were worrying about Dylan’s reading problems. Here was a kid who was clearly disturbed, maybe psychotic. Probably had the crap beaten out of him as a kid and was now hopelessly messed up on drugs, living in a cartoon world, making love to cakes.

Jesus! Life’s hard, but it’s harder when you’re stupid … or crazy, Martin thought. Always someone worse off. And he headed for his car, which started on the second try.

3

“The good news is that you’re going to live. The bad news is that we’re going to have to shave off some of your pretty hair.”

Cindy Porter was just finishing her shift at the Essex Medical Center when Hawthorne off-duty fireman Freddie Wyman brought the kid in. The bleeding had stopped, but there were glass splinters in his scalp.

The boy’s name was Brendan LaMotte, age eighteen, from Barton. He lived alone with his grandfather. Cindy called the man to say that Brendan was being treated for a head bruise, but that it didn’t look serious and that Brendan would most likely be home in a couple of hours after they took X rays. The accompanying firefighter had said that he had lost his footing and fallen headfirst into the storm door of a diner.

“I don’t think you have a concussion, but we’re gonna send you to Radiology to make sure just how hard a head they gave you.”

She tried to get the boy to smile. But he seemed distracted, not by the bruise but being in a hospital. Because the injury was on the top of his head, they had put him on a chair in one of the ER bed bays and drawn the curtain for privacy. But something about the space bothered him. He kept inspecting the oxygen nozzles in the wall, the X-ray plug, the sink, cabinet, box of surgical gloves, cotton swabs, containers of alcohol, et cetera. And he got up and sniffed everything like a drug dog.

“But first we’re gonna clean you up, okay?” She spread the hairs above the cut with her gloved hand. The cut was not deep so he wouldn’t need stitches, but there were splinters that had to be removed. “Boy, that must have hurt.”

“Wasn’t too bad,” he mumbled.

“The bleeding stopped, and we got most of the dried blood cleaned up.”

“‘The cold in clime are cold in blood, / Their love can scarce deserve the name.’”

“What’s that?”

The kid shook his head to say it was nothing.

“Okay,” she continued. “What we’re going to do is just pick out the shrapnel, so sit tight, and I promise to do my best not to hurt. Okay?”

“H-how much hair you gonna cut off?” he asked.

“Maybe about an inch. I won’t shave on the cut itself, just around it to make sure we get it all.”

Cindy was of the school that you keep a running commentary to distract patients from unpleasant matters, especially kids. Brendan wasn’t chatty, although he muttered to himself as if having a private conversation.

She clipped the hair around the wound, which had crusted over. Unfortunately, the glass from the door was the standard fare, not the shatterproof stuff that came apart in chunks. So she had to use tweezers. All the time the kid sat perfectly still. Whatever he was muttering, she detected some kind of rhythm. “Is that some kind of rap you’re doing?”

“Uh-uh.”

“So you’re not going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“What you’re saying.”

“Just a p-p-poem.”

“Oh. What poem?”

“S-Shakespeare. Sonnet Twenty-nine.”

“How does it go?” When he shook his head, she nudged him. “Come on, this place could use a little poetry.”

Finally he consented. “‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state …’” And he recited the whole poem.

“Wow! How about that. Are you an English major?”

“No.”

“That’s right, you just turned eighteen so you’re still in high school. Wow! You must be a pretty good student.”

Brendan did not respond.

“Well, I used to like Shakespeare in school. My favorite is Romeo and Juliet.” And she recited a few lines. “‘But soft! What light through yonder window shines? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun …’”

“Breaks. ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’”

“Oops. That’s why I’m in here and not on stage,” she said. “By the way, did you get attacked by a porcupine or something?”

“What do you mean?”

She began inspecting his scalp. “You’ve got some funny little scars,” she said. She handed him a mirror. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you had some kind of hair implant.”

He stared intensely into it but said nothing.

“Whatever, we got all the glass out and cleaned you up.”

The kid continued to study his scalp in the mirror as she pulled open the curtain and announced that Radiology was ready for him.

“Sorry about the hair,” she said, walking him toward the waiting room. “But if you comb the other way nobody will notice. Wait a sec.” She went behind the reception desk and returned with a baseball cap. On the front it said ELIXIR. “Promo hats from one of the pharmaceutical vendors. We got a whole box of them.”

“Thanks,” he said, still in a funny daze. He tucked the hat in his back pocket.

She walked him down the hall to Radiology and stayed with him while the technician took several shots of his head from different angles. The kid obliged, turning this way and that when asked. When it was over Cindy led him back to his cubicle. “So, you don’t have any headaches?”

“No.”

“Dizziness, disorientation, confusion?”

“No.”

“Who’s the president of the United States?”

Brendan looked up at her to see if she was joking.

“Just checking.”

He told her.

“How about the last one?”

“George W. Bush.”

“Keep going.”

“William Jefferson Clinton.”

Then on a hunch she asked, “Do you know any more?”

For a strange moment he locked eyes with her. Then he said simply, “All of them.”

“Beg pardon?”

“George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon …” He stopped for a moment, his eyes taking on an odd cast. “Nixon, Nixon, Nixon …”

“That’s pretty good,” Cindy said to snap him back. Then he looked at her and shook his head as if trying to dispel something. And without a moment’s hesitation he began to recite: “Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman …” And he named presidents all the way back to George Washington.

Cindy did not know all the names or proper order, but she had a strong suspicion that this wondrous teenage kid had them exactly right. “Holy cow!” she said in pure awe. “That’s amazing.” The kid’s a savant, she said to herself. She looked at the clipboard. Where it asked for occupation he had entered waiter, not student. “How come you’re not in school?”

He shrugged. “It d-d-didn’t work out.”

He looked at her with deep penetrating eyes that locked onto her own. He stared at her with such intensity that she had to look away. God, what a strange boy.

“Can I go?” he asked.

“Pretty soon. The doc has to check your films first.”

A few minutes later, the resident physician, Dr. Adrian Budd, came by to say that he had read the scan and found no signs of a concussion. When he left, Cindy handed Brendan a couple sheets on head injuries. “If there’s any sign of swelling, pain, headaches, or dizziness, you give us a call. The number’s on the top of the page.”

Just then, Freddie Wyman returned with an older man in baggy pants and an ill-fitting shirt. The fireman introduced him as Richard Berryman, Brendan’s grandfather.

“He’s going to be fine,” Cindy told him.

“Hard heads run in the family,” Mr. Berryman said and winked at her. Then he turned to Brendan. “How you doing, Brendy?”

Brendan glanced at the old man. “Okay.” Then he moved to a sink where he studied his scalp in the wall mirror.

“Maybe it’ll knock some sense in him,” Mr. Berryman said to Cindy. “He quit school to work as a waiter, would you believe.”

“That’ll get old fast,” Cindy said, seeing the disappointment in the man’s face. “He’s seems like a smart kid. While we were cleaning him up, he was reciting Shakespeare.”

The old man humpfed. “What he needs is a girlfriend, not Shakespeare.”

“That’ll happen soon enough,” Cindy said.

“Watch out for glass doors,” Cindy said to Brendan. As she handed his grandfather some ointment and a box of gauze pads for the cut, the air was filled with shouting.

The next instant, the double doors burst open with paramedics pushing in a teenage girl on a gurney, trailed by several others including what looked like her parents crying. The girl’s body was covered with blood, and the paramedics were holding a mask on her face and an IV drip to her arm.

Cindy had heard the radio report when she had left for Radiology. Instantly, the ER team was in action. Interns and nurses swarmed around the girl, directing the paramedics where to take her. One tech shook his head at Cindy. The girl was critical. She needed immediate intubation, but somebody shouted that the operating rooms were occupied, they’d have to go to number four where Brendan had been.

While Cindy moved out of the way, she heard Richard say, “Isn’t that Trisha Costello?”

Brendan, who was still at the mirror, glanced at the battered girl on the gurney. “Yes,” he said, momentarily fascinated. Then returned to the mirror and his scalp.

Someplace amid the commotion, an intern shouted for the defibrillator. The girl had gone into cardiac arrest. Nurses were running and shouting as the girl was hooked up. Cindy was not part of the team because she had been working on Brendan when the dispatch came in. But from across the room she could see the electric pads come crashing down on the girl, and the body jolt in place. But a few moments later, another nurse said, “Again … No pulse, no pressure. Nothing … Again … Hang on, Trisha. HANG ON!”

It wasn’t long before Cindy could read the signs from the team around her that the girl was dead.

A wail of horror went up from the mother who was at the bedside with the interns, nurses, and technicians.

Like several of the other nonstaffers, Richard was stunned in place. “I think she died,” he said to Brendan.

Brendan looked over at the clutch of people through the open curtain. “Mmm,” he said. Then he turned to Richard and parted his hair. “Where did I get these?”

“For cryin’ out loud, a girl you know just died and you’re asking about some goddamn scratches on your head.” Richard’s voice was trembling.

Across from them, doctors were trying to comfort the parents who sobbed in grief.

Richard pulled Brendan from the mirror. “I can’t take this,” he said, and they left the emergency room, with Brendan still puzzled and feeling his scalp.

4

SAGAMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT

SAGAMORE, MASSACHUSETTS

The fax report sitting on Detective Greg Zakarian’s desk that morning was to the point:

Greg,Human remains pulled up in scallop net 12 miles off Gloucester 2 months ago. Has similar specs & markings to your case #01–057–4072. Positive ID. I think you might want to take a look.Joe Steiner

Joe Steiner was head pathologist at the medical examiner’s office in Pocasset.

Same specs and markings. Positive ID.

It was the first break in three years. Three long, frustrating years.

Greg sipped his coffee and looked at the two pictures pinned to the corkboard next to his desk: a photo of his wife Lindsay; and a pastel portrait of a young boy.

People no longer asked about Lindsay, because two years ago she was killed in a head-on collision on the Sagamore Bridge by some drunk who swerved into her lane. It had happened a little after midnight. She was returning from a too-long day at the Genevieve Bratton School, a residential treatment center for troubled girls in Plymouth where, for eight years, she had been a social worker. The drunk was returning from a stag party in Barnstable. She died instantly. He walked away with a broken collarbone. Lindsay had been the fundamental condition of Greg’s life, and in a telephone call, she was gone.

But people still asked about the boy in the other picture. Those who didn’t know wondered if he was Greg’s son. He’d say no, which was the literal truth. But to his colleagues in the department—from the dispatchers at the entrance to T.J. Gelford, his supervisor, to Norm Adler, the chief—the boy was his. Greg’s Boy. The Sagamore Boy. His own Boy in the Box.

For the last three years, Greg had tried to determine the child’s identity—ever since his skull was dug up in a sandbar on a local beach. As the responding officer, Greg had worked with CPAC, the state police, DA’s office, the medical examiner, the FBI, and missing children organizations. What they knew from forensic calibrations was that the skull belonged to a six- or seven-year-old white male. But they didn’t know who he was, where he came from, or how he had died. From the condition of the skull, it appeared to have been in the ocean for at least three years, and was probably washed up on the Sagamore Beach by storms. From where, nobody knew.

Two years ago, the state police abandoned the investigation since they had no leads, no tips, no cause of death, no evidence of a crime, no dental matches with anybody in the Missing Children Network’s files, no identity. Today, it was officially a cold case.

But Greg had kept the file open, regularly checking the databases of the Missing Children Network as well as the daily NCIC and CJIS broadcasts of missing persons from law enforcement agencies all over the country. His file was fat with old broadcasts. Because the Sagamore PD had no cold-case unit or funds, Greg did this on his own, in his spare time or at home, often pursuing out-of-town leads out of his own pocket because the department budget could no longer cover him. He had even hired a forensic anthropologist from Northeastern University to do an artistic reconstruction from the skull resulting in the drawing on his wall.

Greg knew that his colleagues saw the case as a private obsession. And that was true, since, from day one, Greg had had a gut feeling that there was something odd about this case: that it wasn’t just some hapless child who had fallen off a raft and gotten swept out to sea. Call it cop instinct, or intuition, or ESP, but Greg sensed something darkly disturbing. And, in spite of the years that had passed, he maintained his solitary investigation against the diminishing odds of resolution. He kept it up in part to take his mind off Lindsay’s death and to rescue himself from bitterness and self-absorption. A shrink would probably say that his obsession was rooted in a quest for his lost family—a need to find closure. Maybe so.

Lindsay was seven months pregnant when she was killed. The little boy she was carrying died with her.

Greg took Joe Steiner’s fax and walked down the hall to the office of Lieutenant Detective T.J. Gelford, his supervisor.

T.J. was on the phone, but he waved Greg in. When he hung up, he said, “That was Frank. He’s at CCMC with a cracked ankle. What else can go wrong?” He looked up at Greg. “What’s up?”

Greg handed T.J. the fax.

Gelford, who was in his late fifties, was not a large man. But he possessed a powerful presence. His hair had been buzz-cut so close to his scalp that it looked like a shadow. He had a roughly hewn rawboned face and gray implacable eyes that could with a microflick go from neutral to withering scorn. Gelford looked at the fax then looked up at Greg. “So?”

“It may be something,” Greg said. “I want to check it out.”

“What’s to check out?”

“He says there are similarities. I want to see what they are.”

Gelford took in a long scraping breath of air and let it out through his teeth in a hiss. “Greg, a dozen times I’ve told you to leave that case alone, there’s nothing there.”

“I hear you, but it’s the first time we’ve got something on the markings.”

Gelford looked at him with that flat, chastening glare. “Yeah, and what you got is coincidence. Natural coincidence.”

“That’s what I want to check out.”

Gelford leaned forward the way he did when he wanted to press a point. “You have chased after every damn shadow, every nibble, every look-alike. I let you go halfway across the country and back on this—twice. You’ve eaten up my budget, not to mention the assistance funds for those software people to run those photosuperimposition screens. I’m up to here with that damn skull kid. You’re not spending your time correctly on your cases, and frankly that pisses me off.”

“And frankly I’m tired of the shit cases I’ve been assigned—stolen bikes, kids drinking, wallet snatches—they’re not even real crimes or ones that can be solved.”

“Maybe if you did what you’re told and dropped this thing, you wouldn’t be getting shit cases. You aren’t solving the ones you’re supposed to anyway.”

Gelford was right, and although he complained to his face, when Greg got home at night he fessed up. He’d go through the motions of investigating something, but he’d be only half there. “Joe Steiner doesn’t make calls unless he’s got something.”

“And Joe Steiner isn’t short of manpower,” Gelford shot back.

“Two hours, T.J. That’s all I’m asking. Two hours. If it’s nothing, I’ll bury it.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit. Just two hours.”

Gelford picked up the A.M. docket from a pile of papers. “Yeah, two hours of wild-goose chasing, while I’m looking at three domestics, an assault and battery, one victim in critical condition. A sniper’s shooting pellets at motorists on Route 3, some asshole kids trashed the high school last night, and vacationers are pouring in by the thousands. You want some real crimes, I’ve got some for you.”

Greg checked his watch. “Back by noon, I promise.” He smiled, hoping to decharge the moment.

But Gelford did not smile back, nor did his manner soften. “This is not what we’re paying you for.”

“T.J., I’ve got a hunch there’s a connection here.”

“That’s what you said the last time and twenty times before that. I’ve had it with your hunches up to here. Get ahold of yourself: The case is closed.”

Greg took a deep breath to center himself. “Someone, somewhere, has lost a kid. Someone, somewhere, still misses him and has his picture hanging up. He’s somebody’s son.”

“Yeah, but not yours.”

Greg felt the sting of that. It was the mind-set of the barracks—that Greg’s tenacity went beyond a professional determination, that it was borderline pathological. “Three years ago I made a promise to myself to find out who that kid was and what happened to him, and I intend to keep that promise.”

“That’s all nice and good, but nobody knows who the kid is, and not from the lack of trying,” Gelford added. “You and two other detectives from the state hunted for the next of kin full-time for eight weeks. You canvassed the schools, day-care centers, pediatricians, and hospitals. Twenty thousand fliers from that reconstruction were distributed Capeside and off. We flooded the Internet, even got a fifteen-grand reward. You scoured all the databases, chased down leads from I don’t know how many families looking for a son the same age. It’s been three years, Greg, three years and nobody’s called your hot line to claim him. What can I say? It’s a fucking dead end.”

He was right again. Given the department budget, they had pulled all the stops. And they had floated plenty of theories on why nobody had claimed the boy. He could have been abducted from out of state, far from the Cape and the publicity blitz; his parents could have died—maybe even with him—perhaps in a boating accident. His parents could be illegal immigrants, afraid to speak with police; or they could have even been the killers; or it could have been a cult murder. One possibility was as good as the next, and they pursued them all. But Greg refused to accept their finality or to let the child remain an unnamed, unclaimed victim of happenstance. Which was why he had taken the case on his own. Which was why after three years, the kid was like family.

“I’d do this after-hours,” Greg said, “but Steiner gets off work before I do. Please.”

Gelford picked up the fax. “I don’t know how to say this without saying it, but this obsession of yours has affected department morale. People are resenting how it’s getting in the way of your real obligations, how you’re not pulling your own weight. And so do I.” He stopped for a moment. “Frankly, Greg, it’s become something of a bad joke. They’re saying stuff like how you should stop whacking your stick on this skull—and how you should get a wife.”

Greg felt the blood rise in his face. He knew that he had distanced himself from the others, even dropping off the department softball team, and bowing out of picnics, and fishing jaunts. He was even aware that other investigators were refusing to work on cases with him, including his onetime partner, Steve Powers. But the thought that he had become a department joke was mortifying. Suddenly he saw himself as a pathetic fool chasing his own tail.

Get a wife.

“This may be my hang-up, but I have not compromised my duties here.”

“That’s arguable,” Gelford said. “But you’ve been at this for three years, and you’re batting a dead mouse.” He handed back the fax.

Greg nodded, but said nothing.

“I think you might want to take a look,” Steiner had written.

Gelford studied Greg’s face. “Noon, and not a minute over,” Gelford said. “But if this does not pan out—as I expect it won’t—you’ll bury it for good. Otherwise … you know the rest.” Gelford then picked up the phone to say that the conversation was over.

Greg folded the fax and put it in his shirt pocket.

“Similar markings.”

“Thanks,” Greg said and left, his mind humming to get over to the ME’s office.

5

“Are you all right?” Martin asked.

“I’m fine,” Rachel said.

“Well, you don’t look it.”

“Don’t start.”

“Don’t start what? You look like you’re about to go to your own funeral.”

“I said I’m fine.”

They were in the kitchen, and Rachel was making pancakes. She was still in her bathrobe, hunched over the stove, pressing chocolate chips into the frying batter. Dylan loved chocolate-chip pancakes, and she made them for him at least once a week. Martin was dressed and ready to go to work.

The bouquet of roses he had bought last night sat in a vase on the dining room table. They had never made it to the Blue Heron. Rachel said she wasn’t up for it.

“You want pancakes?” she asked, her voice void of inflection. Her face was ashen and the flesh under her eyes was puffy. Her hair was disheveled and stuck back by a couple of hasty bobby pins. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.

“I’ll just have some orange juice,” he said and poured a glass. “I’ve got a breakfast meeting with Charlie O’Neill on the road.”

She nodded woodenly. He hated it when she got in these moods. Upstairs Dylan could be heard singing while getting dressed. He liked show tunes, and at the moment he was wailing “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.”

Martin studied Rachel while he drank his juice. She looked miserable, standing there hunched over like an old woman, her feet stuffed into a pair of old slippers, her face looking as if it had been shaped out of bread dough. “So, there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

“I said I’m fine,” she snapped.

“Then how come we haven’t made love for over three weeks?”

Her body slumped in annoyance, but she didn’t answer.

“How come you’ve been avoiding me like I’m the goddamn Ebola virus?”

Without looking up from the pan she said, “I haven’t been avoiding you. And stop swearing, he’ll hear you.”

“You have been avoiding me. For weeks I’ve suggested we go out to dinner together, or a movie or something nice and romantic, but you’re too tired. You don’t feel up to it. You’ve got a headache. You go to bed early. Except for bumping into me, I don’t think you’ve physically touched me in weeks. Something’s wrong, and I want to know what the hell it is.”

Rachel continued staring into the pan, then slowly she turned her head toward him. She seemed just about to respond but then laid the spatula down and went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to Dylan that breakfast was ready.

When she returned, Martin said, “I don’t know what the problem is, but you’ve been moping around here like you’ve got some goddamn—”

Suddenly she let out a scream, shaking her hand. She had burned the tip of her finger pressing chocolate chips into the batter.

Martin ran to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She was not just whimpering in discomfort. She was outright screaming, as if in outrage that the pan had done this to her. Then, she burst into tears.

Martin walked her to the sink and turned on the cold water and held her hand under it. With one arm around her shoulder, the other hand holding hers under the water, he could feel her shaking as she stood there, deep wracking sobs rising from a place that had nothing to do with burnt fingers.

“Mommy! What happened?” Dylan ran into the kitchen and instantly froze in place at the tableau of Martin holding Rachel’s finger under the streaming water and Rachel crying, tears pouring freely from her eyes and her nose running.

“Mommy just burned her finger,” Martin said. “She’s going to be fine.”

“Mommeee.” Dylan ran over to her and hugged her about the middle and buried his face into her bathrobe, then he began to cry.

“It’s burning!” Rachel shouted through her tears. “Turn it off.”

On the stove smoke billowed up from the frying pan.

“It’s burning,” Dylan screamed. “Fire!”

I’m going to lose my fucking mind, Martin thought, as he shot to the stove, turned off the gas, and pulled the pan off the burner.

Suddenly the smoke alarm went off, filling the house with a hideous electronic wail.

While Dylan yelled, his hands to his ears, and Rachel stood by the sink crying, Martin pulled out a kitchen chair. Yup! Any second now I’m gonna hear a snap like a celery stalk, and then I can join the chorus, screaming and blubbering. Yoweeeee!

He punched off the alarm.

The pancakes looked like smoking hockey pucks. Martin felt the crazy urge to laugh, but pushed it down. Instead he tore a couple of sheets off the paper-towel rack and handed them to Rachel. While she dried her face, Dylan insisted that she hold her finger up so he could kiss the boo-boo.

Just another normal little breakfast scene in the happy Whitman household.

“I think you’re going to make it,” Martin said, looking at her finger, “thanks to ole Dr. Dylan here.” He winked at his son. The tip of Rachel’s index finger was a white crust of burnt skin. Martin tousled his son’s hair. “You made her feel better already, right?”

Rachel nodded and caught her breath. She smiled thinly and gave her son a hug.

Seeing Rachel pull herself together again, Dylan rapidly repaired. “Am I going to be a doctor when I grow up?”

“I don’t see why not,” Martin said. “You’ve got the touch. Now maybe you should go upstairs and put the other shoe and sock on, okay, Doc?”

Dylan looked to Rachel. “Take two ass burns and call me in the morning,” he said, and headed upstairs. It was something Martin said all the time.

Rachel nodded, then headed for the stove to clean the frying pan. Her body had slumped into itself again.

Martin came over to her and gave her a hug. She let him, but it was like hugging a dead person. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

She shook her head. “Nothing to tell,” she whispered.

“I don’t believe you. And you don’t believe you.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You never were a good liar.”

Her eyes filled with tears again. “You’re going to be late for your meeting. Say hello to Charlie.”

He nodded. “I love you, woman, but I wish you’d let me in.”

She hugged him weakly, and he left.

He was right: She never was a good liar.

Rachel watched Martin pull out of the driveway. She cleaned the pan and made another batch of pancakes. When she was done, she called Dylan down. And while he ate, she got dressed.

A little before nine o’clock she dropped Dylan off at DellKids and headed toward Rockville, which was nearly forty miles south of Hawthorne. They had thought of finding a local pediatrician, but Dr. Rose had attended Dylan since his infancy. And Rachel liked the man. More importantly, Dylan liked him. He was a warm and gracious man who never rushed through an examination.

To get to the highway, Rachel headed down Magnolia Drive, trying to ease her mind against the fugue playing inside her head.

Had the MRI results been normal, the doctor would have called himself and just said things looked fine. If there was a problem, he would surely have called himself—unless he didn’t get the chance because of the emergency. Maybe he wanted to talk to her about some special learning programs for Dylan.

Yes, think Special Program, she told herself. Special Program. Nice and normal. No problems. No tumors. No …

It was her idea to have the scan in the first place, and Dr. Rose had agreed—a good precautionary measure since the procedure was easy and noninvasive.

Normal procedure. Normal precaution.

That was what she had told herself. Her cover story to herself.

As Rachel drove along, she felt the onslaught of an anxiety attack. She tried to concentrate on the scenery, tried to distract herself by taking in the arborway of maples and oaks and the seaside mansions that clutched the rocky coastline—mansions with their driveway entrances of granite pillars, some surmounted with large alabaster pineapples that forbade you to enter. The road opened up to a sea view and a scattering of shingled homes with deep and closely cropped lawns, sculpted hedges, and trellised gardens festooned with rose blossoms. In the distance, powerboats cut quicksilver plumes across the harbor under a brilliant blue sky.

It was all so perfect. All so good and pure. And now she was going to see if she had destroyed her son.

As she drove down Route 93 toward Rockville, her mind tripped back.

It had started rather casually—like the occasional cough that develops into pneumonia or the dull ache in the left arm that throbs its way to triple bypass surgery. The prelude was a casual note that came in the mail one day early last fall:

Dear Mrs. Whitman,As you know, we have a parentlteacher’s conference in two weeks, but

I’m wondering if we could meet sooner—possibly next week,

No big problem, but I’d like to discuss Dylan’s progress …

It was signed Karen Andrews, Dylan’s teacher. They had enrolled him in a Montessori preschool in Plymouth because the place had one of the best reputations on the South Shore. It also had an admissions waiting list two years long. Not taking any chances and determined to get the very best for their son, Rachel and Martin had entered Dylan’s name when he was eighteen months old. He was four when he started.

She could still recall how excited he was—how excited they all were. For weeks before opening day, they would lie down with him at bedtime and he would count the intervening days. When it finally arrived, Rachel had dressed him in blue plaid shorts, a white polo shirt, and new white and blue striped sneakers, of which he was very proud. With his hair, a shiny chestnut color, parted neatly on the side, and his big green eyes and sweet pink mouth, he looked positively gorgeous. Because of the occasion, Martin took the morning off so they could all go together. Rachel believed in rituals, and this occasion was tantamount to Dylan’s first birthday or Christmas.

Before they headed off, Rachel had directed Martin and Dylan into the front yard where she shot a roll of color prints. Later she would select the best shots and put them in a special album of first-schoolday photos, documenting Dylan’s progress from then to college.

The note arrived in mid-October—the sixteenth, to be exact. Ms. Andrews wanted to set up a conference with Rachel and Martin. They agreed on a day; but because Martin was unexpectedly out of town, Rachel met with the teacher herself.

Karen, a sincere and dedicated woman, began by saying that Dylan was an adorable and sweet child, a view shared by the entire staff. She also went on to say that he loved music and had a beautiful voice, and that he was popular with the other children. “He’s very sociable and very caring of the other kids,” she said. “He also has a great sense of humor, and gets the kids laughing.”

Rachel nodded, thinking this was leading to a complaint that Dylan was too much the class clown, working up the other kids to rowdiness. It wouldn’t take much to encourage him—just a couple of laughs to put him on a roll. But would clowning around be reason for a parental conference? “So what’s the problem?”

“Well, his language.”

“His language?” Maybe Dylan had picked up some swears from Martin.

“He seems to have some difficulty accessing and processing words. Each morning we go to the big wall calendar and put a Velcro star on that day. But first we recite the days of the week in unison. Dylan doesn’t know them. He doesn’t remember from day to day. He also doesn’t know what year it is, even though it’s written down in large letters and we do this every day.”

“Is that so unusual at his age?” It was possible that he was just a little behind the other kids. Martin himself didn’t learn to read until he was eight.

“No, but he also has problems with comprehending What? Where? When? questions. If I ask him ‘What day is it?’ he’ll just repeat the question. Or if I ask ‘Where are the crayons?’ he’ll just answer ‘Crayons’ or repeat the question. He doesn’t seem to understand some basic language concepts. I mean, you must have observed these things at home.”

She had but thought it was just his age. That he would grow out of the problem.

“The same in reading group,” Ms. Andrews continued. “To make story time interactive, I read a few sentences then ask the children what they think about this or that or what do they expect will happen next. And we go right around the circle so each child gets a chance to respond and be rewarded for his or her input. But when it’s Dylan’s turn, he often won’t recall what the story was about or what’s been said about it.”

Rachel began to feel an uneasiness grip her. “What do you think the problem is?”

“Well, it could be several things. It’s possible he’s experiencing some emotional difficulties at home.”

“I can assure you that we’re happily married,” Rachel said defensively. “And if my husband and I have a problem, we make it a point not to discuss it in front of Dylan.”

“I’m sure. But my point is that Dylan has some kind of LD problem.”

“LD?”

“Learning disability.”

“Learning disability?” She uttered the words as if testing a foreign expression.

“He seems to be developmentally delayed. One possibility is that he’s dyslexic. Or he may have some form of ADD—attention deficit disorder. These problems are not uncommon. Twenty percent of all schoolchildren have some form of disability. But it’s something that can be tested for and dealt with very effectively.”

“You mean drugs? Ritalin or whatever?”

“That or other effective drugs. But I think you should consult your pediatrician and look for specialists to evaluate him. Maybe a neurophysician.”

Rachel felt her insides clutch. Learning disability. Dyslexia. Developmentally delayed. Attention deficit disorder. Ritalin. In a matter of moments her son had graduated from class clown to a child suffering neurological dysfunctions.

While she sat there, Rachel’s mind had scrambled for explanations—external realities that she could point to.

The environment. She had taken every precaution possible. Their first house had been built in 1935, and had tested positive for lead paint. So they had the place stripped of every square inch of old paint—which cost a fortune. Then they had all the asbestos insulation removed from the basement heating pipes and replaced with a nontoxic substitute. She had even tested the house for radon gas, finding it perfectly safe. Although Rockville water came from a local reservoir, Rachel took no chances and had spring water delivered to the house every two weeks.

Television. Even though she had restricted Dylan to maybe an hour or two a day—and exclusively to PBS children’s shows—she would sometimes catch him watching it on the sly. God knows how all the rapid-fire cuts could mess up a child’s brain development. Maybe Dylan had a special susceptibility to all the flash, compromising his powers of concentration. She knew Martin would resist because they already had fights over letting Dylan watch sporting events and comedy shows. “It’s quality time—what fathers and sons do,” he had protested. “Sitting passively in front of a baseball game broken up by two hundred beer and car commercials isn’t quality time,” she had shot back. “If you want some quality time take him to Fenway Park or go in the backyard and play catch.” Two hours after her meeting with Karen Andrews, Rachel had their cable TV service terminated in the family room. Martin grumbled for days.

Looking back, she realized how futile all that ramrod determination now seemed. Because the problem went back before that October morning, before Dylan’s first day at preschool. Before his birth.

It went back to Halloween night of her junior year in college. She was at an all-night party at a friend’s house, and everybody was doing acid. She had been dating a chemistry grad who made his own LSD in the school’s lab. The stuff was easy to synthesize, and a lot cheaper than that sold on the street. But this one night he had introduced her to a variation—acid laced with another drug he had synthesized—the combo, he said, would make sex “cosmic.” The street name was TNT. Like acid, the stuff was psychedelic, turning the bedroom walls into polychrome liquid crystal surfaces. But the real kick was sex: An orgiastic pulsation of light and sound where every physical sensation was amplified into starburst scintillations that climaxed in a supernova explosion.

As she pulled her car into the parking space behind Dr. Rose’s office, the sick irony struck her: She was joining the ranks of other mothers and fathers of LD kids, fluent in the statistics, the lingo, and that antiseptic alphabet soup—ADD, ADHD, LD, FAS, WISC. IQ. MRI. LSD.

And the disorder had its source in her: TNT.

“You can take a seat, Mrs. Whitman. The doctor will be with you in a few minutes,” said Liz, Dr. Rose’s secretary, when Rachel entered the office.

Working to calm herself, she picked up a copy of Parenting magazine and thumbed through the pages, trying to focus her mind. It seemed every other story in the magazine was directed at her: “Raising an Eager Reader.” “Baby Games that Teach.” “Hyperactivity Hype?” “How to Help Your Kids Learn Better.” “Great Expectations.”

God, let him be okay. I beg you.

Liz opened the door. “The doctor will see you now.”

Rachel followed her down the corridor to the doctor’s office. “Sorry about the wait.” Dr. Rose was a handsome man of about fifty with a simpatico face and large warm exotic eyes.

Rachel tried to read them as she shook his hand.

“Have a seat, please.” When he sat back down behind his desk he picked up a folder from a pile of material. “Well, the results of the brain scan are back.”

Tumor, whispered a voice in her head. He’s going to say Dylan has a brain tumor.

The doctor got up and slipped the MRI scan on the light display board.

There were three separate black-and-white negative sheets with sixteen shots on each from different angles. It was shocking to see her little boy rendered as a specimen, stripped to his bones and teeth.

“As I explained the other day, brain scanners can’t see individual cells, nor can they tell if brain cells have been rearranged or are missing. Only tissue samples or an autopsy can tell us that. But the images can tell us if there are anomalous structures or deformities—”

But Rachel cut him off. “Is he okay?”

“Well, there is an anomaly.”

“An anomaly?”

With his pencil he pointed to an area on the left side of Dylan’s brain. “Neurology is not my specialty, so I consulted with Dr. Gerald Cormier, a neurosurgeon at the Lahey Clinic, and according to his report there appears to be some developmental abnormality in the ventricular system over here.” He pointed to a white area on the left. “It seems that Dylan has slightly dilated ventricles in this area which suggests some maldevelopment of the thalamus, which is deep in the brain in this area.” He moved the pencil to the lower part of the brain scan. “This kind of malformation in this area is associated with the type of learning problems that Dylan has, I’m told.”

Rachel’s eyes flooded with tears. “My God, what does that mean?”

“I’m not really the one to say. But I did ask Dr. Cormier what the prognosis was for Dylan’s cognitive development, and he said that, unfortunately, this kind of underdevelopment usually results in a reduction in learning abilities.”

Rachel let out a groan.

“This really is not my area, but I’ve read that there’s sometimes a compensatory phenomenon,” he added. “When one side of the brain has deficient wiring, it’s been found that the corresponding healthy region in the opposite hemisphere tends to develop more extensive patterns of connections than is normal. There’s no way to tell from the scan, but it’s entirely possible that the right side of Dylan’s brain is developing excessive connections.”

Rachel nodded, knowing that the doctor wanted to put Dylan’s condition in the best possible light.

“If it’s any consolation, both Einstein and the painter Rodin had deficient left-hemisphere language skills, yet they excelled in the right-brain skills as we all know.”

His attempt to make her feel better produced the opposite effect, because she knew in her heart of hearts that Dylan was damaged, and to suggest he might grow up to be a mathematical or artistic prodigy was all the more painful for its improbability.

“How do you think it happened?”

The doctor handed her a box of tissues. “Well, there’s no way of knowing for sure, but since there’s no evidence of head trauma, my guess is that it either happened in utero or it’s genetic. Given his medical history, we can pretty much rule out diseases. One possibility is prenatal exposure to environmental toxins which can affect brain development,” he said. “You know, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, or any kind of radiation. As far as you recall, were you ever exposed to any such chemicals while pregnant?”

“No.”

“Chemotherapy?”

“No.”

“Did Martin use any pesticides or insecticides to excess that you know of?”

“No.”

“Or longtime exposure to carbon monoxide?”

The question jogged through her. “Do you mean did I try to kill myself?”

“That was not my question, but car exhaust is one form of the gas. Another is a faulty oil burner. Anything like that?”

Rachel shook her head. His questions were cutting closer to the quick. And she wondered if she were projecting the image of someone with a history of mental instability.

“Of course not,” the doctor said, musing over the charts. “How about alcohol or drugs?”

She had sensed the question before it hit the air. “No. I drink very little, and I certainly didn’t while carrying Dylan.”

“Then my guess is that it’s probably genetic since there’s a lot of evidence linking heredity factors to neurophysiological disorders—schizophrenia, depression, stuttering, hyperactivity, alcoholism, and so forth But, once again, I’m not the man to ask. You really have to see a pediatric neurologist.”

Silence filled the room as the doctor waited for her to respond. “Rachel, are you all right?”

She nodded ever so slightly, thinking how there was only one thing more devastating than discovering that your much-wanted child has a brain disorder: the thought that you may have caused that disorder. In a low voice, she said, “I took drugs when I was in college.”

There! It was out.

Dr. Rose rocked back in his seat. “I see. And what did you take?”

“LSD laced with TNT,” she said. “On and off for about two years.”

“And you’re wondering if that caused brain damage in your son.”

She nodded.

“From what I know, there’s no evidence that LSD is a mutagen—that it causes chromosomal damage that could affect unborn children. There were rumors aloft in the sixties, but none was ever found. But I don’t know what this TNT is.”

“It’s also known as trimethoxy-4-methyl-triphetamine, TNT to street people.” The name was etched in her brain.

Rachel tried to push back the tears as she reached into her handbag and pulled out a Newsweek article from three weeks ago. As was typical of newsmagazines its cutesy title belied the horrors: “Acid Kickback.” As if they were reporting about heartburn. She handed the sheets to the doctor.

He adjusted his reading glasses. “‘New study shows evidence linking TNT-tainted LSD and genetic defects in users’ offspring.’” Then he read the rest of the piece to himself as Rachel sat there slowly dying.

For years, she had rested easy in the knowledge that no evidence had been found that LSD was a mutagen. Then Newsweek and the wire services had picked up a recent study by a Yale research group that set off an alarm in Rachel’s soul. The chief culprit was a family of synthetics chemically described as tryptamines, the ugliest of which was TNT, a substance hundreds of times more potent than mescaline. It was what Jake Gordon had synthesized and added to his acid back in school. According to the report, the stuff was genetically toxic, entering the reproductive cells of the female users and causing alterations in the ova, resulting in deformities in children. What startled Rachel was the figure: sixty-five percent of habitual female users of TNT-laced acid gave birth to children with cancers and birth defects. Two babies in the study were born without brains.

“Did you know for certain it was laced with TNT?”

“Yes.”

If the doctor wondered why, he didn’t ask. As all acidheads knew, TNT-LACED acid heightened sexual experience. For better orgasms, Rachel’s son was now brain damaged.

“I’ve not seen the studies, so I can’t tell you if what you took caused Dylan’s problems. And ultimately it may not be possible to tell. But frankly, Rachel, I’m not sure just how useful it is to know that. You could end up consuming yourself with guilt.”

She nodded. I already am.

“Have you discussed this with Martin?”

“Yes.” She had not expected the question. Reflexively, she lied, knowing how much worse it would sound if she had kept it from him. Although Martin knew that she had taken drugs in college—something she had confessed years ago—he did not know about TNT. Maybe someday she’d tell him. But how do you admit to your husband that you may have ruined your only child?

“Well, I think the important thing is to decide on how best to help Dylan with his learning process—working with his school to get the best programs for him. I’ll be happy to give you a referral to pediatric neurologists.” He wrote some names on a notepad and handed them to her.

She thanked him and got up to leave, feeling sick to the core of her soul.

She took a long last look at the films against the light board, thinking that she would do anything to go back in time and undo what she had done.

Anything.

6

CENTRAL FLORIDA

In the open, he was a monster. In the bush, he was invisible.

Billy liked that. He liked how he moved through the woods like a ripple. The alien in Predator. He liked how he could disappear by standing still. He liked how he could melt into scrub so that neither human nor beast could detect his presence. The excitement made him sweat all the more.

What he did not like was the heat.

He slipped out from the clutch of sapling oaks and crossed the clearing. The late afternoon sun sent thick shafts of light through the woods. He wished it were cloudy and twenty degrees cooler. He wished he were doing this someplace in the cool north and not these backwater woods of central Florida where the air felt like hot glue. He wished this were a simple snick, snick, you’re dead.

The scent-free, 3-D hooded camo suit with the fake leaves sewn all over the surface was the stalker’s dream. The ultimate in concealment, short of turning into a butterfly. But the material did not breathe. Inside the hood, his face was slick and his clothes were soaked with perspiration. That made him angry. That made him want to get this over with snick snick. But that wasn’t the assignment.

Billy passed through the clearing to the shack by Little Wiggins Canal, as it was known to the locals, or Number 341 to the U.S. Geological Survey map. The structure was little more than a six-foot cube, banged together with old timbers and roofing sheets the kid’s mother picked up somewhere. The floor was an ancient piece of linoleum over dirt, and the compressed-wood door and single window were crude. The interior consisted of a child’s table and chair, some Matchbox cars, a butterfly guidebook, a Gators banner, and tacked-up pictures of the kid and his dog—rough gestures at clubhouse homeyness, Billy thought. The place was a second home to the kid, a hangout for him and his dog, a place to play fort, games, hide-and-seek with other kids. A little tyke hideaway by the canal.

It was also the last place the little tyke would remember of his old life.

Through the brush, the battered blue and white Airstream trailer that the kid and his mother called home was barely visible from the canal, perched up on the bluff maybe a hundred feet from the shack. Because of the recent drought, the water was low so the mother had no reason to fear the kid getting swept downstream. Spring would be a different story altogether. She’d never let him come down here alone, especially since alligators mated in springtime. But it wasn’t spring—and the canal wasn’t raging and the fish weren’t jumping and the cotton wasn’t high.

So the boy came down. His name was Travis Valentine. Nice name, smart boy. The dog’s name was Bo, short for Bodacious. Dumb name, dumb dog, but teeth down to here.

The dog came first. A black mongrel whose genealogy some Lab must have made a pass at. For Billy, the dog was an unnecessary complication—and half the reason for the getup. A third of the odors of human beings issued from the head—mouths, nostrils, eyes, facial skin. Another third from the hands. Thus, the face-plated hood and scent-lock surgical gloves. Without them Billy would have broadcast his presence the moment the dog stepped outside the trailer, setting off barking like a fire alarm. But Billy was a hunter. He knew better. Still, he didn’t like to think what that dog could do to his ankle. He was a big muscular animal with a big bouldery head and powerful jaws that could crack through bone like that.

Billy heard the door of the trailer slap against the frame. “You got ten minutes, so be back when I ring. And keep away from the water, now.” She’d summon him with a handbell.

The kid moved down the little path, the dog ranging widely, snorting after every critter scent, yarfing and whining to itself. Creatures of habit. Dinner over, and it was down by the riverside with old Bo. The same pattern Billy had observed over the past few nights.

It didn’t take Bo long to pick up the rabbit. In a matter of seconds he found the half-buried carcass Billy had laid out earlier under a bush. And while the dog got lost in the bouquet of viscera, the little boy in the red shorts and white Kennedy Space Center T-shirt and sneakers came sauntering down the dirt lane to the shack. In his right hand was a long-handled net, a glass jar in his left. A butterfly hunt. The kid collected butterflies. And, as Billy had noted, the place was loaded with them.

In his mossy oakleaf Scent-Lok 3-D camo suit, Billy stood behind some trees just a few yards from the shack, his breath wheezing inside his mask and misting up the eye plate. He had used the outfit to hunt deer, but it was the first time on a kid.

While the boy was at some bush maybe twenty yards away, the scrub shifted behind the dog. The dog looked up, and before he could muster a growl, a muffled snick cut the air. And the dog’s head blew open.

“Bo? Here, Bo?”

The boy had heard something and looked around. Just a half-note yelp. No more. He went to the shack and looked inside, thinking the animal had passed through the small swing flap. “Bo?”

Bo. That was the last syllable the boy uttered.

Billy slapped the chloroform-soaked towel against the kid’s face from behind, raising the squirming body against his chest. He struggled with surprising vigor, whimpering into the towel, but the thick hand clamped the small face like an iron mask, forcing the pockets of his lungs to swell with the vapors. To prevent him from heeling his genitals, Billy pressed against the wall, locking his leg around the boy’s shins.

The boy struggled and whimpered for maybe half a minute. Then it was over. A final twitch, and Travis Valentine’s young-colt strength gave out. Billy lowered him to the floor as limp as a rag doll.

For a brief moment, Billy studied his prey. The kid was actually good-looking, with an oval face and short chin, small pug nose, and feathery brown eyebrows, a band of freckles across his nose, his shiny hair longer than was fashionable. His eyes were slitted open, and Billy could see the hazel irises. If he were a girl he’d be beautiful.

Enough of this, thought Billy. He had to get moving before the mother rang her bell. When the kid wouldn’t come, she’d clang some more. And when he still didn’t respond, she’d be down.

Billy unzipped a black body bag made of the same scent-free material as his suit, then took off the kid’s shoes and laid him in it, then zipped it. He grabbed the butterfly net and went back down to the canal. The place was dead—not a sound except for the bugs and bats chittering in the darkening skies. He went back to the shack, and when he was certain that the woods were clear, he moved outside and with his gloved hands picked up the dog and scraps of brain matter and dumped it all and the rabbit into another bag. He sprayed the ground with coon urine from the aerosol can to deflect search-party dogs.

When he finished, he hauled the bags back into the woods maybe two hundred yards then turned west and headed to where yesterday he had dug the four-foot-deep hole, now covered over with brush. He laid down his bundles and uncovered the hole. It was deep enough and already limed. He dropped in the remains, filled the hole with dirt again, sprayed more coon urine, and then returned the brush.

But the exertion in the suit nearly made him faint. He trudged his way to the next clearing in the trees then crossed up and over the rise that would take him back to Little Wiggins Canal Road and to the cutoff in the woods where the van waited with the Igloo cooler full of ice and the six bottles of Coors Lite.

Billy thought about the beer then about the story in tomorrow’s local papers: How little six-year-old Travis Valentine of Little Wiggins Canal Road and his dog Bo were missing, and how the authorities speculated that the boy had gotten lost in the woods. And in a few days people would begin to fear that the boy and his dog had been snatched by alligators because it was nesting season and males are very protective by nature. And then it would come out how some large bulls reaching upward of eleven feet had been spotted in canals not too far from here. Wildlife officers would comment that although gators generally fear humans, some local animals had lost their timidity because residents had been feeding them even though that was against the law, and that most gator attacks occurred around dusk. And a spokesman from the Florida Game and Fish Commission would say something about how the boy’s death should not create a panic, that there had been only eleven confirmed deaths by alligator in the last twenty years, and that death by drowning and bee sting were more common. While that wouldn’t be much comfort to Mrs. Valentine, the commission just wanted to put things in perspective. And the local sheriffs office would solemnly promise that his men would hunt and kill the animal, and that the Game Commission would dissect it to ensure it was the one that got the Valentine boy.

And the distraught mother would report how there had been no screaming or barking or sounds of thrashing water. And how Travis would never disobey her and go near the water because he had more sense than that. He knew about gators, and even though they had almost never been spotted in the vicinity, she had schooled him right. Besides, he had Bo who would detect a gator if it were nearby.

But the authorities would express bafflement that even with a party of police, forest rangers, and a couple dozen backcountry volunteers with dogs, not a trace had been found of young Travis or his mutt—just a butterfly net and a solitary sneaker at the edge of the canal, leading them to rule out foul play, mountain lions, and bears, leaving them with the sad conclusion that both the dog and the boy had been snatched by alligators, the dog probably first—pulled right off the shore without a sound—then, when he went to help, another animal had burst from the depths and pulled in Travis, too.

No bloody clothes, no ravished bodies, nothing but a single sneaker and a butterfly net.

Like he had just up and disappeared snick snick.

7

To Greg’s mind, the groomed piney acreage surrounding the medical examiner’s office was an overstated apology for the interior grimness.

One of the three satellite offices of the Boston headquarters, the Pocasset unit occupied the dark concrete basement of Barnstable County Hospital, a former chronic care facility. Joe Steiner’s office was off a labyrinthine hallway, which housed autopsy rooms, a morgue, and storage facilities filled with cadavers and body parts in plastic containers. Greg parked next to some white ME vans.

He hated the place, for it was where Lindsay had been brought that night two years ago. As he walked down the hall, he could still recall the soupy unreality of moving past these walls and doors to identify her body, knowing that she was dead, while at the same time a tiny part of his brain clung to a candle flicker of hope that it was another woman they had pulled out of the wreckage.

It had been a clear, cool starry April night—the kind that made you aware of infinity, and just how incidental human life is. He had been at home half-watching a ball game and trying to stay awake until Lindsay returned. She was late because one of the girls at Genevieve Bratton had tried to kill herself, and Lindsay was most of the crisis-management team. Over the years, she had seen girls whose young lives were full of horrors so awful that she had stopped talking about them. And many of those lives she had helped turn around. Her colleagues spoke glowingly of her compassion and skills in working with troubled kids. At a fund-raising gala three years ago, she was commended for her work. A graduate who had come into the school at age fourteen—a suicidal victim of repeated sexual abuse, an alcoholic, and a drug addict with a rap sheet a yard long—personally thanked Lindsay for setting her on a path of recovery that had led to a college degree, a successful career, and a sense of self-esteem. Greg had tears of pride in his eyes as the. audience gave Lindsay a standing ovation.

Greg moved down the corridor toward Joe Steiner’s office, and he could still feel the horrid disbelief that clutched him as he walked into Room 55 two years ago to identify her body—how Joe had met him in the hall surrounded by troopers and other officers, including T.J. Gelford. How their faces appeared like a funeral frieze.

Today Joe Steiner was on his phone at his desk, the sports section of The Boston Herald spread open, and a cigarette burning in an ashtray beside an open bag of Cape Cod dark russet potato chips. An air conditioner in a high window groaned against the sultry ocean air. Through the plastic divider was the autopsy room, occupied mostly by a single white porcelain cadaver table under lights and a butcher’s scale.

Reluctantly Greg’s job brought him here a few times a year, and the place always looked the same. On the floor sat a stack of large white plastic formaldehyde containers labeled in Magic Marker—heart, liver, uterus, lungs, brain—each with a case number. Nearby was a cardboard carton of small screw-top specimen jars containing slices of different human organs. Also on the floor was a small white refrigerator, containing vials of blood and urine. The place was a human chop shop.

“Tonight’s my last good night of sleep,” Joe said when he got off the phone. “My daughter Sarah gets her driver’s license tomorrow.”

Joe was only half-joking. He had been a medical examiner for nearly twenty years, conducting more than a hundred autopsies annually. In his time, he had been host to every conceivable form of human death: by fire and water; in car, boat, and plane accidents; by their own hand and somebody else’s. As he once said, he had seen it all. To him, the deceased’s remains were no longer a human being but a scientific specimen containing information on it or in it—information that would assist the judicial system, public health office, police departments, and surviving families. But what still affected Joe—what still cut through that professional crust—was finding on his table a teenager who had wrapped himself or herself around a tree. “Such a waste,” he once said with tears in his eyes.

“I wish they’d up the age to thirty-five.”

“Or give them bumper cars for the first ten years,” Greg said.

Joe smiled. He had sad blue eyes that reminded you of the unspeakable images they had absorbed in his two decades. “So, how you doing?”

Greg knew what he meant: Had he ridden down the grief? Had he gotten on with his life since Lindsay’s death? Had he started dating other women?

During the first year after his wife’s death, Greg’s grief was ravenous, all-consuming. Early on, he wasn’t certain he could survive—and several nights he had found himself gnawing on the barrel of his gun. He had lost the love of his life and his baby-to-be, and with them all purpose. Yet, knowing that Lindsay would want him to go on, he threw himself into his work, taking on extra cases, doing overtime. Still, there were days when he could barely function for missing her. It was like trying to breathe on one lung.

The thought of seeing other women during that first year was borderline heresy. In his mind, his marriage to Lindsay had been a rare alliance with a woman whom he respected as much as he had loved. It always amazed him that someone so extraordinary as she had settled for someone so unextraordinary as he. He felt truly privileged. So, in the second year when friends tried to fix him up, he knew he could not settle for just any woman. She had to be special. He dated casually a couple times and met some fine people. He even on occasion met a woman he had fantasized over. But he soon lost interest and gave up. Lindsay had spoiled other women for him.

Today, the pain of her loss was no less keen. It still throbbed at the core of him. He had just gotten harder around it. And instead of other women, he took up the Sagamore Boy case. It gave him uncompromising purpose.

“So, what do we have?”

“His name is Grady Vernon Dixon, age six, white male from Coldwater, Tennessee. He’s been missing for fourteen months.” From a file folder, Joe produced several color blowups of a human skull and a single long bone. As he had explained on the phone, the remains had been processed at the main office in Boston and the State Crime Lab in Sudbury. After twelve weeks, Gloucester and state police had exhausted all leads, as had investigators at the Tennessee end. All they had were the boy’s abduction and an unattended death—no suspects, no evidence, no leads. Just two devastated parents. And a skull and leg bone.

Greg moved his chair forward and examined the photos.

“You can thank Patty Carney for the link,” Joe said. “She’s the forensic anthropologist at the Boston lab where they processed your Sagamore Boy. She made the connection just the other day and called me.”

“Any idea how long it was in the water?”

“Hard to tell, but from the wear and tear from bouncing around the bottom, I’d say at least a year.”

“So, it’s possible he drowned.”

“It’s possible.”

The skull, like the leg bone, was grayish-brown, not bleached from the sun. Only a few of the teeth were missing, unlike the Sagamore Boy whose skull contained only the incisors and two half-grown back teeth.

“I think he was pretty deep, because there isn’t the weight loss you’d get in warm water.”

“How did they determine it’s a male?”

“There was no soft tissue, but the leg bone had traces of marrow inside,” Joe explained. “And with that, they could detect certain DNA markers which only occur on the Y chromosome—the male chromosome. The calibrations of the skull also point to a male. The same with his ethnicity. Different races have different skull-feature measurements. His age we determine by bone growth and plate fissures, but there’s a larger window of error there—between five and seven years.”

Steiner handed Greg some color photos of the remains lying on the boat deck among piles of scallops, fish, crabs, and seaweed. They looked so sadly out of place. “They were taken by the boat captain.”

Greg turned to one of the several profile shots of the Dixon skull. “It’s got the same holes.”

“That’s what I called you for.”

There were two clusters each of ten small holes on the left side of the Dixon skull——one group between the eye socket and ear hole; the other above the left ear.

Joe opened his desk drawer and pulled out a folder with photos of the Sagamore Boy’s skull. “When this came in three years ago, my guess was the holes were some marine-animal artifacts.” From the same drawer he removed three large white quahog shells. “Also from Sagamore Beach,” he said. He laid the shells under the desk light. Each of the shells had small-bore holes of roughly the same diameter. “These were made from calcium-loving worms called polychaetes. They bore holes that are almost perfectly round, about one to two millimeters in diameter.”

“They look like the skull holes.”

“And that’s what threw me,” Joe said. “Same size, but they’re not from polychaetes or any other aquatic organism I know of. These skull holes occurred premortem.”

“How do you know that?”

“First, the animal holes are random and only partially clustered—maybe a dozen holes in an area then random spacing over a broader surface. Sometimes, as in this shell, you only get two or three on the whole surface, and some don’t go all the way through. But the Sagamore skull and the Dixon boy each have a cluster of ten and twelve above the temple and another cluster of ten above the ear,” he explained, moving from shell to photos. “And no other holes anywhere else on either skull, or the leg bone.”

Greg studied the photos. Both hole clusters were located in exactly the same areas on the skulls. Too much for a coincidence.

“That’s when I stopped guessing and put it under the scope.” From the same folder he pulled out other enlargements.

“On the right is a polychaete bore, on the left a hole from the Dixon skull—both straight-on.”

“They look the same.”

“That’s right.” Then he laid out two more enlargements. He pointed to the photo on the right. “This is the cross section of a polychaete hole in skull bone. Notice the homogeneous field of small pockmarks.” Joe then placed next to it another enlargement. “And this is one of the skull holes. See the difference?”

Greg studied the two for a moment. Laying his finger on the right photo, he said, “This one looks grooved.”

“That’s right. The polychaete worms leave smooth cavities. Those are cut marks from a drill.”

“Jesus!” Instantly Greg conjured up Geoffrey Dahmer-style horrors.

“But it’s not what you may think,” Joe said. “From the angles and the smoothness of the bores, it looks like these were done with very high-speed cranio-blade drills under precision guidance.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning nobody attacked the kid with a Black and Decker. He had some kind of medical procedure. There are no signs of the drill bit sliding on the skull or forced entry. Also, the cutting was fast and controlled—no microchipping or breakage like with a slower handheld instrument. This kid had some kind of sophisticated brain operation.”

Greg looked at him blankly. “Like what?”

“If they were bigger and fewer holes, I’d say they were drainage shunts to relieve internal bleeding—say if he had sustained some kind of trauma such as a car accident.” Joe let out a whimper as if reminding himself of his daughter. “With so many holes, my guess is some kind of biopsy.”

“You mean if he had brain tumors.”

“Or lesions, because something was either taken out of his brain … or put in.”

“Like what?”

“Well, if he were an old man, he might have been treated for Parkinson’s disease—except six-year-old kids don’t get Parkinson’s. Another possibility is he had several tumors. It’s rare, but if that were the case, surgeons might have implanted radioactive seeds.”

“Any way to test for that?”

“I asked Boston to do a radioactive scan. But, like I said, all soft tissue is unfortunately long gone—and no traces were detected in the bone.”

Greg held up the profile enlargements of the two skulls. There were variations in placement, but the clusters appeared identical.

“Another thing,” Joe added. “I checked around, and neurodrill holes are always refilled after such a procedure, either with some synthetic bone or even coral. From all microscopic indications, these were left empty.”

“Maybe they came out in the water.”

“Maybe. But I think there’d still be some signs of bone regeneration, which happens when there’s a fracture or fissure. But I don’t see any sign of the holes closing up.”

“That could have been lost in the water too, no?”

“Sure, but still.”

“If that were the case, it would mean that the kid died from the operation.”

“Or shortly thereafter,” Joe said.

Greg held up photos of the two skulls. “What’s the likelihood of two kids treated for brain tumors being found dead in the waters off the Massachusetts coast?”

Joe nodded and lit up another cigarette. “You’d do better playing the lottery.”

“And how the hell did they end up at the bottom of the ocean?”

“You’re the cop.”

“Do the parents know about the holes?”

“We notified the DA’s office and the CO in Gloucester, who, by the way, has pretty much given up on the case. I guess they hit a dead end and deferred to Tennessee since it’s where the kidnapping took place.”

“And the remains?”

“Sent them back to the parents. We had no further use for them, and they were anxious for a burial. In fact, they threatened the DA with a court order.”

“They could still be evidence.”

“We’ve got plenty of photos and bone samples. And if something unexpected develops, they can always be exhumed.” He coughed a couple times and stubbed out the second cigarette although it was still long. “From what I hear, they’ve hit a brick wall down there, too.”

Greg picked up the card with the child’s name on it. “Coldwater, Tennessee. Never been there.”

“You and six billion other people.”

“First time for everything.”

Joe nodded at the Sagamore Boy shots. “Got anything here?”

“No, but we’re trying to ID with photo superimposition.”

“That’s a good idea,” Joe said. “I’ve seen the software and it’s pretty sophisticated.”

Greg was hoping to match the Sagamore skull to known missing persons registered in the National Missing Children Network. “As backup, we’ve submitted a reconstruction we got made by a forensic artist.”

“We means you,” Joe said.

Greg made a dismissive shrug. He picked up the folder with copies of the photos and ME’s report on the Dixon boy and tucked it under his arm.

Joe nodded at the shot of the Sagamore Boy drawing. “You’ve really got a thing about this kid.”

“He’s some child who ended up a skull on a beach. I can’t sleep with that.”

“When the day is done, my friend, we’re all skulls on a beach.”

“Uh-huh, but before that happens, this one’s going home, too.”

8

Billy had done custody snatches before. But this was the first time he’d used the camo suit, and the first time any of the parents had included with the advance hypodermic needles full of sedatives and instructions on usage. That was fine by him, since it beat all the kicking and screaming. This was also the first time he’d been offered ten grand for a delivery—more than three times the usual fee. The old man must really want his kid back.

Billy didn’t know who the guy was. In fact, rarely did he know his contact. Nor did he give a rat’s ass. That’s how these things got set up. A guy knows a guy who knows a guy who needs a job and has the cash. Billy’s guess was that the old man had lost the custody case and had gone off with another woman and earned the dough to get his kid back—screw the mom. And if he had ten big ones to lay out, then the kid’s probably better off where he’s going, since the old lady lives in a goddamn bug-infested aluminum box in the woods.

About two miles out of Callahan, down service road 108 past the junction of 301, A1A, and U.S. 1 North, Billy spotted the red-white-and-blue Amoco sign.

He had no idea what the kid’s father looked like or what his name was—Something Valentine. (Sounded like a Delbert McClinton song.) And all he’d been told was to bring the kid to the blue shack in a lot about twotenths of a mile past the station on SR 108—which was where the transfer would be made.

He also didn’t know what the guy was driving. But the guy knew what Billy was driving because they had supplied the van, dropping it off in a mall parking lot with the key and an advance of three thousand dollars cash and promise of the balance on delivery.

(It had crossed Billy’s mind to take the money and run, but he was told the guy was good people and true to his word. And ten grand to bag a kid was a piece of cake. Besides, Billy had his professional code. Not good for business.)

He pulled slowly past the Amoco lot, which was one of those gas station /minimart setups that were open twenty-four hours and manned by a couple of kids. He drove on, checking his rearview mirror. Nothing—just black road as far back as he could see.

Around the bend, he saw the lot, and set back under some trees a dark locked shack with a big sign reading BOILED PEANUTS—SALTED AND CAJUN STYLE. They were big in Central Florida with stands dotting the roadsides. But Billy could never understand the attraction. They looked like cat turds and tasted worse.

There were no other cars in the lot, so he backed in, facing the road, and turned off his headlights, keeping the motor running. He was early. He reached under his seat and pulled out his Python. It was fully loaded. He always had it on these jobs—standard operating procedure, whether he knew his clients or not. It made him feel more comfortable about driving off into the night with seven thousand dollars.

He kept the CD playing, but very softly so he could hear the outside sounds. There were none but cicadas and frogs.

After ten minutes, he began to get nervous. He turned off the CD.

After ten more minutes, he began to wonder if this was the right place. He looked back at the kid, who had stirred, but didn’t wake up. He wished the guy would arrive, because he didn’t want to have to go back there and shoot up the kid again if he awoke. Let the old man take care of that. He had done his part.

Twelve minutes later, Billy was still waiting, the kid still asleep. The dashboard clock said 10:04. He was over half-an-hour late.

Just as Billy began to think he had the wrong place, a big black Mercedes pulled alongside. Startled, Billy gripped his gun, his heart thumping like a kettle drum in his chest.

The driver gave a little wave and got out. He was alone. He was about six feet and slender, dressed in dark pants and a pullover. His hands were empty and there was no gun in his pants or holster across his torso. But around his neck he wore a stethoscope.

“Sorry I’m late,” said the man.

Billy nodded. Already he was feeling better, especially with the big M500. Billy imagined he was a wealthy millionaire who would take his kid off to a foreign country to beat an extradition rap. What didn’t make sense was how he had ended up with a trailer-trash wife. Unless he had met her in a bar on some business trip down here and one drink led to the next and that led to some hotel bed where he knocked her up. Billy had glimpsed the mother during stakeout. She was a looker.

The man peered into the windows of the van. “You have Travis?”

“Yup.”

“Good.”

“You the father?”

“Uncle,” the man said. “Can I see him?”

“First things first,” Billy said. He got out of the van, holding the Python at arm’s length.

“You don’t need that,” the man said. Then he turned around with his arms raised to show that he was carrying no weapons. But there was an envelope sticking out of his rear pocket. The man pulled it out and handed it to Billy.

Billy backed up a safe distance behind the van and with a penlight inspected the contents. Hundreds. A stack of hundred-dollar bills. He pulled a few randomly out of the pack and held them over his light to make sure they weren’t counterfeit or photocopies. They weren’t. When he was satisfied, he stuffed the envelope into his jacket and led the man to the rear of the Caravan.

They looked around and waited for a car to pass. Then Billy opened the rear door.

Travis was lying on a mattress with a blanket over him. He was still asleep from the shot two hours ago. Billy’s instructions had been to avoid restraining the kid in any way—no cords or handcuffs. Just to put him to sleep. The stuff was good for a minimum of six hours—and they had supplied three backup needles. He was also told to drive under the speed limit and not to get caught, no matter what. There was no worry of that. Billy had been doing small heists for years and knew how to keep his ass off radar screens.

As Billy waited, the man pulled out a small penlight from his pocket and raised the kid’s eyelids. With the stethoscope he listened to the kid’s heart. Billy watched, thinking that the uncle was the family doctor, which explained the big German wheels. No doubt he was footing the bill for his po’boy country bubba.

When the guy was satisfied, he carefully lifted the kid out and hustled him to the Mercedes where he laid him across the rear seat, strapped him in, then covered him with a blanket. He thanked Billy and shook his hand. “This is going to make some people very happy. Thank you.” With that he got in his car and left.

Billy watched the car turn east onto 108, which would take the guy back to A1A and onto U.S. 1 North—the big red taillights disappearing into the black.

Man, that was easy, he thought, and got into his van and pulled into the southbound lane. In his mirror, the road was an empty black as far as he could see. He would take the service road to the next junction, reconnecting him with A1A South.

About a mile down the road, no cars in either direction, Billy flicked on the overhead light and opened the envelope. “Oh, yeah!” he said, riffling through the wad of Benjies with his thumb. Seventy big ones. He flicked off the light and stuffed the envelope into his inside jacket pocket and turned up the CD—Delbert McClinton’s Nothing Personal.

At about three miles down the road, Billy flicked on the light and once again inspected the money, his mind tripping over ways to spend it. First he’d get himself one of those fifty-inch TVs and a DVD player and a bunch of DV discs —Predator, Terminator 2, The Score: the good shit.

At about five miles down the road, Billy replaced McClinton with When It All Goes South by Alabama and began to sing along.

About six miles down the road, it crossed his mind that maybe he’d have a multidisc CD player installed so he wouldn’t have to keep changing albums by hand.

About seven miles down the road, Billy’s heart nearly stopped.

In his rearview mirror he noticed an unmarked cruiser with its dashboard cherry.

“SHIT!”

He had tried to keep under the speed limit. Maybe it was a busted taillight, but he pulled over, thinking that it could have been much worse had he gotten stopped an hour ago with a kid tied up in the back seat. Or maybe the van matched the description of a stolen vehicle.

“SHIT!”

He stuffed the package of money under the seat.

The cruiser pulled behind him, and in the mirrors Billy watched the lone cop get out of his car. He was out of uniform, which was unusual. Unmarked car okay, but with an unmarked officer? Probably off duty. Just Billy’s luck. He could get three years in the slammer for driving a stolen vehicle. Then he’d have to explain the camo suit and bag covered with bloodstains from the dog.

“SHIT!”

He rolled the window down. “Hey!” he said, real friendly.

“Would you step out of your car, please, sir?” The officer was a guy about fifty, short and stocky.

“Pretty sure I was under the limit, Officer,” Billy said, getting out.

The road was dark, and no other cars came by.

“Around this way,” the officer said. He had black driving gloves on.

“Aren’t you going to ask me for my license?” Billy said, reaching for his wallet.

“Not yet,” the officer said, and led Billy around the front of the car which was nosed into thick brush under trees just off the shoulder of the road. The officer made him place his hands on the van’s hood and spread his legs.

Shit! Billy thought.

The man patted him down. When he felt the inner pocket of his jacket, the man’s hand went inside. Billy grabbed the man’s arm to stop him when he heard snick snick.

Billy’s hands went free. He looked over his shoulder and saw the long barrel of the man’s pistol.

Just as he realized the extension was a silencer, Billy saw a flash of light go off in his face.

It was the last light he would ever see.

9

“Daddy, will you read to me?”

Wearing pajamas with big cartoon spaceships all over them, Dylan opened the door to Martin’s office, a converted bedroom on the second floor.

Martin was at his laptop looking over the dossiers of recruits, most of them senior-level information technology experts. “Hey, you little monkey,” he said with a glance.

“I’m not a monkey,” Dylan protested.

“Just kidding,” Martin said. “I’ll be right with you.” He finished what he was doing and followed Dylan to his room where he climbed into bed with a book called Elmo the Christmas Cat. It was part of a series of books about the adventures of an inimitable black-and-white cat.

“That’s a Christmas story,” Martin said, stretching himself beside his son. “Isn’t it a little early?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s only June, and Christmas is in December, which is six months from now.”

“But I want Elmo the Christmas Cat.”

Martin wasn’t sure Dylan got what he meant. He had a little trouble with time abstractions. “Okay, but do you remember the months of the year?”

“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday, Fivesday …”

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” Martin corrected. “No, those are days of the week. I mean months of the year.” Feeling a little frustrated, Martin pointed to the large kid’s calendar on the wall. “You know, ‘January, February, March …’” Martin began to sing.

They had been trying to get him to learn the days of the weeks and months of the year for a while. The odd thing was Dylan could memorize things if they were set to music, which was how he could sing the alphabet correctly and why he knew the lyrics of a couple of dozen show tunes. Yet he could not recite things straight. So they had made up little jingles for the days of the week and months of the year, but at the moment he was more interested in Elmo.

Martin opened up the book and began to read, wondering when the boy would be able to do this himself.

After a couple pages, Dylan noticed the small dark blood scab on Martin’s cheek. “You cut yourself. How come?”

“Just from shaving.”

Dylan touched it gently with his finger. “Does it hurt?”

“Nah.”

“Want a kiss to make it feel better?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe I’ll be a doctor someday.” Dylan kissed the scratch. Then he lay back on his bolster.

“Maybe.” Martin read to him, thinking about his work. When he was finished, he turned out the light. “You know, hon, I’m not going to be home tomorrow night.”

“How come?”

“Well, I’ve got to be in Boston tomorrow.” He had a late conference in town and it made sense to stay over at a hotel.

“I hate Boston. You always go there.”

“I promise I won’t go back for a long time. But tomorrow you’ll have to take care of Mom, okay?”

“Tomorrow we go to the zoo.”

“You are?” Martin had forgotten that Rachel and Sheila MacPhearson were chaperoning Dells kids on a field trip to Franklin Park.

“Uh-huh. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Mom’s sad.”

“She is? Why do you say that?”

“Because I saw her crying.”

Jesus, it was getting worse, he thought. When he came home a little after seven, she said that dinner was on the stove, then announced that she wanted to lie down because she had a headache. In fact, she had been lying down for nearly two hours now. The light was out in their bedroom and the door was closed, which meant that she was probably asleep.

“Well, I’ll check in on her. I bet she was just tired.”

“Dad, do you like me?”

“Of course I like you. I love you. Why do you ask that?”

Dylan shrugged. “Lucinda doesn’t like me.”

“Sure she does. And if she doesn’t, something’s definitely wrong with her.”

“Something’s definitely wrong with her,” he repeated, and closed his eyes.

Martin had read someplace that it takes the average adult about eight minutes to fall asleep. Dylan was out in less than a minute, no doubt dreaming of some outsized cat in a Santa outfit coming down the chimney.

Martin got up and crossed the hall to their bedroom. The interior was dark, and Rachel was asleep on her side of the huge king-sized bed. Her sweatshirt was still on, but she had taken her slacks off and draped them over the footboard. The thought of her lying there in her panties produced a giddy sensation in his genitals.

He sat on the edge of the bed and she opened her eyes a slit.

“Are you in there?”

She nodded.

“How’s the head?”

She nodded to say that it was okay.

“Well, I hate to wake you but it’s nine o’clock. I thought you might want to change into your PJs.”

She nodded, and closed her eyes again.

“You know what you could use? A few pages of Elmo the Christmas Cat.”

She did not smile, or even open her eyes. She just shook her head ever so slightly.

“Swann’s Way might be more your style.”

Still nothing.

“I know,” he said and stretched himself alongside of her and put his leg across hers. “How about Mighty Marty’s Happy Beef Injection? Been known to cure PMS just like that.” He gave her a little pelvic grind.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

It was as if she had turned to wood. But in the scant light he could see tears pooling in her eyes. Martin pulled back. “Hey, girl, what’s the problem?”

She shook her head slightly.

“Rachel, I’ve known you for nearly ten years. I know when something is eating away at you. And something is, and it’s beginning to scare me. Really. I’m beginning to wonder if you have some awful disease you’re not telling me about.” Martin rubbed her shoulder. “Come on, Rache, what’s going on?”

She took his hand and muttered something he couldn’t get.

“What?” he said, and gently coaxed her face out of the pillow.

“I’m scared.”

Martin felt a cold shock pass through him. She has cancer. “About what?” He snapped on the light.

“Dylan.”

“What about Dylan?”

“His problems.”

“What problems? What are you talking about?”

Suddenly she was sharply alert. “What do you mean, what problems?” she snapped. “His learning problems. His disabilities. His dyslexia. His … impairment.”

Impairment. She had rummaged for the right word and came up with impairment. Such a clinical term, he thought. According to specialists Dylan had a language-processing problem. But that didn’t make him impaired.

“Rachel, we’ve been through all this. He hasn’t got polio, for God’s sake. He’s dyslexic, like millions of other kids in this country. We’ll get learning specialists, whatever it takes.”

“But they can’t perform miracles.”

“No, but they can help reverse the problem.”

“It’s not like having his feet straightened.”

Martin wasn’t sure what she meant. “It will take time. But we’ll do the best we can and get beyond this. It’s not the end of the world. Dyslexia can be dealt with.”

“I’m thinking of taking him out of DellKids.”

“How come? What happened?” They had waited a long time and pulled strings to get him into the program, applying months before they actually had moved to town. If it weren’t for Sheila MacPhearson, they wouldn’t have succeeded.

“It’s more than dyslexia. He’s just not in the same league as the other kids, and they’re beginning to make fun of him.”

“Make fun of him?” Rachel was like a mother bear. One of the kids must have mouthed off, Martin decided.

“Maybe if you spent a little more time with him you’d notice.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that you’re so damn absorbed with your work,” she said. Then she added, “And so damn self-congratulatory.”

He felt as if he’d been slapped. “Self-congratulatory?”

“You know what the hell I mean. Working in Cambridge in ‘the brainiest mail zone on the planet.’” Her voice had shifted to a mocking singsong.

Why the hell was she throwing his words back in his face? Of course he loved being in Cambridge and out of that garret behind the Hanover Mall. He now had a five-room suite on the seventh floor of an office building near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive and a view of Boston that would make a hermit ache. In addition to the extra floor space and easier commute, he was thrilled to spend most of his day surrounded by MIT, and not just because it was his alma mater. With Harvard at one end and MIT at the other end, Mass Ave was like a giant filament blazing with the greatest concentration of mind power in the world. In those other buildings were people who prepared manned missions to Mars, spliced genes, designed robotic intelligence and nanomachines, and searched for quarks, quasars, and extraterrestrial life. Yes, 02141 glowed with the greatest cerebral wattage anywhere, and SageSearch sat at ground zero. Martin felt smarter just being here. “So, what’s your point?”

“That you’re never around long enough to realize your son’s got serious language problems.”

“But he’s younger than the others, and young for his age,” Martin protested. “Besides, wasn’t the idea to put him in there where he can learn from other kids—something about a mentoring theory?”

“Maybe you should take a few hours off some afternoon and observe them. If that’s mentoring, it’s not working.”

Martin saw that coming, but let it go. “Well, if you think it’s not working, then maybe we should find another day-care place.”

Rachel didn’t respond. She seemed too preoccupied, too on the fringes. He watched her open her night table drawer, pull out the vial of sleeping tablets, and toss a couple into her mouth, washing them down with a glass of water. “There are things we can do for him, tutors, special ed teachers,” he said, trying to make her feel better. “Even special schools if need be. We can deal with it.”

Still Rachel didn’t respond. Instead she slipped her pajamas on and got back into bed. “I wish we were back in Rockville.”

“Are you kidding? We’re living in one of the best towns on the North Shore. You should be counting your blessings. Our blessings.”

Without a word, she flicked off the light.

So that was it! he thought. Christ! He hated when she clammed up like this. “Guess it’s good night.” He hated another night going by without sex. It had been three weeks.

“G’night.” Her voice was barely audible. Then he heard her mutter something else. In a few minutes the sleeping pills would kick in and she’d be out.

As Martin went to the bathroom, he realized what she had said: I’m sorry. But by the time he returned to ask what she meant, she was asleep.

For a long moment, he stood there watching her slip deeper into her Xanax oblivion. While her breathing became more peaceful, it occurred to him that no matter how much you think you know the person you love, even after ten years, there are always those damn little black holes in their makeup from where no light ever escapes. And yet, like the ubiquitous X-ray presence around collapsed stars that astronomers talk about, what Martin detected were the subtle signatures—those microsigns in Rachel’s expression that told him she was holding something back. While she could control her wording and body language, she could not disguise that slightly askew cast of her eyes. It was there again tonight while they spoke. That look that said something was festering just beneath the skin of things.

10

Around eleven, the black Mercedes pulled into an abandoned lot about six miles west of Jacksonville.

Phillip was waiting for him. Oliver had ditched the dark blue Chevy that had doubled as an unmarked police car in the woods, then walked half a mile to the rendezvous site.

They drove another six miles to a dirt road that led to Lake Chino just below the Georgia border where they had left their DeHavilland Beaver floatplane in a black little cove.

Travis was still asleep under his blanket, and he would probably remain so for another couple hours. When he woke up, they would feed him because he probably hadn’t eaten since breakfast. On the floor under the boy sat a large Igloo filled with sandwiches and drinks. They were still cool in spite of the hours the plane had baked in the sun.

Using a self-inflating raft, they floated him to the plane in the dark and loaded him into a seat in the rear, then strapped him in securely and covered him with a blanket. The night air was cool and the plane’s heater was faulty.

Oliver, an experienced pilot, got behind the controls while Phillip took the passenger seat.

A little before midnight, in clear cloudless skies, the Beaver lifted off the black water, then banked to the right, heading northeast which would take them through Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and, eventually, all the way up the coast to New England. It was not the kind of long haul Oliver liked to fly, especially at night. At a cruising speed of 110 knots, the flight would take about twelve hours with two stops for refueling. He had preselected small airports where you could roll up to a fuel pump and pay with a credit card like that Amoco station back there. And he had a fake credit card so he wouldn’t be tracked. Because he was flying on visual, he did not have to maintain contact with regional operations as he would were this an instrument flight. Which meant no record or tracking of their plane.

When they leveled off to ninety-two hundred feet someplace over the southern Georgia interior, he looked over his shoulder. The kid was in a deep slumber, but breathing normally.

“He’s got himself a good-looking kid here,” he said to Phillip.

Phillip gave a cursory glance over his shoulder. “Yeah.” He was more interested in the lights of the city in the distance.

“Too bad about the scratches on his face,” Oliver said.

“Like we’re going to have to take him back.”

“Right.”

Phillip checked his watch against the clock on the instrument panel. “Twelve hours. I’m getting tired of these long hauls,” Phillip said.

“Take a third as long in a Lear.”

“Except you can’t land on water and do midnight drops. What did you fly in the service?”

“F-1011s. Quite a comedown, huh? Doing kiddie runs in a Beaver floatplane.”

“But the pay is better.”

“There’s that.”

“But you made good money as a PI,” Phillip said, popping open a can of beer. “How come if you were such a crackerjack bringing in fugitives you stopped doing it?”

“Because it’s against the law for a convicted felon to be a detective, private or otherwise.”

“That’s what’s wrong with this country—they get everything backward. If you wanted to know how bad guys think, hire a crook, right?”

“And pay him good.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Phillip looked over his shoulder at the boy. He was sound asleep. “We got another drop tomorrow night, but the forecast calls for a storm.”

“Uh-uh,” Oliver said. “No more repeats of the last time.”

11

COLD CREEK, TENNESSEE

Vernon and Winifred Dixon lived in a single-level brick structure that could not have been more than thirty feet long and half as wide. If it had wheels, it could have been a trailer home made of brick.

The place sat at the edge of an endless woodland about twenty miles northwest of Chattanooga in an area of Cold Creek called Gad’s Buck Knob, according to the map. Greg had no idea what the name meant; neither did Sergeant Andy Kemmer, the Tennessee State Police detective who had been assigned the Dixon case since the boy’s disappearance sixteen months ago.

Kemmer, a tall, thin nervous-looking man about forty, met Greg at the Chattanooga Airport. He was dressed casually and driving a squad car, so there was no need for Greg to pick up a rental. Before they left the airport, Greg bought a bouquet of flowers.

On the phone, Greg had explained to Kemmer that he was here to investigate the similarities between the Dixon case and another he had been working on for three years. What Greg didn’t mention was that he was here on his own money and time, which was why they were meeting on Saturday. As far as anybody at the Sagamore station knew, he was off fishing for the weekend.

Kemmer gave him a copy of the Dixon boy’s complete file, including the names, addresses, and depositions of everybody they had interviewed since the boy’s disappearance as well as his medical and dental records. “Ten pounds of notes, and zero leads,” Kemmer said.

The drive took over an hour, mostly through backcountry roads. On the way, Kemmer warned Greg that the Dixons weren’t keen on the police. Apparently a few years back, Vernon Dixon had threatened a bank loan officer with physical harm because he couldn’t make mortgage payments. When the sheriff’s officer came by to investigate, Vernon met him with a rifle. He was arrested, put in jail for three days, and fined two hundred dollars for threatening an officer. “He’s one of those people who just doesn’t trust the law. Grady disappeared, and he refused to accept how we couldn’t find him. Bitched and moaned we weren’t doing enough, which was bullshit, man, since we had half the county looking for him, including dogs specially trained to sniff out cadavers. We musta covered twenty square miles of woods—and out there it’s as thick as fur.”

“Do you have kids?”

“Two.” Then Kemmer considered the question. “Yeah, maybe when it’s your own it’s different. But, man, we hit stone. Not a flipping lead. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say we felt exonerated when he turned up your way. But the old man’s still pissing on us, so prepare yourself is all I gotta say.”

As small as it was, the Dixon place was tidy and cheerful looking, belying the agony the inhabitants must have suffered. Against the red brick was crisp white trim, including a porch banister running the length of the place. Pots of red geraniums hung from support poles. The upkeep was no doubt an expression of the Dixons’ hope against all odds. Greg wondered where people found such strength.

Kemmer pulled the car under a large shade tree. Sitting on a crushed gravel driveway was a battered gray station wagon. Attached to the side of the house was a propane tank. From a nearby willow hung a tire swing. A wading pool lay nearby. The water was bright green. What caught Greg’s eye was the faded yellow ribbon tied around a tree at the edge of the drive.

Greg got out of the car and instantly he felt perspiration bead across his brow. The heat and humidity were borderline lethal.

Vernon Dixon came out to greet them. He was a heavyset man, with thick hamlike arms, a balding head, and broad unfriendly red face. He was dressed in blue jeans, yellow work boots, and a black T-shirt. He nodded at Kemmer who nodded back and introduced Greg who handed Dixon a business card.

Dixon scowled at the card and the flowers in his hand.

“I’m very sorry about your son, Mr. Dixon.”

He gave Greg a nod.

“What kind of a name is Zakarian?”

“Armenian.”

Vernon grunted. “We don’t get many of your kind down here.”

“I guess not.”

“Is that like Arabian?”

“No.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Is that important to know?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes? What the hell kind of answer is that? You do or you don’t.”

“Mr. Dixon, are we really going to stand out here and argue my religious convictions?”

“I guess not. But I don’t believe in the bastard anymore, because He let somebody take my kid.” Then he tossed his head toward the house. “It’s cooler inside.” And he led the way.

The interior was cooler with the help of a small AC humming in a rear window and a fan on the coffee table. They had entered a small living room with oversized chairs upholstered in green imitation leather. Mrs. Dixon was standing at the threshold to the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel. She was a solid-bodied woman with a drawn white face and short-cropped brown hair. She said hello to Kemmer and shook Greg’s hand.

Greg handed her the bouquet of flowers. “I’m very sorry about your son.”

She thanked him and went to get something to put them in.

“You boys want something to drink?” Dixon asked. “Beer? Lemonade? Dr Pepper? The lemonade’s fresh. Winnie just made it.”

Through the door Greg spotted an open container of frozen drink by the sink. “The lemonade will be fine, thank you.”

“Ditto,” Kemmer said. While Vernon went to get the drinks, Kemmer looked at Greg and rolled his eyes to say, I told you so.

Greg made a noncommittal smile and looked around. Most of the room was taken up by the couch and chairs. A faux fireplace mantel sat against the wall. On it sat several photographs of Grady. And one framed illustration of Jesus, his face raised into the light, his hands pressed in prayer.

Dixon returned with a tray with glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. “Do your people up there have any idea how Grady died, cuz the boys down here don’t have a damn clue?” He said that without even a glance at Kemmer.

“Not really,” Greg said. “But I’d like to ask you and your wife a few questions because we may have a similar case.”

“We’re goddamn questioned out. It’s answer time.”

Mrs. Dixon returned with the flowers in a glass vase and set it on the mantel next to the boy’s photos. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying in the kitchen. “They’re lovely, thank you very much,” she said.

Greg nodded.

From a pack of Newport Lights, she punched out a cigarette and returned to the kitchen where she turned on a burner from the gas stove, stuck the cigarette into the flame until it started burning, then sucked it to a blush. She then returned to the living room. She looked shaky. “Do you have children of your own, Sergeant Zakarian?”

“No, I don’t.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of a name is Zakarian?”

This was becoming tiresome. “Armenian.”

“That’s Christian, right?”

“Yes,” he said, hoping she wasn’t going to begin another inquisition.

“Well, we had a proper Christian burial for our boy last week. Malcolm Childers, the reverend at Mount Ida’s Baptist, gave a very special service for Grady. And after, his wife, Pammie Rae, held us a lunch. It was simply lovely. I swear half the county turned out.” Her voice cracked, and she struggled to maintain composure. “There I go again, and I thought I was cried out.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“You know, just to give us closure.”

“Closure!” Vernon grunted. “There’s no such thing. Never’s any closure when your kid’s been murdered.” He shook his head. “I just hope he didn’t suffer, is all.” His voice hitting gravel.

“Well, I feel better cuz he’s home where he belongs.”

“Only way I’ll feel better is if I had five minutes in the room with the sumbitch who did this to him. Five minutes is all.” As he said that, the muscles in his neck and arms tightened, and rage darkened his face. Greg could understand how Dixon had run afoul of the law.

Greg got up and went to the mantel to inspect the photographs. Several shots of the boy outside on the tire swing, at a birthday party, in the wading pool. “Handsome little guy.”

“Here’s the most recent one,” Vernon said. “It was his first school picture. And his last.” And he held up a T-shirt advertising missing children. On it was a picture of Grady along with his date of birth, height, weight, coloring, and an 800 number for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The boy was smiling brightly. He was a sweet-looking kid with a bright chipped-tooth smile, and Greg tried to shake away the image of the specimen on Joe Steiner’s desk.

“They posted his picture at airport kiosks, in public buildings, on the Internet, you name it. Mailed it all over the country, and even had a billboard on Highway 27 outta Chattanooga,” Mrs. Dixon said.

“Lotta damn good that did,” Vernon growled.

There were two rooms off the living room, and one of them was closed. On the door was a sticker with a cartoon bear. Greg walked over to it.

“We called him ‘Lil Bear,’” Mrs. Dixon said. She got up. “You can take a look if you like. All the other officers did.”

“He didn’t come for that,” Vernon said. “Fact is, I’m not sure what he came for.”

“I would like to see his room, thank you,” Greg said. He did not pick up on Vernon’s bait. It wasn’t the right time.

From a dish on the mantel, Mrs. Dixon removed a key and unlocked the door.

The room looked as if it hadn’t been touched since the boy’s disappearance. The air was close and scented with mothballs. There was a small bed with a stuffed bear lying at the foot. One wall was covered with banners and drawings signed by his classmates and teachers: “Come home soon” and “We Love You, Grady” and “We Miss You.” Another wall had decals and pictures of cartoon bears, snapshots of the boy and a dog, a UT football banner, a poster-board drawing of the Dixon house with the tree swing, signed by Grady; another of Jesus in a pasture with children and sheep. On a small table sat a nearly complete truck fashioned intricately with Legos. A box of loose pieces lay by it in expectation.

“He liked to build things,” Mrs. Dixon said. She opened a bureau drawer and pulled out some photos of Grady posed proudly with several different structures. “He’d sit in here for hours working away, his tape machine playing his stories.” She nodded at a yellow plastic device and a stack of tapes. “He was a very neat boy, always picking up after himself at the end of the day. I almost never had to speak to him. Some kids are pretty messy, especially boys, but not him.”

Against the rear wall was a small desk with a neat arrangement of books and a kid’s Fisher-Price electronic keyboard toy.

“We were saving to get him a computer for Christmas.” Mrs. Dixon sighed and began to close the door. “We had nothing to go on, but we always hoped he’d come back.” Tears flooded her eyes. “I prayed every day he’d come home.” Vernon put his arm around her.

Greg picked up Grady’s baseball glove. On the strap that went over his left wrist Grady had printed his name with a black marker. As he stared at it, he wondered how these people could go on. They had so little and now they had lost everything that mattered. But he sensed that they would go on, and he drew from their strength.

They returned to the living room. “I want you to know that the investigation is ongoing in Massachusetts. We’ve not given up on Grady,” Greg said. “And that’s why I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may, because we’ve found some similarities to another case.”

Vernon Dixon didn’t look pleased.

“’Spose it can’t hurt,” Mrs. Dixon said.

“Three years ago, we found the remains of another child—a boy about Grady’s age—also in the waters of Massachusetts. We’re trying to determine if there’s a connection.”

“I know what you’re gonna ask,” Vernon said, “and the answer is no. It’s what I told him. We got no idea how he ended up in Massachusetts. We’ve never even been to Massachusetts. We ain’t even got relatives or acquaintances in Massachusetts. ‘Cept for you, I don’t think I ever met anybody from Massachusetts.”

Mrs. Dixon nodded in agreement.

“I understand that,” Greg said. “But the other child we found had markings on the skull similar to Grady’s.” Greg could not get himself to use the word holes. “I’m wondering if you can tell me what kind of neurological procedure he had had.”

Mrs. Dixon’s face was a perfect blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer. What markings?”

“The perforations, the holes.” Greg raised his finger to the side of his head.

“What holes?”

He flashed a look at Kemmer for an explanation. Greg knew Joe Steiner had notified Gene Grzywna, the Gloucester case officer, about the holes, and he in turn had sent a report to Kemmer. Or he was supposed to have.

Kemmer made a faint shrug that said he didn’t have a clue either. If there was a screwup, Greg didn’t want to fan Dixon’s contempt of police.

From his briefcase, Greg pulled out a computer schematic of a child’s head, the holes in Grady’s skull designated as black circles. Kemmer shook his head. He hadn’t seen the drawing. Somebody in Gloucester had screwed up badly. This was not going to be easy. “Our medical examiner suspects that these are the results of some kind of neurological procedure. A brain operation.”

“Brain operation? Good heavens, no,” Winnie said. Suddenly the expression on her face turned dark with concern.

Maybe operation was the wrong term. “Did Grady ever have a biopsy for a lesion or tumor?”

Vern shook his head.

“Seizures? Blackouts … ?”

“Nothing like that. Hell, he never even had headaches.”

“And we got all his medical records,” Mrs. Dixon added.

“Is it possible to see them?”

Vernon looked hesitant, but Mrs. Dixon got up to get them. Vernon glowered at Greg. “Are you saying it might be some other child you found?”

“No, it’s Grady, I’m afraid. We’ve got a positive ID on the DNA and dentals.”

Was Joe Steiner wrong about the holes? That they were made by some marine organism?

Mrs. Dixon returned from the other room. “He was a very healthy boy.” She was carrying a thin folder. “You can see for yourself.” She handed it to Greg.

Inside were doctors’ reports of vaccinations, checkups, paid bills, insurance statements, and receipts for medication. It all looked unremarkable. Twice, a few years back, the boy had been to the emergency room for a split knee and removal of a fishhook in his thumb. No paperwork from any neurologist or neurosurgeon’s office.

Vernon looked at the schematic. “You’re saying these holes were in Grady’s skull?”

“Yes.”

“So how in hell did they get there?”

“That’s what I hoped you would tell me.”

Vernon gave Greg a harsh look. “I just said he never had a brain operation.”

“It’s possible we’re mistaken.”

“Now there’s a big surprise.”

Deserved! Greg thought. “It could be some aquatic organism.” And in the back of his mind he could hear Joe Steiner: “The polychaete worms leave smooth cavities.”

Greg had worked with Joe Steiner for a dozen years and never found him wrong about anything. When he didn’t know something, he’d say so. When he was uncertain, he’d go to people who weren’t. He also said he had double-checked with his people at the Crime Lab.

Or these people were holding back—but why lie about your kid’s biopsy?

Or the kid had the procedure after he was kidnapped. Christ! Nothing made sense.

“These holes were done with very high-speed cranio-blade drills with precision guidance.”

Greg felt like a horse’s ass.

“Guess that’s not gonna help in your other case now, is it?” Vernon downed his lemonade.

“Maybe not,” Greg said.

Kemmer checked his watch. Their stay was growing cold.

“Well, I feel for the parents,” Mrs. Dixon said. “I know what they’re going through. Grady could be a handful at times. There were days when I wondered if I’d given birth to the devil himself. He could be mighty stubborn.” Her mouth quivered. “It’s just that I’d give anything to see him walk through that door again.”

She got up and went into Grady’s room and returned with a small wooden box, fashioned after a pirate’s chest. “These were some of his special things.”

While Vernon looked anxious for Greg and Kemmer to leave, Mrs. Dixon suddenly seemed compelled to tell them about Grady. “Some of it’s just his baby stuff,” she said. Inside were a baby brush and comb set, a silver rattle, a crucifix, and a little envelope. From it Mrs. Dixon removed a reddish curl of hair. “It’s from his first haircut. He had a head of ringlets, like a cherub.” Her voice broke up.

“It’s where they got the DNA stuff from,” Vernon said.

“He was such a clever little boy,” Mrs. Dixon continued, tears running down her cheeks. “He picked things up real fast. The teachers had him earmarked for the TAG program.”

“TAG program?”

“Talented and gifted. They were going to start him in the second grade.”

She put the box down and removed a sheet from a file folder included with the medical report. “In fact, he was so bored in kindergarten that his teacher said we should have him special-tested. He got a ninety-ninth percentile straight across.”

Greg looked at the score sheet. Listed in different boxes—Verbal, Analytical, Spatial, Logic, Sequencing, and so on—were numerical percentages. Each category was printed with a 99. At the bottom of the page was small print saying that the test was copyrighted by Nova Children’s Center, Inc.

Greg handed Vernon back the folder. “I know it’s in the file,” Greg said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m wondering when the last time was you saw Grady.”

“On that swing outside,” Mrs. Dixon answered. “Every day Tillie Haskell dropped him off from the school van in front. As usual, he came in and got his snack, then went outside to wait for Junie Janks to come by and play. Junie’s the boy who lives down the road. You passed their place coming in. Junie is short for junior—his real name’s Bernard, after his dad. About twenty minutes later, Junie shows up wondering where Grady is.” Mrs. Dixon took a deep breath.

Vernon continued for her. “The county police said not to worry, he probably just wandered into the woods. But that was pure bulltiki, because the first thing you teach your kids down here is to respect these woods. The next house on the other side is seventeen miles. I’ve lived in these parts for fortysix years, and I could still get lost a thousand yards in. It all looks the same, and we got that through his head from the day he could walk. You don’t go into the woods.

“Musta had two hundred people search for him—police, volunteer firemen, neighbors, and just about everybody at Mount Ida’s. We looked for a week. But when he didn’t show up by nightfall that first day, I knew we lost him. I knew somebody had taken him. I felt it in my bones. God only knows why.”

12

Brendan was checking out the odd head scars in his bathroom mirror when it crossed his mind to kill his grandfather.

The notion just popped into his head without the slightest shock—like deciding to clip his toenails.

And it would be one-two-three easy. No fuss, no muss. No telltale fingerprints or DNA evidence to sweat. No decision about weapons or modus operandi. No having to bury bloody meat cleavers. No burning or cutting up the remains. No witnesses.

And no motive, unlike going back to the diner and putting a knife in Angie for publicly humiliating him. He had no motive—just curiosity. (Besides, what kid would kill his own grandfather—his last remaining relative?) And it would be the perfect murder: Just hold back on his pills and sit back and watch him gasp to death on his La-Z-Boy. That would be something. Might melt some snow.

“Hey, Brendan! Where the hell are you, boy?”

“Coming,” he shouted. Richard wanted his refill. Grandpa Richard, although he never called him grandpa. Just Richard. Grandpa was a technicality of blood.

And no blood. No red hand.

His face would scrunch up in wincing pain as the realization swelled in his chest that he was going to die from arterial occlusion. Inarticulate sounds would rise from his throat, saliva stringing from his chin onto his shirt, his hands alternately flailing then clutching his breast, his feet kicking, his mouth shuddering, air squealing from a clenched larynx, trying to call for help, blubbering in disbelief that Brendan was sitting there transfixed in fascination just three feet away munching pretzel logs.

Maybe that would do it.

“Brendy?” he shouted from his chair downstairs in the TV room.

“In a minute!” Richard had called him that as long as he could remember, which wasn’t much. It came from Brendy Bear, as in Brendy Bear Hugs because Brendan was always hugging and kissing people, Richard claimed. He didn’t do that anymore. He hadn’t touched his grandfather in years. He hadn’t touched anybody in years. Nor did he understand the impulse. He had been misnamed.

Brendan really had nothing against Richard. In fact, he liked him the way a dog might like a devoted owner. He was a nice old man who treated him well, gave him money and, when he turned seventeen, his old Ford pickup which Richard had used for his plumbing business before retiring. Richard had taken him in when his parents died, raising him as best he could at his age. He was protective, kind, and generous with what little he had. There surely was no reason to kill him. It was purely academic. Brendan simply wondered what he’d feel—if anything. He wondered if he’d cry.

Richard had a bad heart. A couple years ago he had suffered a myocardial infarction and now suffered from ventricular tachycardia arrhythmia—rapid heartbeats. In his condition, Richard had maybe three years at best. His friends were dying off, one last week in fact—maybe his last. Brendan could tell that that bothered Richard.

“Old men know when an old man dies.”

Yeats was right about that.

In the medicine cabinet sat a row of maybe a dozen little amber plastic pill containers. Richard Berryman.

I measure my life in Walgreen vials, he thought.

Lipitor, Enalapril, Demerol, metropolol, Pronestyl.

WARNING: This drug may impair the ability to drive or operate machinery.

WARNING: Do not use this medicine if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding.

WARNING: This medication may decrease your ability to be human.

Generic name: Wintermind. Take as directed.

One must have a mind of winter …

Not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind …

Brendan closed the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom. At the bottom of the stairs the light of the television made the foyer pulse. Brendan walked down, the lines from Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” drowning out all the other clutter in his head.

He entered the parlor.

The old man was sprawled out in his La-Z-Boy, his wispy white hair barely covering the old pink dome, his T-shirt rumpled, his pajama bottoms half up his pathetic white sticks of legs, his bare feet knobbed on the footrest like claws. According to the old photos, he used to be a big, strapping guy.

Richard looked up, his eyes wet and yellow, like sad clams. Death would be a gift.

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Brendan knew he should feel something for Richard. Anything. He understood the finality of his grandfather’s condition, that he could go any day now. He just wished he could feel something. Anger. Horror. Sadness. Love. He wished he could cry.

“I called it in three hours ago, so it should be ready.” Richard held up a twenty-dollar bill. “And whyn’t you pick up some mint chocolate chip while you’re at it.”

“I thought chocolate was bad for you.”

“What the hell isn’t? Here.” He flapped his hand.

Let the lamp affix its beam.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Brendan gave his head a shake to snap away the poetry jamming his mind. It was a constant distraction. White rhyming noise in turbo. At the moment it was Wallace Stevens for some reason. In ten minutes it could be Elizabeth Barrett Browning. God! There wasn’t enough room in his head. It was like a flash plague that would strike without warning—his only defense was to build mind quarantines to box them up.

“And get some hot fudge, while you’re at it.”

He could do it with the throw pillow from the couch. Or a quick shot to the throat, snap his trachea. Snap his limbs like carrot sticks.

Not even horror, like Trisha Costello dying the other night.

Can’t even cry.

Brendan slowly crossed over to Richard and pressed his face so close to him he could smell his sourness.

The old man flinched. “What? What the hell you doing?”

“Do you kn-know anything about these scars?” He lowered his head and parted his hair.

“Jeez, I already told you I know nothing about them.”

“Use your magnifying glass.” Brendan handed it to him and bowed his head down again.

Richard peered through the glass at his scalp. “Just a few white spots. Where the hell you get them?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“How would I know? Maybe your mother dropped you on your head. Probably explains things.”

“How b-badly do you want me to get your pills?” Brendan tried to put on a mean face, but he didn’t have anything inside to back it. Brendan never felt mean. He never felt much of anything. Just a flat-line awareness that something was missing.

“Here. Take these so you won’t forget.” Richard waved the empty vial. “What are you staring at me like that for?”

Brendan muttered under his breath.

“Aw jeez, Brendy, please no poetry, okay? I want to watch this show.” Then he added, “I think I liked it better when you couldn’t talk.”

Brendan looked at Richard. “W-what’s that?”

“I said would you please get me my pills.”

“N-no, about how you liked it better w-w-when I couldn’t talk.”

Richard made a sigh of exasperation. “It was just a joke.”

“Well, I missed it.”

“It’s just that you didn’t start talking until you were four or five. I don’t know. But God knows you’ve made up for it. So will you please get my pills or do I have to call 911?”

Brendan studied Richard for a few seconds then he picked the car key out of the candy bowl on the desk. Beside it sat a double frame with photographs of Brendan’s parents. They had died in a car crash on the Mass Pike outside of Worcester when he was nine. They were returning to their Wellesley home from a Christmas party. It was a night of freezing rain. But it wasn’t the ice that killed them. They were sideswiped by another vehicle on an empty stretch and driven into a concrete barrier. The impact was so great that they died instantly, said the reports. There were no witnesses to the accident, and the truck that hit them never stopped. But weeks later one whose paint matched that on his parents’ car turned up some miles away. It had been stolen. The police had no suspects, and today it remained just another cold case of hit-and-run. That’s when he was moved up here to live with Richard whose wife was still alive—Grandma Betty. She died ten months later. For the last seven years, it’d been he and Richard.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Brendan said, before he left. “Did my parents drink any kind of almond liqueur … cordial? Amaretto?”

Richard shook his head. “Jeez, you ask the damnedest questions.”

“W-when you visited them, what did they drink?”

Richard winced as if trying to squeeze up a memory. “I don’t know. They weren’t boozers, if that’s what you mean. You mother liked white wine, and your dad was a beer man. Why?”

“Did they cook with almond extract—cookies, candies, ice cream—stuff like that?”

“Are you going to get me my pills? I’m not supposed to go more than four hours, and it’s been six.”

If Richard went into cardiac arrest and died, Brendan would become a ward of the state and turned over to some foster home or orphanage. That would not be good. “I’m going,” he said. “What about you? Did you drink a-almond liqueurs or eat anything with a-almond extract?”

“You think I was some kind of boozer?”

“Did you?”

“Jesus Christ. What is it with you?” Richard looked confused and exasperated, maybe even a little frightened. “No. Scotch. I don’t think I ever had any Almaretto or whatever. And I don’t eat nuts because they get stuck in what teeth I got left. Okay? Now get me the damn pills before I croak.”

Brendan put his backpack over his shoulder, feeling the weight of his field glasses inside. “I’ll be back.”

“Christ, and before dawn, please!” Brendan was halfway out the door when Richard called out: “Hey, Brendy, you’re a good kid.”

No, Brendan thought. I’m a snowman.

13

Every Thursday night, Cindy Porter would stop at Morton’s Deli for some pastrami, sauerkraut, potato salad, kosher pickles, fresh sub rolls, and a copy of the Cape Ann Weekly Gazette. Then she’d head home and, weather permitting, she’d settle into the backyard hot tub with her boyfriend, Vinnie, and read the paper and pig out.

As a nurse, she knew better, given how the cholesterol, fat, and salt in one of her Mortons could probably send a hippopotamus into cardiac arrest. But the rest of the week, she did her tofu-wheat-germ-and-broccoli virtues. Besides, she had read about a study by some Harvard nutritionist who concluded that a steady diet of low fat and cholesterol statistically added at best two months to one’s life. Her weekly Mortons were worth a measly eight weeks, especially since her parents were in their seventies and still going strong.

It was a pleasant evening, and, as usual, she changed into her bathing suit. Vinnie was visiting his mother in Connecticut and wouldn’t be back until late. So she made herself a sandwich and settled into the tub with a cold Sam Adams and the Gazette. As the warm water gushed around her, she felt her muscles loosen in place. She took a bite of sandwich and washed it down with some beer.

The headlines were about the ongoing battle to build low-income housing. She was against it, only because she knew that only ten percent of the actual complex would be for poor families, the rest for expensive country condo living that would amount to a bonanza for developers. And that meant more coastal acreage would be jammed with construction, and more traffic clogging town roads. She made note of the town hearing next week.

She turned the paper over. Catching her eye at the bottom of the page was the headline: “Human Remains off Gloucester Identified.”

According to the story, a skull and a leg bone that had been pulled up by professional scallopers two months ago had been positively identified. She vaguely recalled reading about the discovery. Apparently the remains had been DNA-matched to a six-year-old boy from Tennessee.

Maybe he had been up this way on a summer vacation or a visit with relatives. The poor kid. There were boating accidents and disappearances every year, usually because people don’t check the weather reports and then get caught in storms.

The story went on to say how forensics experts from the medical examiner’s office in Boston originally were baffled by the mysterious holes in the boy’s skull.

On an inside page, where the story continued, was a schematic drawing of the skull showing the odd cluster of holes—two sets on the left side of the forehead just behind the hairline, and above the ear.

Experts still aren’t certain if the holes were made by marine organisms or had occurred before death.The cause of death has not yet been determined. However, forensic scientists estimate that the remains could have been in the water for over a year, leading some to conclude that the child had drowned.But according to Gloucester police who worked in conjunction with Tennessee authorities, the child’s disappearance was being treated as a kidnapping and homicide.

The story went on to say that the remains had been returned to the parents for burial.

Cindy stared at the diagram.

That strange boy who came into the ER the other night had scars on his head just like these. The poetry kid. The savant.

Brendan something or other.

“Yes, they’re drill marks,” Joe Steiner insisted. “And you don’t need to get a second opinion. While you were gone, I had Boston look at them. We got both stereoscopic and an electron microscopic analysis. No marine organism in the books made those holes. They also ruled out lasers, knives, ice picks, and every known kind of muzzle projectile—bullet, pellet, BB, buckshot, dart—you name it. They were drilled, Greg, and you can take that to the bank.”

Greg was on the phone the morning after he had returned from Chattanooga. He would have called from the road yesterday, but Joe was out of the office yesterday, car-shopping with his daughter.

“How come the parents weren’t notified about the holes?”

“Because somebody messed up, maybe at the Gloucester end, maybe Tennessee,” Joe said. “It’s possible it was simply overlooked, or somebody didn’t think it was significant. Whatever, the Boston ME made it clear those perforations were the results of a neurological procedure. And that got into the report because I saw it.”

“They didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”

“If the kid had had an operation, the parents would have remembered. Nobody saw it as a cause of death. These things happen.”

“Joe, you weren’t down there,” Greg said. “You didn’t see the expression on their faces when I told them that their kid’s head had been drilled.”

“I understand. That must have been a bitch. But when you calm down, you might want to give this woman a call.”

“What woman?”

“Write this down: Cynthia Porter, R.N., at the Essex Medical Center.”

“What’s she got?”

“A kid with cluster-scars on his head identical to those of the Sagamore Boy and the Dixon kid,” Joe said.

“What?”

“And he’s alive.”

14

Nicole was naked but for a tutu and doing peek-a-boo pirouettes while her boyfriend, the older guy from the diner, lay naked and panting on her bed in a state of red alert, his wanger armed and poised like a surface-to-air missile—when suddenly she glided to the window and dropped the blinds, cutting off Brendan’s view.

Brendan lowered the binoculars. Whatever they were doing in there, only the fish in her aquarium could appreciate.

It was a little after midnight that same evening. For nearly half an hour he had watched her through her bathroom window just thirty feet from his perch, taking in every moment of her precoital ritual. She had stripped down to that pink-cream flesh then, with her back to him, she brushed her golden mane, after which, turning slightly toward him, she shaved herself at the sink, her arms raised like swan necks toward the ceiling so he got a full double-barrel shot of those pink-capped breasts, then raising her legs as if practicing a ballet move, running the razor in long strokes, turning this way and that, all the while oblivious to the raised blinds and Brendan in the tree right outside her window.

Even so close, he could not see his mark because she never faced him straight-on long enough—just a quick flash of the dark target area, then she slipped into the shower, which was one of those fancy all-glass-and-chrome enclosures that instantly misted up, rendering her a moving impressionism in pink. And when she was finished, he lost her to a towel.

Brendan slipped the field glasses into its case and slumped against the tree trunk. This was the third time he had staked her out. And another bust. Next time.

He didn’t care about the boyfriend, who had climbed up the drainpipe onto the porch roof and into her bedroom. Brendan was only interested in Nicole.

Nicole DaFoe.

He liked to stretch the syllables like sugar nougat.

Ni-cole Da-Foe

DaFee DaFi DaFoe DaFum

I smell the blood of a Yummy Yum Yum

Nicole DaFoe.

Everybody knew her name because it was in the newspapers all the time about how she made the honor roll at Bloomfield—a precious little prep school for rich geeks—how she got this award and that, how she was at the top of her class two years in a row and won first place in the New England science fair, how she was nominated for a Mensa scholarship for her senior year and was going to some fancy genius camp this summer to study biology and astrophysics. But not how she danced naked for her boyfriends. And not what they all said: Nicole DaFoe: the Ice Queen who fucked.

Next time, he told himself. And up close and personal.

At this hour most of Hawthorne was asleep. Brendan had slipped out in his grandfather’s truck and driven the fifteen miles to Nicole’s house. From his perch high in an old European beech elm, he watched a blue-white crystalline moon rise above the line of trees and the fancy homes that made up her street. It blazed so brightly that the trees made shadow claws across the lawns.

But Brendan did not notice. He was now lost in the moon face—so much so that his body had gone rigid with concentration and his mind sat at the edge of a hypnotic trance. So lost that neither the electric chittering of insects nor the pass of an occasional car registered. So lost that the ancient shadows on the white surface appeared to move.

He had nearly cleared his mind of the assaulting clutter—of verbal and visual noise that gushed out of his memory in phantasmagoric spurts—crazy flash images of meaningless things that would at times rise up in his mind like fuzzy stills, as if he were watching a slide show through gauze—other times they’d come in snippets of animated scenes, like a film of incoherent memory snatches spliced together by some lunatic editor—images of people’s eyes, their faces blurred out—just eyes—and lights and shiny metal, television commercials, green beeping oscilloscope patterns.

And that Möbius strip of poetry.

He liked poetry, which stuck to his mind like frost—especially love poetry, not because he loved but because he couldn’t. It was like some alien language he tried to decipher, his own Linear B.

Maybe it was because he had banged his head earlier that day, but his mind was particularly active—and from someplace he kept seeing flashes of a big smiling Happy Face cartoon.

It made no sense.

Nixon.

He almost had caught it earlier. Nixon.

Big blue oval face and a sharp almond odor he could not identify—an odor that was distinct and profoundly embedded in his memory.

Memory.

That was the problem: He had Kodachrome memory, ASA ten million, and one that didn’t fade. Ever. He had been cursed with a mind that would not let him forget things. Although the Dellsies thought it cool having a waiter with total recall who could tell you the nutritional value of everything in the kitchen and remember what you ordered three weeks ago for lunch, his head was a junk-heap torture chamber. While other people’s recollection was triggered by a song or a familiar face, Brendan’s mind was an instant cascade of words and images, triggered by the slightest stimulus—like the first neutron in a chain reaction in a nuclear explosion. It was horrible, and it led him to avoid movies, music, and television. To keep himself from total dysfunction or madness or suicide—and there were many days he contemplated braiding a noose—he had worked out elaborate strategies. Sometimes he would project the images onto an imaginary book page then turn the page to a blank sheet. Or he would write down words or phrases that just wouldn’t go away—sometimes pages worth, including diagrams and stick drawings of people and things—then burn them. When that didn’t work, he would torch whole books.

Medication also helped. But when he turned sixteen, he had to quit school because he could not take the reading, not because he couldn’t understand the material—au contraire, the subjects were stupefyingly easy. It was that he couldn’t clear his mind of what he read, and just to release the pressure, he would gush lines of memorized text—like verbal orgasms. Teachers complained. Classmates called him “freak.” They called him “Johnny Mnemonic.” They wanted him to do mind tricks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man—look at a shuffled pack of cards, then turn them over and recite the order, or spout off the telephone numbers of all the kids in class, or the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Stupid razzle-dazzle memory stuff. It was easy, but no fun being a one-man carnie sideshow. So he stopped reading and quit school.

The other day he happened to walk by DellKids, and because the door was ajar he overheard that little Whitman boy, Dylan, complain that he didn’t remember something that he was supposed to. Brendan envied him that. He would kill to turn off his brain.