Midnight

long time, while an elongated reflection of it shimmered on the surface of the water in the swimming pool. It was a swollen yellow moon, still low in the sky and immense.

Soon the judge came out onto the patio, calling to him, and Tommy said, 'Here.'

The judge joined him by the pool. 'What're you doing, Thomas?'

'I'm watching for …'

'For what?'

Just then Tommy saw the hawk silhouetted by the moon. For years he had been told he would see it one day, had been prepared for it and all that it would mean, and suddenly there it was, frozen for a moment in midflight against the round lunar lamp.

'There!' he said, for the moment having forgotten that he could trust no one but the Indian.

'There what?' the judge asked.

'Didn't you see it?'

'Just the moon.'

'You weren't looking or you'd have seen it.'

'Seen what?'

His father's blindness to the sign only proved to Tommy that he was, indeed, special and that the portent had been meant for his eyes only — which reminded him that he could not trust his own father. He said, 'Uh … a shooting star.'

'You're standing out here watching for shooting stars?'

'They're actually meteors,' Tommy said, talking too fast. 'See, tonight the earth's supposed to be passing through a meteor belt, so there'll be lots of them.'

'Since when are you interested in astronomy?'

'I'm not.' Tommy shrugged. 'Just wondered what it'd look like. Pretty boring.' He turned away from the pool and started back toward the house, and after a moment the judge accompanied him.

The next day, Wednesday, the boy told Runningdeer about the moonhawk. 'But I didn't get any messages from it. I don't know what the great spirits want me to do to prove myself.'

The Indian smiled and stared at him in silence for what began to be an uncomfortably long time. Then he said, 'Little Chief, we'll talk about that at lunch.'

Miss Karval had Wednesdays off, and Runningdeer and Tommy were at home alone. They sat side by side on patio chairs for lunch. The Indian seemed to have brought nothing but cactus candy, and Tommy had no appetite for anything else.

Long ago the boy had ceased to eat the candy for its flavor but devoured it eagerly for its effect. And over the years its impact on him had grown constantly more profound.

Soon the boy was in that much-desired dreamlike plane, where colors were bright and sounds were loud and odors were sharp and all things were comforting and appealing. He and the Indian talked for nearly an hour, and at the end of that time Tommy came to understand that the great spirits expected him to kill his father four days hence, Sunday morning. 'That's my day off,' said Runningdeer, 'so I will not be here to offer you support. But in fact that's probably the spirits' intention — that you should have to prove yourself all on your own. At least we'll have the next few days to plan it together, so that when Sunday comes you'll be prepared.'

'Yes,' the boy said dreamily.

'Yes. We'll plan it together.'

Later that afternoon, the judge came home from a business meeting that had followed his court session. Complaining of the heat, he went straight upstairs to take a shower. Tommy's mother had come home half an hour earlier. She was in an armchair in the living room, feet on a low upholstered stool, reading the latest issue of Town & Country and sipping at what she called a 'precocktail-hour cocktail.' She barely looked up when the judge leaned in from the hall to announce his intention of showering.

As soon as his father went upstairs, Tommy went to the kitchen and got a butcher's knife from the rack by the stove.

Runningdeer was outside, mowing the lawn.

Tommy went into the living room, walked up to his mother, and kissed her on the cheek. She was surprised by the kiss but more surprised by the knife, which he rammed into her chest three times. He carried the same knife upstairs and buried it in the judge's stomach as he stepped out of the shower.

He went to his room and took off his clothes. There was no blood on his shoes, little on his jeans, but a lot on his shirt. After he quickly washed up in his bathroom sink and sluiced all traces of blood down the drain, he dressed in fresh jeans and shirt. He carefully bundled his bloody clothes in an old towel and carried them into the attic, where he hid them in a corner behind a seaman's trunk. He could dispose of them later.

Downstairs he passed the living room without looking in at his dead mother. He went straight to the desk in the judge's study and opened the right bottom drawer. From behind a stack of files, he withdrew the judge's revolver.

In the kitchen he turned off the overhead fluorescents, so the only light was what came through the windows, which was bright enough but left some parts of the room in cool shadows. He put the butcher's knife on the counter by the refrigerator, squarely in some of those shadows. He put the revolver on one of the chairs at the table, and pulled the chair only partway out, so the gun could be reached but not easily seen.

He went out through the French doors that connected the kitchen to the patio, and yelled for Runningdeer. The Indian did not hear the boy over the roar of the lawnmower, but happened to look up and see him waving. Frowning, he shut off the mower and crossed the half-cut lawn to the patio.

'Yes, Thomas?' he said, because he knew that the judge and Mrs. Shaddack were at home.

'My mother needs your help with something,' Tommy said. 'She asked me to fetch you.'

'My help?'

'Yeah. In the living room.'

'What's she want?'

'She needs some help with … well, it's easier to show you than to talk about it.'

The Indian followed him through the French doors, into the large kitchen, past the refrigerator, toward the hall door.

Tommy halted abruptly, turned, and said, 'O! yeah, Mother says you'll need that knife, that one there behind you on the counter, by the refrigerator.'

Runningdeer turned, saw the knife lying on the shadowed tile top of the counter, and picked it up. His eyes went very wide. 'Little Chief, there's blood on this knife. There's blood—'

Tommy had already plucked the revolver off the kitchen chair. As the Indian turned toward him in surprise, Tommy held the gun in both hands and fired until he emptied the cylinder, though the recoil slammed painfully through his arm and shoulders, nearly knocking him off his feet. At least two of the rounds hit Runningdeer, and one of them tore out his throat.

The Indian went down hard. The knife clattered out of his hand and spun across the floor.

With one shoe, Tommy kicked the knife closer to the corpse, so it would definitely look as if the dying man had been wielding it.

The boy's understanding of the great spirits' message had been clearer than his mentor's. They wanted him to free himself at once from everyone who had more than a little power over him: the judge, his mother, and Runningdeer. Only then could he achieve his own lofty destiny of power.

He had planned the three murders with the coolness of a computer and had executed them with machinelike determination and efficiency. He felt nothing. Emotions had not interfered with his actions. Well, in truth, he was scared and a little excited even exhilarated — but those feelings had not distracted him.

After staring for a moment at Runningdeer's body, Tommy went to the kitchen phone, dialed the police, and hysterically reported that the Indian, shouting of revenge, had killed his parents and that he, Tommy, had killed the Indian with his father's gun. But he didn't put it so succinctly. He was so hysterical, they had to pry it from him. In fact he was so shattered and disoriented by what had happened that they had to work patiently with him for three or four tedious minutes to get him to stop babbling and give them his name and address. In his mind he had practiced hysteria all afternoon, since lunch with the Indian. Now he was pleased that he sounded so convincing.

He walked out to the front of the house and sat in the driveway and wept until the police arrived. His tears