“Yes, because the dogs are good, but they might not be with her all the time when bad guys are around.”
“You have a lot of trouble with bad guys?”
He shook his head, then smiled a little. “But once this kid at school? He was being mean to me all the time, and he tried to hit me, so I flipped him!”
“You mean, with a karate throw?”
“Yeah! All the other kids were going, ‘Whoa! I can’t believe it!’” He looked a little sheepish. “I didn’t break any of his bones or anything, but I got in big trouble. Mom said I can’t do that to other kids — I have to use it for my last dessert.”
“As a last resort, maybe?”
“Yes. That’s what I mean.”
“That’s not why you’re home schooled, is it?”
“You mean, did I get kicked out? No way!”
“Do you like being home schooled?”
He hesitated, glancing toward the kitchen. “Of course. I learn more this way. I’ll show you.”
He led Frank down a hallway toward the back of the condo, to a door with a hand-lettered sign taped to it: Private — Please Do Not Enter Without Permission. The second
“This is my room,” he said, opening the door.
At first glance, the room seemed to be in utter chaos. Hardly a surface was bare. A piece of clothesline stretched from two hooks in the wall above the bed, and over it a sheet formed a tent of sorts above the mattress. An elaborate Lego structure stood in the middle of the room — a fort, it seemed, judging from the number of green plastic army men on parade within its walls. They appeared to be under the command of a Batman figurine. In one corner, a large and intricate guinea pig abode held My Dog, who gave out a series of dovelike cooing sounds as they entered the room. While Seth greeted him, Frank continued to survey the room.
A Macintosh computer with a screensaver of constellations sat on a desk piled high with schoolbooks. There was a map of the world on one wall, a history timeline on another. “What are all the stickers on the map?”
“I come from those places. I mean, those are places where my grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers are from — and all the grandmothers, too. I’m from all over the world. Cool, huh?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “Very cool — so’s this poster.”
The closet door had an old hockey poster on it — Gordie Howe. Long before Seth’s time.
“Are you a hockey fan?” Frank asked.
“Yes. That poster was my father’s, when he was little.” Seth stared at it, frowning — although Frank thought he was concentrating on something other than Howe’s photo. The boy moved to a small telescope near the window, fidgeting with it for a moment before he said, “I saw a movie once where someone used a picture to make a ghost come into a house. Did you see that one?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Peering into the large end of the telescope, he asked with studied casualness, “Do you think there’s any such thing as ghosts?”
“You mean the scary kind, like the ones you see in movies?”
He looked up from the lens and nodded solemnly.
Frank thought of the times when, while working on especially disturbing cases, he had awakened with a start — and for a brief half-asleep, half-awake instant felt certain that he had seen a murder victim sitting at the end of his bed. “No,” he said. “Do you?”
“Not really,” Seth said.
“Are you afraid you might see your father’s ghost?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Your father was a good man who would have wanted to be with you if he could. He never, ever would have harmed you.”
“Even if he knew I had been bad?”
“Even then. He was smart, and he would understand that everybody does something wrong now and then. He’d know that you try to be good.”
Seth quietly considered this as he walked around the room, familiar with an unobstructed path of his own design. He straightened a Batman comic book that lay on a small table next to the bed, aligning it with a book about dinosaurs and another about ships. He picked up a portable CD player, flipped the cover open and shut a few times, and set it down. Then he gestured to Frank to come nearer a wall with a series of shelves on it. These shelves held an assortment of objects on them.
He showed Frank his rock collection, a seashell collection, a shed snake-skin that he had found while visiting Matt in the desert.
“Matt’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he?” Frank asked.
“Yeah. He’s pretty fun, but he’s been sick lately, so I don’t get to visit him so often. He had to have an operation on his heart. He’s got a big scar. From here to here,” he said with a certain amount of relish as he traced a line from his neck to his belly button.
“Who are your other friends?”
