something delicate.
“Explain,” he said, taking a careful sip of his coffee.
She took a sip from her own cup. No need for caution. It was lukewarm. “Our Sniper is very much into playing games.”
“What he lives for,” Birdy said. “And Repetto is his opponent, at least in his mind.”
“And his mind is what we’re trying to get into. He gets his jollies planting clues, leaving us riddles to solve.”
“And you solved one?” Repetto asked.
“I just checked the murder files to make sure,” Meg said to both men. “If, in the Sniper’s mind, the game actually began when Repetto came to the case, the first victim was Vito Mestieri.”
“Sniper pretty much made that game thing clear,” Birdy said. “It started with Mestieri.”
“So to this point the victims are, in order, Mestieri, who owned and operated an appliance and TV repair shop. Ralph Evans, buyer for a chain of men’s clothing stores. Candy Trupiano, editor and National Guard corporal. Kelli Wilson, who sometimes spent the night on her boat docked in the city. And Lee Nasad, millionaire author. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man-”
“-poor man, beggar man, thief,” Repetto finished for her.
Meg nodded. “Child’s play.”
33
Strong Ranch was 590 acres of flat, arid land roughly between Phoenix and Tucson in the Arizona desert. It was bisected by an arroyo that ran with water about twice a year during unusually heavy rainstorms. On one side of the arroyo was the main ranch house, the boys’ barracks, and various outbuildings including a tractor shed and hip- roofed barn. On the other side was the smaller, girls’ quarters, a scaled-down version of the boys’ stucco-and- lapboard one-story structure with rooftop air-conditioning units and solar panels.
The barracks were divided into separate cubicles that afforded some privacy, and it was in one of those cubicles that Dante Vanya spent most of his time alone after being transferred to Strong Ranch. Being by himself was what he wanted, or told himself so, and the ranch wasn’t the kind of place where friendships were easily formed.
In the dining area, Dante ate alone at a table away from the other ten boys currently at the ranch, his fellow … he wasn’t sure if they were prisoners or patients.
With each passing day, Dante became more determined to go it alone at Strong Ranch. The others might have their problems, but none of them had Dante’s disfigurements.
On the third day, a hulking fifteen-year-old named Orvey tried to pick a fight with Dante by perpetrating a shoving match. Instead of shoving back, Dante kicked him hard in the shin, then advanced on him. Dante wasn’t angry, and not at all frightened. He was obviously resigned to taking a beating from the much larger boy, but determined to give back what he could.
The fight didn’t last long, and Dante was saved from a serious trouncing when two of the older boys separated the combatants out of fear the confrontation would draw attention and result in punishment.
From then on the other boys, including Orvey, granted Dante his privacy. They also respected him. They recognized toughness born of hopelessness and knew that whatever they started, the quiet boy with the sparse hair and hideous left profile would match them in meanness.
The week after Dante’s arrival, a commotion outside his cubicle made him curious. The other boys were obviously pleased by something, judging by their loud voices and laughter.
Dante ventured out to see what was going on.
A tall, broad-shouldered man with curly blond hair stood in the center of the main room. He was wearing a western-style tan shirt, cowboy boots, and jeans with a big silver belt buckle.
When he saw Dante he smiled. “Ah! Our newest arrival!” He walked over to stand near Dante, seeming even taller. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you, but I had to be in Europe on business. I’m Adam Strong.” He extended his hand.
Dante took it, and they shook. Strong’s grip was firm but he didn’t squeeze Dante’s hand like some people who tried to establish that they were in charge.
“This is Dante Vanya,” Strong said, releasing Dante’s hand and straightening up. He formally introduced the other boys, one of whom, Kerry, was bald. Dante learned later he’d lost his hair because of some kind of cancer treatment.
“What we do here,” Strong said, “is let you continue to recuperate, if you arrive with physical problems, and we help you find yourselves, no matter how you arrive.” He grinned. It scrunched up his cheeks and made his pale eyes tilt so he looked like a cat. “No doubt you’ve heard that ‘finding yourself’ malarkey before. What it means here at the ranch is that you learn what you like to do, then learn how to do it well.” He looked directly at Dante. “This is a working ranch, so we expect something in return for your stay here. There’ll be chores. You’ll act and talk like gentlemen. And we expect you to take part in activities.” The grin widened. “But don’t let me scare you, Dante. The main idea is for you to learn how to live, and to enjoy living.”
Strong looked at his wristwatch. It was big and seemed to have been made from a gold coin. “I’ve got work to do now. Vic will assign chores for the day.”
Vic was an older boy, about eighteen, who slept in the main house and also dressed like a cowboy. Dante thought he looked something like the gunfighters he’d seen on TV, only without the guns.
Vic read from a wrinkled sheet of paper. Nobody complained when they heard what work they were assigned, whether it was cleaning stables, milking cows, or helping to dig a new well. Dante drew kitchen duty in what everyone called the mess hall. In the biggest kitchen Dante had ever seen, a fat woman named Allen, even though she was a woman, gave him a paring knife and sat him down to peel potatoes for lunch. It would be a month before Dante learned that Allen was her last name and that her first was Lil.
Dante still kept to himself, but after a while he didn’t much mind being at Strong Ranch. The routine was morning chores, then various activities, and in the evenings reading or sometimes movies for both the boys and girls.
One of the girls, a redhead named Verna, was pretty in a storybook princess way, and Dante wished he knew her better, but after one look at his burned face she didn’t seem interested. He heard that her father was dead and her mother had sold her for crack money when she was six years old, to a man who’d kept her prisoner in a trailer court until she was nine. “Poor Verna can’t ever love anyone,” Dante overheard Lil Allen say one day, “’cause she can’t trust anyone. Not all the way.”
Dante could understand that. What he didn’t understand was that Verna must also betray everyone.
After the first month at the ranch, the school year began, and boys and girls together rode a bus every day into Nailsville, a small town about twenty miles away. There, with a lot of other kids, they attended school in a long, flat-roofed brick building with narrow, horizontal windows.
Despite having missed a grade, Dante found school easy enough, especially math. One day his math teacher handed him an envelope with instructions to give it to Adam Strong. Dante thought he might be in some kind of trouble, and since the envelope was unsealed, he opened it and read the note inside. His gaze fixed on the word
Early one evening, instead of the usual softball or soccer exercises, or track and field competition, Adam Strong had something different in mind. He drove up in his dusty white Ford pickup to where the boys were assembled, then lowered the tailgate and stood there with his fists on his hips. In the truck’s bed was a folded blue blanket. When the boys had all walked over to him, Strong unfolded the blanket to reveal a dozen rifles.
“We’re going to target shoot,” Strong announced. “Shooting’s a sport I used to be good at, and I know it’s a
