matter, since most of them knew it anyway through the macabre reach of the grapevine, and those who didn't were soon filled in after school closed and a quiet had sifted over the grounds.
But he had kept the promise, and when classes were dismissed, he took off for the track.
Seeing the same faces move about, seeing different ones take different places, seeing some of the kids smiling because of the time off, and some of them grim and staring blindly at the grass that rippled as the wind came up.
There was no one in the bleachers.
On his third lap he saw a flickering under the wooden seats, and he slowed, peered into the shadows, and sped up again. It was nothing. A trick of the light. A trick of the sky and the sun that didn't give a damn that a seventeen-year-old girl had been mangled because the cops couldn't catch one lousy killer.
And that, he decided, would be part of the new order he had devised: no one, not even adults, would die at the hands of a crazy bastard who obviously thought he was some kind of animal.
He walked the next lap, head down, arms limp at his sides. His shirt was stained with perspiration, his trousers damp and clinging. Tracey wasn't in school. He didn't blame her. From the garbled story he'd heard last night, she had practically been killed herself, and the first thing he was going to do when he got home was forgive her for not getting in touch, and call her.
Someone called his name.
He ignored it and started around the front turn, heading for the bleachers again. Once there, he would take one more lap, then go home and shower. After that he would call. And after that he would try to figure out what had happened to his best friend.
On Sunday, when he was finally able to examine the poster more closely, he realized that in one respect he had been wrong, that no one had attempted to mutilate the picture-a finger touched the paper and he saw that the flaw was in the picture itself. There were no raised edges, no indentations. Just a static screen of white lines that made no sense at all. Flaws like that didn't come with time.
Someone called his name.
He scowled and looked around, saw Jeff at the railing at the bottom of the stands. A glance to the bleachers, a brief wondering what he had seen there, and he decided he had had enough. With one hand massaging the back of his neck he walked over to the nearest steps and hauled himself up, dropped onto a seat and waited for Jeff.
'Hey,' Lichter said without much enthusiasm.
'Yeah,' he said, passing a sleeve over his mouth.
'What a bitch.'
Don rested his forearms on his knees and leaned over, still trying to get his wind back. Thinking about Amanda. A drop of sweat landed on his shoe.
'I mean, they don't even know what this dude looks like, for god's sake!
What the hell kind of thing is that? This makes what, seven? And they don't even know what he looks like!' He took off his glasses and pulled out a shirttail to clean them. 'Tracey's practically ready to move in with her grandmother, and I tell you, Don, I don't blame her.'
He covered his face with his hands, drew them down an inch at a time, and looked up at the sky. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean, she and Mandy were walking back from the library, minding their own business, and all of a sudden this crazy guy runs out at them, and the next thing Tracey knows, Mandy and this guy are gone into the park.
She-Trace, I mean-she screamed so much she's hoarse, and she ran all the way to Beacher's to use the phone. Her old man was there, but she says she could hardly talk she was so scared. Some doctor was supposed to go over to their place and give her something so she could sleep.' He replaced the glasses, pushed back his hair. 'I bet she didn't though. I bet she didn't sleep a wink.'
Don pushed back on the seat until he could lean his elbows on the one behind. Then he squinted at Jeff. 'She called you?'
'Yeah.'
He nodded, and felt a wall begin to crack somewhere inside him, a fissure splitting the wall in half.
'She cried a lot, believe it.'
The wall fell to dry, colorless dust. 'She called you.'
'Yeah, I said she did.' Jeff started to smile, then found something to look at intently on the gridiron. 'She said she had to talk to someone, and your line was busy. She said she tried for nearly an hour, but she had to talk to someone, and when she couldn't get you, she tried me.'
'You were home.'
Jeff's laugh sounded almost genuine. 'Sure! You think my father would let me out that late on a school night?'
'Well, it just goes to show you,' Don said, rising and dusting at his trousers.
'Hey, Don, I told you she tried to call.'
'I know, I know.'
'But your line was busy.'
'My father,' he said. 'Reporters and all, and the police.'
'Oh. Well, look, you oughta call her when you get home, you know? I mean, it was you she wanted to talk to, not me.'
'Sure.' He started for the stairs; he had to run again in spite of the stitch that lingered in his side.
'Hey, Don, damnit,' Jeff called.
He didn't look around.
'Hey, it ain't my fault.'
He started to run.
'Well, fuck you too, pal.'
And when he came around again, Jeff was gone.
The burning in his left eye he blamed on the wind, and he lowered his head so his vision would clear, and so he could watch the out-and-back rhythm of his feet gliding over the track.
Out. Back. The cinder so smooth he imagined he wasn't moving at all.
He felt it then-the slipping away, letting anger stiffen his muscles and labor his breath, color his mind until he couldn't think, could barely see, made him stop, panting, hands hard on his hips while he gulped at the sky for air to calm him.
He was back at the bleachers, blinking the tears away and trying not to scream Jeff's name at the sky. Trying not to chase after his friend, slam him against a wall and demand to know what he thought he was doing, talking to Don's girl when it was Don Tracey wanted, Don she had tried to call and could not reach because his goddamned parents were too busy trying to lessen the blow of Mandy's death. Not soften. They were hunting for ways to let life go on with a minimum of disruption: the school and the celebration. Ashford. One hundred and fifty years. And Mandy was only seventeen and he was only seventeen-and-a-half and he would be damned if he was going to let it happen to him.
He bent over and let his arms hang loose. His hands shook wildly but the tension wouldn't drain; his knees felt like buckling, and he was ready to give in, to collapse and try to make sense of this new thing when, from his right, he heard a noise.
A shuffling, a sniffing, something moving under the seats.
He turned his head and peered into the shadows. A dog, probably. That's what he had seen before-a glow from its eyes, or something in its mouth.
A claw, or the color of its fur.
He listened, and heard nothing.
He stared back at the track, shaking himself all over to loosen up and drive the red from his eyes. When he was finished, he took several deep breaths he released explosively, then walked over and leaned down, supporting himself on his palms while he looked between the seats.
He overcame an initial rush of surprise and said, 'Hey, who are you?'
But the man cowering against the brick wall only lifted a filthy hand to wave him away. A man of indeterminate age, in fatigue pants and tweed jacket, with grime on his face and dark stains on his fingers and
