“No,” Johnny said. “I used to smoke a few cigarettes when I was in college, but I lost the habit after my accident.

“A man keeps his cigarettes in his breast pocket. Take them out, get a cigarette, put the pack back. If you're wearing gloves and not leaving fresh prints every time you get a butt, what you're doing is polishing that cellophane wrapper? Get it? And you missed one other thing, Johnny. Need me to tell you?”

Johnny thought it over and then said, “Maybe the pack of cigarettes came out of a carton. And those cartons are packed by machine.”

“That's it,” Bannerman said. “You are good at this.”

“What about the tax stamp on the package?”

“Maine,” Bannerman said.

“So if the killer and the smoker were the same man… Johnny said thoughtfully.

Bannerman shrugged. “Sure, there's the technical possibility that they weren't. But I've tried to imagine who else would want to sit on a bench in the town common on a cold, cloudy winter morning long enough to smoke twelve or sixteen cigarettes, and I come up a blank.”

Johnny sipped his tea. “None of the other kids that crossed saw anything?”

“Nothing,” Bannerman said. “I've talked to every kid that had a library pass this morning.”

“That's a lot weirder than the fingerprint business. Doesn't it strike you that way?”

“It strikes me as goddam scary. Look, the guy is sitting there, and what he's waiting for is one kid one girl-by herself. He can hear the kids as they come along. And each time he fades back behind the bandstand…”

“Tracks,” Johnny said.

“Not this morning. There was no snow-cover this morning. Just frozen ground. So here's this crazy shitbag that ought to have his own testicles carved off and served to him for dinner, here he is, skulking behind the bandstand. At about 8: 50 A. M., Peter Harrington and Melissa Loggins come along. School has been in session about twenty minutes at that time. When they're gone, he goes back to his bench. At 9: i5 he fades back behind the bandstand again. This time it's two little girls, Susan Flarhaty and Katrina Bannerman.”

Johnny set his mug down with a bang. Bannerman had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them savagely.

“Your daughter crossed this morning? Jesus!”

Bannerman put his glasses on again. His face was dark and dull with fury. And he's afraid, Johnny saw. Not afraid that the voters would turn him out, or that the Union-Leader would publish another editorial about nitwit cops in western Maine, but afraid because, if his daughter had happened to go to the library alone this morning

“My daughter,” Bannerman agreed softly. “I think she passed within forty feet of that… that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?”

“I can guess,” Johnny said.

“No, I don't think you can. It makes me feel like I almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. Like I passed up the mushrooms at dinner and someone else died of toadstool poisoning. And it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel filthy. I guess maybe it also explains why I finally called you. I'd do anything right now to nail this guy. Anything at all.”

Outside, a giant orange plow loomed out of the snow like something from a horror movie. It parked and two men got out. They crossed the street to Jon's and sat at the counter. Johnny finished his tea. He no longer wanted the chili.

“This guy goes back to his bench,” Bannerman resumed, “but not for long. Around 9:25 he hears the Harrington boy and the Loggins girl coming back from the library. So he goes back behind the bandstand again. It must have been around 9:25 because the librarian signed them out at 9:18. At 9:45 three boys from the fifth grade went past the bandstand on their way to the library. One of them thinks he might have seen “some guy” standing on the other side of the bandstand. That's our whole description. “Some guy.” We ought to put it out on the wire, what do you think? Be on the lookout for some guy.

Bannerman uttered a short laugh like a bark.

“At 9:55 my daughter and her friend Susan go by on their way back to school. Then, about 10:05, Mary Kate Hendrasen came along… by herself. Katrina and Sue met her going down the school steps as they were going up. They all said hi.”

“Dear God,” Johnny muttered. He ran his hands through his hair.

“Last of all, 10:20 A. M. The three fifth-grade boys are coming back. One of them sees something on the bandstand. It's Mary Kate, with her leotard and her underpants yanked down, blood all over her legs, her face-” her face-”

“Take it easy,” Johnny said, and put a hand on Banner-man's arm.

“No, I can't take it easy,” Bannerman said. He spoke almost apologetically. “I've never seen anything like that, not in eighteen years of police work. He raped that little girl and that would have been enough-enough to, you know, kill her-the medical examiner said the way he did it-he ruptured something and it-yeah, it probably would have, well-killed her-but then he had to go on and choke her. Nine years old and choked and left-left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.”

Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Superbowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.

After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.

“I'm sorry, man,” he said. “It's been a very long day.”

“It's all right,” Johnny said.

“I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.”

“Well, I guess that was just too long to wait.”

“You're a sympathetic ear. “Bannerman slipped his glasses back on. “No, you're more than that. You've got something. I'll be damned if I know just what it is, but it's something.”

“What else have you got to go on?”

“Nothing. I'm taking most of the heat, but the state police haven't exactly distinguished themselves. Neither has the attorney general's special investigator, or our pet FBI man. The county M. E. has been able to type the sperm, but that's no good to us at this stage of the game. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of hair or skin under the victim's fingernails. They all must have struggled, but we don't have as much as a centimeter of skin. The devil must be on this guy's side. He hasn't dropped a button or a shopping list or left a single damn track. We got a shrink from Augusta, also courtesy of the state A. G., and he tells us all these guys give themselves away sooner or later. Some comfort. What if it's later -say about twelve bodies from now?”

“The cigarette pack is in Castle Rock?”

“Yes.”

Johnny stood up. “Well, let's take a ride.”

“My car?”

Johnny smiled a little as the wind rose, shrieking, outside. “On a night like this, it pays to be with a policeman, he said.

The snowstorm was at its height and it took them an hour and a half to get over to Castle Rock in Bannerman's cruiser. It was twenty past ten when they came in through the foyer of the Town Office Building and stamped the snow off their boots.

There were half a dozen reporters in the lobby, most of them sitting on a bench under a gruesome oil portrait of some town founding father, telling each other about previous night watches. They were up and surrounding Bannerman and Johnny in no time.

“Sheriff Bannerman, is it true there has been a break in the case?”

“I have nothing for you at this time,” Bannerman said stolidly.

“There's been a rumor that you've taken a man from Oxford into custody, Sheriff, is that true?”