Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

The Kneeling Soldier

He's out there? Again?"

A dish fell to the tile kitchen floor and shattered.

"Gwen, go down to the rec room. Now."

"But, Daddy," she whispered, "how can he be? They said six months. They promised six months. At least!"

He peered through the curtains, squinting, and his heart sank. "It's him." He sighed. "It's him. Gwen, do what I told you. The rec room. Now." Then he shouted into the dining room, "Doris!"

His wife hurried into the kitchen. "What is it?"

"He's back. Call the police."

"He's back?" the woman muttered in a grim voice.

"Just do it. And Gwen, I don't want him to see you. Go downstairs. I'm not going to tell you again."

Doris lifted the phone and called the sheriff's office. She only had to hit one button; they'd put the number on the speed dialer ages ago.

Ron stepped to the back porch and looked outside.

The hours after dinner, on a cool springtime evening like this, were the most peaceful moments of the year in Locust Grove. The suburb was a comforting thirty-two miles from New York City, on the North Shore of Long Island. Some truly wealthy folk lived here — new money as well as some Rockefeller and Morgan hand-me-downs. Then there were the aspiring rich and a few popular artists, some ad agency CEOs. Mostly, though, the village was made up of people like the Ashberrys. Living comfortably in their six-hundred-thousand-dollar houses, commuting on the LIRR or driving to their management jobs at publishing or computer companies on Long Island.

This April evening found the dogwoods in bloom and the fragrance of mulch and the first-cut grass of the year filling the misty air. And it found the brooding form of young Harle Ebbers crouching in the bushes across the street from Ron Ashberry's house, staring into the bedroom window of sixteen-year-old Gwen.

Oh, dear Lord, Ron thought hopelessly. Not again. It's not starting again…

Doris handed the cordless phone to her husband and he asked for Sheriff Hanlon. As he waited to be connected, he inhaled the stale, metallic scent of the porch screen he rested his head against. He looked across his yard, forty yards, to the bush that had become a fixture in his daydreams and the focus of his nightmares.

It was a juniper, about six feet long and three high, gracing a small municipal park. It was beside this languorous bush that twenty-year-old Harle Ebbers had spent much of the last eight months, in his peculiar crouch, stalking Gwen.

"How d'he get out?" Doris wondered.

"I don't see what good it'll do," Gwen said from the kitchen, panic in her voice, "to call the police. He'll be gone before they get here. He always is."

"Go downstairs!" Ron called. "Don't let him see you."

The thin blonde girl, her face as beautiful as Lladro porcelain, backed away. "I'm scared."

Doris, a tall, muscular woman exuding the confidence of the competitive athlete she'd been in her twenties, put her arm around her daughter. "Don't worry, honey. Your father and I are here. He's not going to hurt you. You hear me?"

The girl nodded uncertainly and vanished down the stairs.

Ron Ashberry kept his gaze coldly fixed on the figure next to the bush.

It was a cruel irony that this tragedy had happened to Gwen.

Conservative by nature, Ron had always been horrified by the neglect he saw on the part of families in the city to which he commuted every day. Absent fathers, crack-addict mothers, guns and gangs, little girls turning to prostitution. He vowed that nothing bad would ever happen to his daughter. His plan was simple: he'd protect Gwen, raise her the right way, teach her good moral values, family values — which, thank God, people had started talking about again. He'd keep her close to home, insist that she get good grades, learn sports, music and social skills.

Then, when she turned eighteen, he'd give her freedom. She'd be old enough then to make the correct decisions — about boys, about careers, about money. She'd go to an Ivy League college and then return to the North Shore for marriage or a career. This was serious work, hard work, this child rearing. But Ron was seeing the results of his efforts. Gwen had scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on the PSATs. She never talked back to adults; her coaches reported she was one of the best athletes they'd ever worked with; she never snuck cigarettes or liquor, never whined when Ron told her no driver's license until she was eighteen. She understood how much he loved her and why he wouldn't let her go into Manhattan with her girlfriends or spend the weekend on Fire Island unchaperoned.

And so he felt it was utterly unfair that Harle Ebbers picked his daughter to stalk.

It had begun last fall. One evening Gwen had been particularly quiet throughout the evening meal. When Ron had asked her to go pick a book out of his library so he could read it aloud, Gwen just stood at the kitchen window, staring outside.

"Gwen, are you listening to me? I asked you to get me a book."

She'd turned and to his shock he saw she was crying.

"Honey, I'm sorry," Ron'd said automatically and stepped forward to put his arm around her. He knew the problem. Several days ago she'd asked if she could take a trip to Washington, D.C., with two teachers and six of the girls and boys from her social studies class. Ron had considered letting her go. But then he'd checked out the group and found that two of the girls had discipline problems — they'd been found drinking in a park near the school last summer. He'd told Gwen she couldn't go and she'd seemed disappointed. He'd assumed this was what troubled her today. "I wish I could let you go, Gwen —" he'd said.

"Oh, no. Daddy, it's not that stupid trip. I don't care about that. It's something else…"

She'd fallen into his arms, sobbing. He was filled with overwhelming parental love. And an unbearable agony for her pain. "What is it, honey? Tell me. You can tell me anything."

She'd glanced out the window.

Following her gaze, he'd seen, in the park across the street, a figure crouching in the bushes.

"Oh, Daddy, he's following me."

Horrified, Ron had led her to the living room, calling out, "Doris, we're having a family conference! Come in here! Now!" He'd gestured his wife into the room then sat next to Gwen. "What is it, baby? Tell us."

Ron preferred that Doris pick up Gwen at school. But occasionally, if his wife was busy, he let Gwen walk home. There were no bad neighborhoods in Locust Grove, certainly not along the trim, manicured route to the high school — the greatest threats were usually aesthetic: a cheap bungalow or a flock of plastic flamingos, herds of plaster Bambis.

Or so Ron had believed.

That autumn night Gwen had sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the floor, and explained in a meek voice, "I was walking home today, okay? And there was this guy."

Ron's heart had gone cold, hands shaking, anger growing within him.

"Tell us," Doris had said. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened. Not like that. He just like started to talk to me. He's going, 'You're so pretty. I'll bet you're smart. Where do you live?'"

"Did he know you?"

"I don't think so. He acted all funny. Like he was sort of retarded, you know. Kind of saying things that didn't make sense. I told him you didn't want me to talk to strangers and I ran home."

"Oh, you poor thing." Her mother embraced her.

"I didn't think he followed me. But…" She bit her lip. "But that's him."

Ron had jogged toward the bush where he'd seen the young man. He was in a curious pose. It reminded Ron of one of those green plastic soldiers he'd buy when he was a kid. The kneeling soldier, aiming his rifle.

The boy saw Ron coming and fled.

The sheriff's office knew all about the boy. Harle's parents had moved to Locust Grove a few months before, virtually driven out of Ridgef ord, Connecticut, because their son had targeted a young blonde, about Gwens age, and had begun following her. The boy was of average intelligence but had suffered psychotic episodes when younger. The police hadn't been able to stop him because he'd only hurt one person in all his months of stalking — the girl's brother had attacked him. Harle had nearly beaten the boy to death but all charges were dropped on the grounds of self-defense.

The Ebbers family had at last fled the state, hoping to start over fresh.

But the only change was that Harle had found himself a new victim: Gwen.

The boy had fallen into his obsessive vigil: staring into Gwen's classrooms at school and kneeling beside the juniper bush, keeping his eyes glued to the girl's bedroom.

Ron had tried to get a restraining order but, without any illegal conduct on Harle's part, the magistrate couldn't issue one.

Finally, after Harle had stationed himself beside the juniper bush for six nights straight, Ron stormed into the state mental health department and demanded that something be done. The department had implored the boy's parents to send him to a private-care hospital for six months. The county would pay ninety percent of the fee. The Ebbers agreed and, under an involuntary commitment order, the boy was taken off to Garden City.

But now he was back, kneeling like a soldier beside the infamous juniper bush, only one week after the ambulance had carted him off.

Finally Sheriff Hanlon came on the line.

"Ron, I was going to call you."

"You knew about him?" Ron shouted. "Why the hell didn't you tell us? He's out there right now."

"I just found out about it myself. The boy talked to a shrink at the hospital. Apparently he gave the right answers and they decided to release him. Keeping him any longer on a dicey order like that, there was a risk of liability for the county."

"What about liability for my daughter?" Ron spat out.

"There'll be a hearing in a few weeks but they can't keep him in the hospital till then. Probably not after the hearing either, the way it's shaking out."

Tonight as mist settled on the town of Locust Grove, this beautiful spring night, crickets chirped like greaseless gears, and Harle Ebbers was frozen in his familiar pose, dark eyes searching for a delicate young girl whose father happened to be deciding at that moment that this couldn't go on any longer.

"Look, Ron," the sheriff said sympathetically, "I know it's tough. But —"

Ron slammed the phone into the cradle, nearly tearing it from the wall.

"Honey," Doris began. He ignored her and as he started for the door she took his arm. She was a strong woman. But Ron was stronger and he pulled away brusquely. Pushed open the screen door and started across the dewy lawn to the park.

To his surprise, and pleasure, Harle didn't flee. He stood up out of his crouching position and crossed his arms, waiting for Ron to approach.

Ron was athletic. He played tennis and golf and he swam like a dolphin. One hundred laps a day when the country club pool was open. He was slightly shorter than Harle but, as he gazed at the boy's prominent eyebrows and disturbingly deep-set eyes, he knew in his heart that he could kill the young man. With his bare hands if he had to. All he needed was the slightest provocation.

"Daddy, no!" Gwen screamed from the porch, her voice like a high violin note, resonating through the mist. "Don't get hurt. It's not worth it!"

Ron turned back, hissed to his girl, "Get back inside!"

Harle was waving toward the house, "Gwennie, Gweenie, Gwennie…"a frightening grin on his face.

Neighbors' lights came on, faces appeared in windows and doorways.

Perfect, Ron thought. He makes the least gesture toward me and I'll kill him. A dozen witnesses'll back me up. He stopped two feet from Harle, on whose face the grin had fallen away.

"I got sprung. They couldn't make it stick, could they? Make it stick, make it stick, couldn't make it stick. So I. Got. Sprung."

"You listen to me," Ron muttered, fists balling at his side. "You're real close. You know what I mean? I don't care if they arrest me, I don't care if they execute me. You don't leave her alone, I'm going to kill you. Understand?"

"I love my Gwennie, I love her, love her, loveher, loveher, lover, loverloverlover. She loves me, I love her she loves me I love she loves I love she loves she loves sheloves shelovessheloves-shelovessssss…"

"Come on. Take a swing at me. Come on. Coward! Haven't got the guts to mix it up like a grown-up, right? You make me sick."

Harle uncrossed his arms.

Okay, here it comes…

Ron's heart flexed and an ocean crashed in his ears. He could feel the chill adrenaline race through his body like an electric current.

The boy turned and ran.

Son of a bitch…

"Come back here!"

He was racing down the street on his lanky legs, disappearing into the misty dusk, Ron close behind him.

For a few blocks.

Athletic, yes, but a forty-three-year-old's body doesn't have the stamina of someone's half that age and after a quarter mile the boy pulled ahead and disappeared.

Winded, his side cramping fiercely from the run, Ron trotted back to the house, climbed into his Lexus. Gasping, he shouted, "Doris! You and Gwen stay here, lock the doors. I'm going to find him."

She protested but he ignored her and sped out of the drive.

A half hour later, having cruised through the entire neighborhood and finding no sign of the boy, he returned home.

To find his daughter in tears.

Doris and Gwen sat in the living room, the shades down and curtains drawn. Doris held a long kitchen knife in her strong fingers.

"What?" Ron demanded. "What's going on?"

Doris said, "Tell your father."

"Oh, Daddy, I'm sorry. I thought it was best."

"What?" Ron strode forward, dropping onto the couch, gripping his daughter by her shoulders. "Tell me!" he cried.

"He came back," Gwen said. "He was by the bush. And I went out to talk to him."

"You did what? Are you crazy?" Ron shouted, shaking with rage and fear at what might have happened.

Doris said, "I couldn't stop her. I tried, but —"

"I was afraid for you. I was afraid he'd hurt you. I thought maybe I could be nice to him and ask him please just to go away."

Despite his horror, a burst of pride at her courage popped inside of Ron Ashberry.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Oh, Daddy, it was terrible."

The feeling of pride faded and he sat back, staring at his daughter's white face. Ron whispered, "Did he touch you?"

"No… not yet."

"What do you mean, 'yet?" Ron barked.

"He said…" Her tearful face looked from her father's furious eyes to her mother's determined ones. "He said that when it's the next full moon, that's when women get a certain way because of their, you know, monthly thing. The next full moon, he's going to find me wherever I am…" Her face grew red in shame. She swallowed. "I can't say it, Daddy. I can't tell you what he said he'd do."

"My God."

"I got so scared, I ran back to the house."

Doris, her strong-jawed face turned toward the window, added, "And he just stood there, staring at us, kind of singing in this sick voice. We locked the doors right away." She nodded at the knife, setting it on the table. "I got that from the kitchen just in case."

She loves me, I love her she loves me I love she loves I love she loves she loves…

His wife continued. "Then you came back and when he saw the car lights he ran off. It looked like he was headed toward his folks' house."

Ron grabbed the phone, hit the speed dial.

"This is Ron Ashberry," he said to the police dispatcher.

"Yessir, is it the boy again?" she asked.

"Hanlon. Now."

A pause. "Hold, please."

The sheriff came on the line. "Ron, what the hell's going on tonight? I've had four calls from your neighbors about this thing, shouting, people running around."

Ron explained about the threats.

"It's still just words, Ron."

"Goddamn it, I don't care about the law! He said the night of the full moon he's going to rape my little girl. What the hell do you people want?"

"When's the full moon?"

"I don't know, how would I know?"

"Hold on a second. I've got an almanac… Here we go. It's next week. We'll have somebody at your house all day. If he makes a move, we'll get him."

"For what? Trespass? And he'll be out in, what, a week?"

"I'm sorry, Ron. It's the law."

"You know what you and your law can do? You can go straight to hell."

"Ron, I've told you before, if you take things into your own hands, you're going to be in serious trouble. Now good night to you."

Ron jammed the phone into the cradle hard again and this time it flew from the wall fixture.

He shouted to Doris, "Stay here. Keep the doors locked."

"Ron, what are you going to do?"

"Daddy, no…"

The door slammed so hard a pane cracked and the fissure lines made a perfect spiderweb.

Ron parked on the lawn, narrowly missing a rusting Camaro and a station wagon, lime green except for the front fender, which was the matte color of dried-blood-brown primer.

Pounding on the scabby door, he shouted, "I want to see him. Open up!"

Finally the door swung open and Ron stepped inside. The bungalow was small and it was a mess. Food, dirty plastic plates, beer cans, piles of clothes, magazines, newspapers. A strong animal pee smell too.

He pushed past the diminutive, chubby couple, both wearing jeans and T-shirts. In their late thirties.

"Mr. Ashberry," the man said uneasily, looking at his wife.

"Is your son here?"

"We don't know. Listen, sir, we had nothing to do with him getting out of that hospital. We was all for keeping him there, as I think you know."

"What do you mean you don't know where he is?"

"He comes and goes," his wife said. "Through his bedroom window. Sometimes we don't see him for days."

"Ever try discipline? Ever try a belt? What is it, you think children should walk all over you?"

The father gave a mournful laugh.

His wife said, "Has he done something else?"

As if what the boy had done wasn't enough. "Oh, he's just threatening to rape her, that's all."

"Oh, no, no." She clutched her hands together, fingers dirty and bedecked with cheap rings. "But it's just talk," the woman blurted. "It's always just talk, with him."

Ron whirled to face her. Her short black hair was badly in need of a wash and she smelled of sour onions. He muttered, "It's gone past the talk stage and I'm not going to put up with it. I want to see him."

They glanced at each other and the father led him down a dark corridor toward one of two bedrooms. Something — old food, it seemed — crunched under Ron's feet. The man looked over his shoulder, saw his wife standing in the living room and said, "I'm so sorry for all this, sir. I truly am. I wish I had it in my heart to, you know, make him go away."

"We tried that," Ron said cynically.

"I don't mean a hospital or jail." His voice fell to a whisper. "To go away forever. You know what I mean. I've thought about it some. She has too but she doesn't say it. Being his mother and all. One night I almost done it. When he was asleep." He paused and caressed a crater in the Sheetrock, made by a fist, it seemed. "I wasn't strong enough. I wished I was. But I couldn't do it."

His wife joined them and he fell silent. The father knocked timidly on the door and when there was no response he shrugged. "Ain't much we can do. He keeps it locked and won't give us a key."

"Oh, for God's sake." Ron stepped back and slammed his foot into the door.

"No!" the mother cried. "He'll be mad. Don't —"

The door crashed open and Ron stepped inside, flicking on the light. He stopped, astonished.

In contrast to the rest of the house, Harle's room was immaculate.

The bed was made and the blankets were taut as a buck private's. The desktop ordered and polished. The rug vacuumed. Bookshelves neat, and all the books were alphabetized.

"He does it himself," Harle's mother said with a splinter of pride. "Cleans up. See, he's not really so bad —"

"Not really so bad? Are you out of your mind? Look at that! Just look!"

On the walls were posters from World War Two movies, Nazi paraphernalia, swastikas, bones. A bayonet dangled from one wall. A miniature samurai sword sat on a footlocker. One poster was a comic book scene of a man with knives for feet, ripping apart an opponent he was fighting. Blood sprayed in the air.

Three pairs of spit-polished combat boots sat by the bedside. A tape, The Faces of Death, sat on the VCR, attached to a spotless television.

Ron reached for the door to the closet.

"No," his mother said firmly. "Not there. He don't let us go in there. We're never supposed to do that!"

The double door too was locked but with one yank Ron ripped the panels open, nearly wrenching them off the hinges.

Gruesome toys, monsters and vampires, characters from horror films, fell out. Rubber mock-ups of severed limbs, taxidermied animals, a snake's skeleton, Freddy Krueger posters.

And in the center of the closet floor was the main attraction: an altar dedicated to Gwen Ashberry.

Ron cried out in horror as he dropped to his knees, staring at the frightening tableau. Several photographs of Gwen were pinned to the wall. Harle must have taken them on the days when she walked home from school by herself. In two of the snapshots she was strolling obliviously along the sidewalk. In the third she was turning and smiling off into the distance. And in the fourth — the one that struck him like a fist — she was bending down to tie her shoe, her short skirt hiked high on her trim legs. This was the photo in the center of the shrine.

She loves me, I love her she loves me I love she loves I love she loves she loves she loves shelovesshelovesshelovessssss…

On the floor, between two candles, what looked like a white flower, sprouting from a dime store coffee mug, printed with the name Gwen on it. Ron touched the flower. It was cloth… but what exactly? When he pulled the girl's underpants from the mug all he could do was give a deep moan and clutch the frail garment to his chest. He remembered Doris commenting several months ago that she'd found the outer door to the laundry room open. So, he'd been in the house!

In his fury Ron ripped down the picture of Gwen bending over. Then the others. Shredded them beneath his strong fingers.

"Please, don't do that! No, no!" his mother cried.

"Really, mister!"

"Harle'll be mad. I can't stand it when he gets mad at us."

Ron rose to his feet, flung the cup into a Nazi flag, where it shattered. He pushed past the cowering couple, flung open the front door and strode out into the street.

"Where are you?" he cried. "Where? You son of a bitch!"

The peaceful dusk in Locust Grove had tipped into peaceful night. Ron saw nothing but faint houselights, he heard nothing but his own voice, dulled by the mist, returning to him from a dozen distant places.

Ron leapt into his car and left long black worms of skid marks as he knocked over garbage cans, streaking into the street.

Three hours later, he returned home.

The bright security lights were on, one of them trained directly at the juniper bush.

"Where've you been?" Doris demanded. "I've called everybody I could think of, trying to find you."

"Driving around, looking for him. Is everything okay?" he asked.

"I thought I heard somebody in the work shed about an hour ago, rummaging around."

"And?"

"I called the police and they came by. Didn't find anything. Might've been a raccoon. The window was open. But the door was locked."

"Gwen?"

"She's upstairs asleep. Did you find him?"

"No, no trace. At least I hope I put the fear of God into him so we'll have a few days' peace." He looked around the house. "Let's make sure everything's locked up."

Ron walked to the front door and opened it, stepping back in shock at the sight of the huge dark form filling the doorway. Gasping, he instinctively drew back his fist.

"Whoa, there, buddy, take it easy." Sheriff Hanlon stepped forward into the hallway light.

Ron closed his eyes in relief. "You scared me."

"I'll ditto that. Mind if I come in?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Ron snapped. The sheriff entered, nodding to Doris, who ushered him into the living room. He declined coffee.

Husband and wife looked at the sheriff, a big man in a tan uniform. He sat on the couch and said simply, "Harle Ebbers was found dead about a half hour ago. He was hit by a train on the LIRR tracks."

Doris gasped. The sheriff nodded grimly. Ron didn't even try to keep the smile off his face. "Praise Him from whom all blessings flow."

The sheriff kept his face emotionless. He looked back to his notebook. "Where've you been for the past three hours, Ron? Since you left the Ebbers' house?"

"You went there?" Doris asked.

Ron knitted his fingers together then decided it made him look guilty and he unlinked them. "Driving around," he answered. "Looking for Harle. Somebody had to. You weren't."

"And you found him," the sheriff said.

"No, I didn't find him."

"Yessir. Well, somebody sure did. Ron, we've got reports of you threatening that boy tonight. The Clarkes and the Phillips heard screaming and looked out. They heard you saying that you didn't care if you got caught, or even executed, you wanted to kill him. And then you took off chasing him down Maple."

"Well, I —"

"And then we got reports that you caused a disturbance at the Ebbers' place and fled." He read from his notebook. "'In a very agitated frame of mind.'"

"'Agitated frame of mind.' Of course I was agitated. He had a pair of my daughter's underwear in this goddamn altar in his closet."

Doris's hand rose to her mouth.

"And I found some pictures of her he'd taken on the way home from school."

"And then?"

"I drove around looking for him. I didn't find him. I came home. Look, Sheriff, I said I'd kill him. Sure. I'll admit it. And if he was running from me and got hit when he was crossing the tracks, I'm sorry. If that's, I don't know, negligent homicide or something, then arrest me for it."

The sheriff's broad face cracked a faint smile. "'Negligent homicide.' Let me ask you, you read about that somewhere? Hear it on Court TV?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just that it sounded a little rehearsed. Like maybe you'd thought it up before. You threw it at me pretty quick just then."

"Look, don't blame me if he got hit by a train. What the hell're you smiling at?"

"You're good is what I'm smiling at. I think you know that boy was dead before the train came along."

Doris was frowning. Her head swiveled toward her husband.

The sheriff continued. "Somebody crushed his skull with a blunt object — that was the cause of death — and dragged him a few feet to the roadbed. Left him on the tracks. The killer was hoping his getting hit by a train'd cover up the evidence of the blows. But the train wheel only hit his neck. The head was intact enough so the medical examiner could be sure about the cause of death."

"Well," Ron said.

"Do you own an Arnold Palmer model forty-seven golf club? A driving wood?"

A long pause.

"I don't know."

"Do you golf?"

"Yes."

"Do you own golf clubs?"

"I've been buying golf clubs all my life."

"I ask 'cause that was the murder weapon. I'm thinking you beat him to death, left him on the tracks and threw the club in Hammond Lake. Only you missed and it ended up in the marsh beside the lake, sticking straight up. Took the county troopers all of five minutes to find it."

Doris turned to the sheriff. "No, it wasn't him! Somebody broke into our shed tonight and must've stolen a club. Ron keeps a lot of his old ones there. He must've stolen one. I can prove it — I called you about it."

"I know that, Mrs. Ashberry. But you said nothing was missing."

"I didn't check the clubs. I didn't think to."

Ron swallowed. "You think I'd be stupid enough to kill that boy after I called the police and after I threatened him in front of witnesses?"

The sheriff said, "People do stupid things when they're upset. And they sometimes do some pretty smart things when they're pretending they're upset."

"Oh, come on, Sheriff. With my own golf club?"

"Which you were planning to send to the bottom of fifty feet of water and another five of mud. By the way, whether it's yours or not, that club's got your fingerprints all over it."

"How did you get my prints?" Ron demanded.

"The Ebbers'. The boy's closet door and some coffee cup you smashed up. Now, Ron, I want to ask you a few more questions."

He looked out the kitchen window. He happened to catch sight of the juniper bush. He said, "I don't think I want to say anything more."

"That's your right."

"And I want to see a lawyer."

"That's your right too, sir. If you could hold out your hands for me, please. We're gonna slip these cuffs on and then take a little ride."

Ron Ashberry entered the Montauk Men's Correctional Facility as an instant hero, having made such a great sacrifice to save his little girl.

And the day that Gwen gave that interview on Channel 9, the whole wing was in the TV room, watching. Ron sat glumly in the back row and listened to her talk with the anchorwoman.

"Here was this creep who'd stolen my underwear and'd taken pictures of me on my way home from school and in my swimsuit and everything. I mean, he was like a real stalker… and the police didn't do anything about it. It was my father who saved me. I'm, like, totally proud of him."

Ron Ashberry heard this and thought just what he'd thought a thousand times since that night in April: I'm glad you're proud of me, baby. Except, except, except… I didn't do it. I didn't kill Harle Ebbers.

Just after he'd been arrested, the defense lawyer had suggested that maybe Doris was the killer though Ron knew she wouldn't have let him take the blame. Besides, friends and neighbors confirmed that she'd been on the phone with them, asking about Ron's whereabouts, at the time of the boy's death. Phone records bore this out too.

Then there was Harle's father. Ron remembered what the man had told him earlier that evening. But Ron's tearing out of the driveway caused such a stir in the Ebbers' neighborhood that several snooping neighbors kept an eye on the house for the rest of the evening and could testify that neither husband nor wife had left the bungalow all night.

Ron had even proposed the theory that the boy had killed himself. He knew Ron was out to get him and, in his psychotic frame of mind, Harle wanted to retaliate, get back at the Ashberry family. He'd stolen the golf club and wandered to the train track, where he'd beat himself silly, flung the club toward the lake and crawled onto the tracks to die. His defense lawyer gave it a shot but the DA and police laughed at that one.

And then in a flash, Ron had figured it out.

The brother of the girl in Connecticut! The girl who'd been the previous victim. Ron envisioned the scenario: the young man had come to Locust Grove and had stalked the stalker, seeking revenge both for his sister and for the beating he himself had taken. The brother — afraid that Harle was about to be sent back to the safety of the hospital — decided to act fast and had broken into the work shed to get a weapon.

The DA hadn't liked that theory either and went forward with the case.

Everyone recommended that Ron take a plea, which he finally did, exhausted with protesting his innocence. There was no trial; the judge accepted the plea and sentenced him to twenty years. He'd be eligible for parole in seven. His secret hope was that the boy in Connecticut would have a change of heart and confess. But until that day Ron Ashberry would be a guest of the people of the State of New York.

Sitting in the TV room, staring at Gwen on the screen, absently playing with the zipper of his orange jumpsuit, Ron was vaguely aware of a nagging thought. What was it?

Something that Gwen had said to the interviewer a moment earlier.

Wait…

What pictures of her in her swimsuit?

He sat up.

Ron hadn't found any photos of her in a bathing suit in Harle's closet. And there hadn't been any introduced at trial, since there'd been no trial. He'd never heard about any swim-suit pictures. If there were any, how had Gwen known about them?

A terrible thought came to him, so terrible that it was laughable. Though he didn't laugh; he was compelled to consider it — and the other thoughts that sprang up like ugly crabgrass around it: that the only person who'd ever heard Harle threaten Gwen with the full-moon story was Gwen herself. That nobody'd ever heard Harle's side of the situation — no one except the psychiatrist in Garden City and, come to think of it, he'd let the boy out of the hospital. That all the young man had ever said to Ron was that he loved Gwen and she loved him — nothing worse than what any young man with a crush might say, even if his demeanor was pretty scary.

Ron's thoughts, racing: They'd just been accepting Gwen's story about Harle's approaching her on the way home from school eight months ago. And had been assuming all along that he'd pursued Gwen, that she hadn't encouraged him.

And her underpants?…

Could she have given him the panties herself?

Suddenly enraged, Ron leapt to his feet; his chair flew backward with a loud slam. A guard ambled over and motioned for Ron to pick it up.

As he did, Ron's thoughts raged. Could it actually have happened — what he was now thinking? Was it possible?

Had she been… flirting with that psycho all along?

Had she actually posed for him, given him a pair of the underwear?

Why, that little slut!

He'd take her over his knee! He'd ground her so fast. She always behaved when he spanked her, and the harder he whipped her the quicker she toed the line. He'd call Doris, insist she take the Ping-Pong paddle to the girl. He'd —

"Yo, Ashberry," the guard grumbled, looking at Ron's purple face, as it glared up at the screen. "You can't cool it off, git it on outa here."

Ron slowly turned to him.

And he did cool off. Inhaling deep breaths, he realized he was just being paranoid. Gwen was pure. She was innocence itself. Besides, he told himself, be logical. What possible reason would she have to flirt with someone like Harle Ebbers, to encourage him? Ron had raised her properly. Taught her the right values. Family values. She was exactly his vision of what a young woman ought to be.

But thinking of his daughter left him feeling empty, without the heart to continue watching the interview. Ron turned away from the TV and shuffled to the rec room to be by himself.

And so he didn't hear the end of the interview, the part where the reporter asked Gwen what she was going to do now. She answered, with a girlish giggle, that she was about to leave for a week in Washington with her teacher and some classmates, a trip she'd been looking forward to for months. Was she going with her boyfriend? the reporter asked. She didn't have one, the girl said coyly. Not yet. But she sure was in the market.

Then the reporter asked about plans after high school. Was she going to college?

No, Gwen didn't believe college was for her. She wanted to do something fun, something that involved travel. She thought she might try her hand at a sport. Golf probably. Over the past several years her father had spent countless hours forcing her to practice her strokes.

"He always said I should learn a proper sport," she explained. "He was quite a taskmaster. But one thing I'll say — I've got a great swing."

"I know it's been hard for you but I'm sure you're relieved to have that monster out of your life," the reporter offered.

Gwen gave a sudden, curious laugh and turned to the camera as she said, "You have no idea."