screenprinting T-shirts. But just what he would do was still a cloudy

mystery.

It was a little scary taking off the cap and gown. Like shedding his

youth. He held them both in his hands as he scanned his room. It was

cluttered with clothes, mementos, record alb.u.ms, and since his mother

had long since given up on cleaning it herself, his cache of Playboys.

There were the letters he'd earned in track and baseball. The letters,

he remembered, that had convinced Rose Anne Markowitz to climb into the

backseat of his secondhand Pinto and do it to the tune of Joe c.o.c.ker's

Feeling Alght.

He'd been blessed with a tough athletic body, long legs, and quick

reflexes. Like his father, his mother was fond of saying. He supposed

in some way he took after the old man, though their relationship had had

its share of battles. Over hair length, wardrobe, politics, curfews.

Captain Kesselring was a stickler.

Came from being a cop, Michael supposed. He remembered being careless

enough once to bring a single joint into the house. He'd been grounded

for a month. And a few lousy speeding tickets had cost him just as

dearly.

The law was the law, old Lou was fond of saying, Michael thought now.

Thank G.o.d he himself had no intention of being a cop.

He took the ta.s.sel from the cap before tossing it and the gown onto his

unmade bed. Maybe it was sentimental to keep it, but n.o.body had to

know. He routed through his dresser drawers for the old cigar box that

held some of his most valued possessions. The love letter Lori Spiker

had written him in his junior year-before she'd dumped him

for a biker with a Harley and tatoos. The ticket stub from the Rolling

Stones' concert he had, after a lot of blood and sweat, convinced his

parents to let him attend. The pop top from his first illegal beer. He

grinned and, pushing it aside, found the snapshot of himself and Brian

McAvoy.

The little girl had kept her word, Michael thought. The picture had

arrived in the mail only two weeks after the incredible day his dad had

taken him to meet Devastation. The new alb.u.m had come with it, the

hot-off-the-presses copy. He had been the envy of his contemporaries

for weeks.

Michael thought back to that day, the almost unendurable excitement he'd

felt, the sweaty armpits. He hadn't thought about that day in a long

time. Now, perhaps because of his newly acquired adult status, it

occurred to him that it had been a terrific thing for his father to do.

And uncharacteristic. Not that the old man couldn't come up with

terrific things, but he had gone to the rehearsal hall on police

business. Captain Lou Kesselring never mixed police business and

personal pleasures.

But he had that day, Michael thought.

It was strange, but now that he was remembering it all, he could picture

his father dragging home files, night after night. As far as Michael

could recollect, his father had never brought home work that way before,

or since.

The little boy, Brian McAvoy's little boy, had been murdered. It had