“Hannibal!” Jim and Dave shrieked in unison. The sound made Cynthia think of the Doublemint Twins.

She shoved the Carver kids toward the open door of the truck so hard that Brother Boogersnot fell down. He started to bellow at once. The girl-always an Ellie, never a Margaret, Cynthia remembered-looked back with an expression of heartbreaking bewilderment. Then the man with the long hair had her by the arm and was hauling her up into the cab. “On the floor, kid, on the floor!” he shouted at her, then leaned out to grab the yowling boy. The Ryder truck’s horn let out a brief blat; the driver had hooked one sneakered foot through the wheel to keep from sliding out headfirst. Cynthia batted the red wagon aside, grabbed the boogersnot by the back of his shorts, and lifted him into the truck-driver’s arms. Down the street, approaching, she could hear a man and a woman yelling the kids” names. Dad and Mom, she assumed, and apt to be shot down in the street like the dog and the paperboy if they didn’t look out.

“Get up here!” the driver bawled at her. Cynthia needed no second invitation; she scrambled into the overcrowded cab of the truck.

Gary Soderson came striding purposefully (although not quite steadily) around the side of his house with his martini glass in one hand. There had been a second loud bang, and he found himself wondering if maybe the Gellers” gas grill had exploded. He saw Marinville, who had gotten rich in the eighties writing children’s books about an unlikely character named Pat the Kitty-Cat, standing in the middle of the street, shading his eyes and looking down the hill.

What be happenin, my brother?” Gary asked, joining him.

“I think someone in that van down there just killed Cary Ripton and then shot the Reeds” dog,” Johnny Marinville said in a strange, flat voice.

“What? Why would anyone do that?”