“Dad-dy, you’re getting me all soapy!” the girl protested.

Carver kissed her brow between the eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “Are you all right, Ellie?”

“Yes,” she said. “What happened?”

She tried to look toward the street, and her father shielded her eyes.

Collie went to the woman and the little boy. “Is he okay, Mrs Carver?”

She looked at him, not seeming to recognize him, and then turned her attention back to the squalling kid again, caressing his hair with one hand, seeming to devour him with her eyes. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “Are you okay, Ralphie? Are you?”

The kid drew in a deep, hitching breath and bellowed: “Margrit’s spozed to pull me up the hill! That was the deal!”

The little snot sounded okay to Collie. He turned back toward the crime-scene, noted the dog lying in a spreading pool of blood, noted that the blond Reed twin was tentatively approaching the body of the unfortunate paperboy.

“Stay away!” Collie called sharply across the street.

Jim Reed turned toward him. “But what if he’s still alive?”

“What if he is? Have you got any healing fairy-dust to sprinkle on him? No? Then stand back!”

The boy stepped toward his brother, then winced. “Oh man, Davey, look at your feet,” he said, then turned aside and threw up himself.

Collie Entragian suddenly felt tumbled back into the job he thought he had left behind for good the previous October, when he had been bounced from the Columbus Police Department after a positive drug test. Cocaine and heroin. A good trick, since he had never taken either drug in his life.

First priority: protect the citizenry. Second priority; aid the wounded. Third priority: secure the crime-scene. Fourth priority…

Well, he’d worry about the fourth priority after he’d taken care of one, two, and three.

The store’s new day-clerk-a skinny girl with double-coloured hair that made Collie’s eyes hurt-slid out of the truck and straightened her blue smock, which was badly askew. The truck’s driver followed her. “You a cop?” he asked Collie.