As soon as the bell rang ending homeroom, Garrett took him aside to share a weird new detail.

"Rattraps," he said, cupping a hand over his mouth.

"What are you talking about?" Roy asked.

"When they caught him, he had rattraps stuck on his shoes. That's how come he couldn't run away."

"I'm so sure."

"Seriously, dude. The cops told my mom he stepped on 'em while he was sneakin' around the trailer."

Knowing Dana, Roy could actually picture it.

"Broke three of his toes," Garrett said.

"Oh, come on."

"Absolutely! We're talkin' humongous rattraps." Garrett held his hands a foot apart to illustrate.

"Whatever." Roy knew that Garrett was famous for exaggerating. "Did the police tell your mom anything else?"

"Like what?"

"Like what Dana was after."

"Smokes is what he said, but the cops don't believe him."

"Who would?" said Roy, hoisting his book bag over his shoulder.

All morning he looked for Beatrice Leep between classes, but he never saw her in the hallways. At lunch hour, the girl soccer players were sitting together in the cafeteria, but Beatrice wasn't among them. Roy approached the table and asked if anybody knew where she was.

"At the dentist," said one of her teammates, a gangly Cuban girl. "She fell down some steps at home and broke a tooth. But she'll be ready for the game tonight."

"Great," said Roy, but he didn't feel so good about what he'd just heard.

Beatrice was such a phenomenal athlete that Roy couldn't imagine her falling down the stairs like some ordinary klutz. And after seeing what she could do to a bicycle tire, he couldn't picture her breaking a tooth, either.

Roy was still thinking about Beatrice when he sat down in American history. He found himself struggling to concentrate on Mr. Ryan's quiz, though it really wasn't that difficult.

The final question was the same one that Mr. Ryan had asked him in the hallway on Friday: Who won the Battle of Lake Erie? Without hesitation, Roy wrote: "Commodore Oliver Perry."

It was the only answer that he was sure he got right.

On the bus ride home, Roy kept a wary eye on Dana Matherson's hulking friends, but they didn't glance once in his direction. Either Dana hadn't gotten the word out about what Roy had done, or his buddies didn't care all that much.

The police captain was reading the arrest report when Officer Delinko and the sergeant came in. The captain motioned for both men to sit down.

"Nice work," he told Officer Delinko. "You've made my life a whole lot easier. I just got off the horn with Councilman Grandy, and he's one happy camper."

"I'm glad, sir," Officer Delinko said.

"What do you make of this Matherson kid? What's he told you?"

"Not much."

The interrogation of Dana Matherson hadn't gone as smoothly as Officer Delinko had hoped. In the training films, the suspects always caved in and confessed to their crimes. However, Dana had remained stubbornly uncooperative, and his statements were confusing.

At first he'd said he was snooping around the Mother Paula's property in order to heist a load of Gladiator cigarettes. However, after speaking with a lawyer, the boy changed his story. He claimed he'd actually gone to the trailer to bum a cigarette, but the foreman mistook him for a burglar and came after him with a gun.

"Matherson's a hard case," Officer Delinko told the captain.

"Yeah," the sergeant said, "he's been around the block a few times."

The captain nodded. "I saw his rap sheet. But here's what bothers me: The kid's a thief, not a practical joker. I can't picture him dumping alligators in port-a-potties. Stealing port-a-potties maybe."

"I wondered about that, too," Officer Delinko said.

The Mother Paula's vandal had displayed a dark sense of humor that didn't fit the Matherson boy's dim-witted criminal history. He seemed more likely to strip the wheels from a patrol car than to paint the windshield black or hang his shirt like a pennant from the antenna.

"What's his motive for the funny stuff?" the captain wondered aloud.

"I asked him if he had a gripe against Mother Paula's pancakes," Officer Delinko said, "and he did say IHOP's were better."

"That's it? He likes IHOP pancakes better?"

"Except for the buttermilks," Officer Delinko reported. "He had nice things to say about Mother Paula's buttermilks."

Gruffly, the sergeant interjected: "Aw, the kid's jerking our chain, is all."

The captain pushed back slowly from his desk. He could feel another crusher of a headache coming on.

"Okay, I'm making a command decision here," he said. "Considering we've got nothing better to work with, I intend to tell Chief Deacon that the Mother Paula's vandal has been apprehended. Case closed."

Officer Delinko cleared his throat. "Sir, I found a piece of a shirt at the crime scene-a shirt that's way too small to fit the Matherson boy."

He didn't mention that the remainder of the shirt had been tied, tauntingly, to the antenna of his squad car.

"We need more than a rag," the captain grunted. "We need a warm body, and the only one we've got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he's our perpetrator, understand?"

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

"I'm going out on a limb here, so you know what that means," the captain said. "If another crime happens on that property, I'll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?"

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

"Excellent," said the captain. "So your mission, basically, is to make sure there's no more surprises between now and the Mother Paula's groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday."

"No sweat." The sergeant rose to his feet. "Can we tell David the good news?"

"Sooner the better," said the captain. "Officer Delinko, you're back on the road, effective immediately. In addition, the sergeant has written a letter commending the outstanding job you did in capturing our suspect. This will become part of your permanent file."

Officer Delinko was beaming. "Thank you, sir!"

"There's more. Because of your experience on this case, I'm assigning you to a special patrol at the Mother Paula's construction site. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, beginning tonight at dusk. You up for that?"

"Absolutely, Captain."

"Then go home and take a nap," the captain advised, "because if you doze off out there again, I'll be writing a much shorter letter for your file. A termination letter."

Outside the captain's office, Officer Delinko's sergeant gave him a hearty slap on the back. "Two nights and we're home free, David. You psyched?"

"One question, sir. Will I be on duty out there alone?"

"Well, we're hurting on the night shift right now," the sergeant told him. "Kirby got stung by a yellow jacket, and Miller's out with a sinus infection. Looks like you'll be riding solo."

"That's okay," Officer Delinko said, though he would have preferred to have a partner, under the circumstances. Curly probably would be staying at the trailer, though he wasn't the best company.

"You drink coffee, David?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Drink twice as much as usual," the sergeant said. "I don't expect anything to happen, but you'd better be wide awake if it does."

On the way home, Officer Delinko stopped at a souvenir shop along the main highway. Then he swung by the Juvenile Detention Center to take one more crack at Dana Matherson. It would be such a relief if the boy admitted to even one of the earlier vandalisms.

Dana was brought to the interview room by a uniformed guard, who took a position outside the door. The kid was dressed in a rumpled gray jumpsuit with the word INMATE stenciled in capital letters across the back. He wore only socks because his toes were still swollen from the rattraps. Officer Delinko offered him a stick of gum, which the kid crammed into his cheeks.