He'd never looked like a cop. Short, pudgy, glasses. And he'd never been interested in the more viscerally exciting parts of police work. Making drug arrests, kicking in doors, high speed chases...he was willing to leave that to the others. He liked seeing more than acting, knowing more than doing. And nobody saw better or knew more than a murder police.

After twenty-two years, he'd seen enough and knew too much. When he retired he stopped wearing his glasses around the house. He'd had enough of hard edges. He wanted the rest of his days to be a little more soft.

She talks baby talk to it. I've heard her do it. Right out loud, like she doesn't care if people think she's as stupid as her dog. Rich people. Too much money and not enough common sense. They shouldn't be allowed to breed. Them or their dogs. Hell, it probably took her a couple minutes to realize her little dog was gone...that's how stupid she is. By that time, I had the dog in the car and was three blocks away.

It's been a couple of days now. She's been back to the park maybe half a dozen times, calling the dog's name. She's put up signs in the neighborhood. She's offering a reward. Three hundred bucks, if you can believe it. I'll give her another day or so. Let her start to lose hope. See if the reward goes up. Easy money.

But why would anybody even try to break in through the window when there's a perfectly good roof waiting up there? No passing bystander or police patrol will see you on the roof. There are no bars on the roof. And anybody with a drill and a saw can cut a hole in the roof in just a few minutes.

But that window...ain't nobody gonna break in through that window.

Soon it will rain.

It's not as simple as it sounds. Waiting is a talent more than a skill; you're either good at it or you're not. It's patience combined with awareness. It's not enough to just be there. You also have to remain alert. You have to be ready for whatever it is you're waiting for. The thing about waiting is that you never know how long it's going to last. An hour, five hours, twelve hours, a week...and you have to be just as alert, just as aware at the end of the twelfth hour as you were at the end of the first

It's not very interesting. It's certainly not very romantic. It's just necessary.

He'd heard about sports parents...the ones who lived out their dreams through their kids, the ones who didn't treat the sport as a game. The ones who got upset and yelled. The ones who got in fights with other parents and with the referees. He'd heard about them, but he'd never had to deal with one before.

He realized he had a problem the first time he reprimanded the kid for making a slide tackle. The kid...and the kid's coach...knew slide tackles weren't allowed in the under twelve league. The coach apologized, the kid didn't, and the kid's father shouted insults. A short time later when the kid did it again, he had no choice but to eject him from the match.

What else was he to do? He was the referee; he had to look out for the safety of the other kids. He started to explain it to the kid's father, but the guy wouldn't listen. The father gave him a shove. He stumbled backwards over the ball and fell, hitting the back of his neck on the bucket full of iced bottles of water.

It didn't hurt. It just surprised him. He couldn't understand why he wasn't able to move his arms or legs. The kid's father was still angry, still shouting. He wanted to tell the man that it was just a game. It was just a game and they were just kids.

It wasn't a working barn. Hadn't been for a while. All the livestock had been sold off long time ago. Now wasn't nothing in it but some trash and some falling-apart hay bales stacked behind an old hand-start John Deere from the 1940s and a rusted, broken disk harrow. But the rafters was sturdy and the tin roof would keep out the rain.

He'd molested a young Christian girl, is what they said. Didn't want to take it to the police. That'd just bring embarrassment down on that poor child and her family. Best to handle it themselves. Besides, a Jew from up north'd just hire hisself a lawyer and wangle his way out of it. In a way, they said, a Jew doing it was worse than a nigger doing it. Nigger didn't know no better. Nigger just an animal, is what they said. A Jew, though, a Jew was clever. A Jew, they said, knew what he was doing and folks had to be held accountable when they done wrong.

They passed around a bottle, lit up some cigars. The rain came down hard on that tin roof.

Arson - it's a service industry.

There was a time when if you wanted to disappear, all it took was a willingness to change everything about yourself.

Now it's different. Now if you want to disappear, you have to disappear.

Unless, of course, a few holes are poked through to the lungs. Sometimes you just have to help Nature along.

She could do it when it was dark. She could continue to tell herself it had just been an ordinary date. She could tell herself that he was a nice guy. A charming man with a good education from a fine family. A man with an important job. Not the sort of man who would rape his date.

She'd told him no. But he'd had too much to drink. No, that wasn't true. He'd had some wine, but he hadn't been drunk. He just didn't believe her when she said no. No, that wasn't true either. He believed her. He just didn't care.

She spent the night with him anyway. That made it seem more like a real date. But then the morning came. The sun came. And the truth came.

Goddamn sun. Goddamn morning. Goddamn truth.

He did it for the strange feelings he experienced being in somebody's house when they weren't there. It was exciting. Not in a pervy way; he wasn't one of those guys who jerked off in woman's panty drawer or took a dump on the pillow. He'd read about those guys. Those guys were sick.

What he liked was looking in their closets, their dressers, their cupboards, their refrigerators and medicine cabinets. Touching their things. He liked being able to brush up against the lives of other people without them knowing. He liked the feeling of intimacy.

It wasn't about stealing. Or sex. They'd never understand that. They'd never understand that really, deep inside, it was about love.

So eventually he told her. How hot it had been in Iraq. How dusty. How scary. How unpredictable. He told her how the anxiety and fear could turn into rage. Free-floating, unfocused rage. And how, when given something to focus that rage on...anything to focus that range on...it was hard, so very hard, not to let the rage out. He told her how he'd let that rage out. Once. One time.

She wished he hadn't told her. She wished he hadn't told her. She wished he hadn't told her.

Now all she could see was his hands.

The staff at Starbucks was beginning to act strange, though. And some of the customers were clearly former KGB; they had those flesh-colored earphones, cheap-ass Soviet era tech. That shit didn't worry him. So long as he stayed away from their diamond-tipped, hollowpoint umbrellas he'd be okay. Hell, in a way seeing them was good thing. They were like canaries in the mineshaft. A low-tech alarm system. If the Intra-Zionist insurrectionists showed up, those ex-KGB dudes would disappear faster than a dot com start-up.

It wouldn't last, though. He knew it. They'd find him there eventually. They always did. They'd probably infiltrate the Starbucks baristas. They wouldn't dare send in a tiger team, not in a public mall. So he ought to have plenty of warning.

But until then he could relax. God knows he needed it. God really did know.