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cook at the Pico Mundo Grille.
        “They’re not so bad you have to choke them down,” he admitted, “but they’re not in the same league with yours. Or his pancakes.”
        “Nobody can match the fluff factor in my pancakes,” I agreed.
        “Is it some culinary secret?”
        “No, sir. It’s a born instinct.”
        “A gift for pancakes.”
        “Yes, sir, it seems to be.”
        “You feel magnetized yet or whatever it is you feel?”
        “No, not yet. And it would be better if we don’t talk about it, just let it happen.”
        Chief Porter sighed. “I don’t know when I’m ever going to get used to this psychic stuff.”
        “I never have,” I said. “Don’t expect I ever will.”
        Strung between the boles of two palm trees in front of the Pico Mundo High School, a large banner declared GO, MONSTERS!
        When I attended PMHS, the sports teams were called the Braves. Each cheerleader wore a headband with a feather. Subsequently, this was deemed an insult to local Indian tribes, though none of the Indians ever complained.
        School administrators engineered the replacement of Braves with Gila Monsters . The reptile was said to be an ideal choice because it symbolized the endangered environment of the Mojave.
        In football, basketball, baseball, track, and swimming, the Monsters haven’t equaled the winning record of the Braves. Most people blame it on the coaches.
        I used to believe that all educated people knew an asteroid might one day strike the earth, destroying human civilization. But perhaps a lot of them haven’t heard about it yet.
        As though reading my mind, Chief Porter said, “Could’ve been worse. The Mojave yellow-banded stink bug is an endangered species. They could’ve called the team Stink Bugs .”
        “Left,” I suggested, and he turned at the next intersection.
        “I figured if Simon was ever coming back here,” Chief Porter said, “he would’ve done it four months ago, when he was released from Folsom. We ran special patrols in the Jessup neighborhood during October and November.”
        “Danny said they were taking precautions at the house. Better door locks. An upgraded security system.”
        “So Simon was smart enough to wait. Gradually everyone let down their guard. Fact is, though, when the cancer took Carol, I didn’t expect Simon would come back to Pico Mundo.”
        Seventeen years previously, jealous to the point of obsession, Simon Makepeace had become convinced that his young wife had been having an affair. He’d been wrong.
        Certain that assignations had occurred in his own home, when he had been at work, Simon tried to coax the name of any male visitor from his then four-year-old son. Because there had been no visitor to identify, Danny had not been able to oblige. So Simon picked up the boy by the shoulders and tried to shake the name out of him.
        Danny’s brittle bones snapped. He suffered fractures of two ribs, the left clavicle, the right humerus, the left humerus, the right radius, the right ulna, three metacarpals in his right hand.
        When he couldn’t shake a name out of his son, Simon threw the boy down in disgust, breaking his right femur, his right tibia, and every tarsal in his right foot.
        Carol had been grocery shopping at the time. Returning home, she found Danny alone, unconscious, bleeding, a shattered humerus protruding through the flesh of his right arm.
        Aware that charges of child abuse would be filed against him, Simon had fled. He understood that his freedom might be measured in hours.
        With less to lose and therefore with less to constrain him, he set out to take vengeance on the man whom he most suspected of being his wife’s lover. Because no lover existed, he merely perpetrated a second act of mindless violence.
        Lewis Hallman, whom Carol had dated a few times before her marriage, was Simon’s prime