top up and music blaring. The wind gusted, and there was movement in the gutters, an acorn rolled along the walk and dropped into shadow.
Where are you? he thought, feeling the cold through the pane.
- There was no answer, and he had no time to ask the question again.
Joyce was in the foyer, rattling the car keys and calling up to Norman, telling Don to leave on one light so they wouldn't break a leg when they got home, and wondering aloud what she had forgotten, what would go wrong, what people would think if the celebrations began with a thud, not a bang.
He followed them out, and took a deep breath, saw Mr. Delfield rushing back to his house with his dog wriggling under his arm, and took the backseat without any prompting.
He watched the street as they drove over and parked on the north side because there were no ready openings on the boulevard, Joyce complaining because they should have started earlier to get a decent spot.
At the gates-similar pillars of stone that marked the other entrance-he hesitated and listened, and could hear nothing but the murmuring of a patiently waiting crowd, the slam of a car door, the heels of his mother's shoes cracking on the path.
Folding chairs had been placed in orderly half-moon rows facing the bandstand. The lights were bright and focused on the orchestra that took its place to a smattering of applause that grew, swelled, had people on their feet with smiles and whistles and proud looks for their children.
A television news crew was off to one side amid a clutch of newsmen who scanned the front rows, discounting the mayor and the community leaders who couldn't keep from glancing surreptitiously at the cameras.
Don sat between his parents, not liking the way he was looked at, pointed at, highlighted by smiles that claimed him as their own. The Quinteros sat behind him, and he spent as much time as he could whispering to Tracey about how silly this all was as he returned a nod or a wave when it came in his direction.
The bandmaster climbed to his stand, and the audience settled down; he turned to the microphone set up to his left and cleared his throat, causing a squeal to rip through the clearing. He laughed nervously; the audience laughed with him. He thanked them for coming, and introduced Mayor Garziana, who spent fifteen minutes orating Ashford's history in such a way that the back rows began squirming and the front rows froze their smiles.
A moment, then, in dramatic pause before he introduced each of the Ashford Day Committee members, the principals of the two high schools, and a dozen others who had worked to bring the town together for its birthday.
Norman and Joyce stood together, and Don winced when his father turned to the crowd and waved.
Then the mayor paused again, spoke again in a voice so soft no one dared sneeze for missing a word. He alluded to the Howler, and introduced Don.
Don didn't move though the applause was loud.
'Go on,' Joyce urged him with a hugging grip on his arm.
He couldn't. The cameras were watching, and the mayor was beaming, and the police chief in his dress uniform had climbed to the bandstand with a package in his hand.
'Go, Donald,' Norman hissed, poking his ribs harshly.
He couldn't.
Where are you?
Tracey leaned forward and pulled a strand of his hair. 'Go for it, Vet,'
she said into his ear.
He grinned, shook his hair loose and stood. Hand smoothed his jacket, his throat went dry, and the walk across the infield through the flare of the spotlights was long and slow and filled with the sound of his soles striking the ground.
Hollow. Booming. Iron striking iron.
The applause started again when he positioned himself between the police chief and the mayor, and he smiled shyly, unable to see anything beyond the wall of white light.
The mayor said something-Don heard Amanda's name and heard the silence that followed-and said something else before shaking his hand vigorously; and suddenly there were people right in front of him, kneeling, crouching, cameras working, flashbulbs exploding, mouths working as they ordered this pose and that, bumping into one another, crowding together, a hydra with white fire-eyes that made his own water.
The police chief said something, and handed him the package. His medal, and a certificate, and the grateful thanks of a town he had saved from further grief.
The applause punched his ears, the mayor slapped his back, and the chief pumped his hand without once seeing his face.
Then he was standing in front of the mike, and it was quiet. Only the whirr of a camera forwarding its film, only the scuffle of feet on the grass and the creak of a few chairs.
It was quiet, and it took him a moment to realize they wanted him to speak. Say a word. Tell them all how a kid had beaten a murderer to death.
A voice broke through the white wall from somewhere in the dark: 'Hey, Duck, tell them the giant crow did it!'
He looked up sharply, searching for the voice and the derisive laughter that followed.
'I ...'
He wasn't close enough to the mike, and only the mayor heard him start; but the laughter was still there, and spreading through the crowd, feeding on his nervousness, sympathetic at his plight and trying to tell him there was only good cheer out there and the gratitude hadn't died.
But they laughed, a few of them, and Don held the velvet-covered box close to his chest.
The mayor patted the back of his head and pushed him closer; the bandmaster cleared his throat. The laughter settled, and died, and there was quiet again.
Except for the wind that waited in the trees.
He looked down and saw his parents-Joyce was brushing a tear from her eye, and Norman was scowling; behind them, he could see Tracey holding tightly to her father's arm as if holding him in his seat.
'Thank you,' he said at last and clearly, and stepped off the platform before anyone could stop him.
The applause was swift and short, and by the time he reached his seat, the bandmaster was already rapping his baton.
The police station was deserted except for the desk sergeant and dispatcher and, in a second floor office that faced the main street, Thomas Verona. His shift was over at twelve, but he felt as if he'd already strung three of them together- his eyes were bleary, his hands unsteady, and whenever he tried to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time, the world began a slow spinning that forced him to shut his eyes tightly before he lost his balance.
Three fingers massaged one cheek as he stared out the window. There were few pedestrians, and the cars that stopped at the light on the corner were more than likely from adjoining towns, passing through, going home.
He shifted his ministrations to the other cheek and imagined he could hear the concert in the park. Susan was there, sitting with the Quinteros, and he wished he could have joined them. But he couldn't. It was Luis's night, not his-Luis had found the boy and had taken care of him until the ambulance had arrived, Luis, who also managed to clear up the accident between a bus and car that had jumped a boulevard island.
Luis Quintero deserved what attention he could get; he, on the other hand, was needed to fill in when one of his colleagues was taken ill.
Still, it would have been nice, sitting beside Susan and holding her hand. A hell of a lot better than sitting in here.
'Shit,' he muttered, and turned away from the window, laid his palms on the cluttered desk, and stared at the file folder spread open before him. Test results on Falwick's injuries. Test results on Amanda Adler and the Howler's other victims. Test results on the blood found on Boyd's clothes and hands. A preliminary autopsy report made just around noon, precedence over others because of the case's notoriety. He poked at them with a finger and frowned. By necessity, most of what he looked at was initial findings only, though certainly conclusive enough for him to shut the folder, file it away, and move on to the next thing.
But he couldn't.
