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the Bateman hill (so far up on top that Z couldn't see them
through his side window,) Z flanked student parking at the back,
continuing until he'd cleared the football stadium and an open,
grassy space beyond, the street forking at that point, the left
branch what he was looking for.
    It was when veering onto Franklin that
Z was surprised to discover ... what looked like "no-man's-land" in
WW I -- gouges in the earth, no trees, no houses.
    Of course! The soccer field. The place
looked like a battleground because both sides of Franklin had been
ripped up by bulldozers, some houses gone so long the land they'd
stood on had been rain-washed flat, scraggly weed-clumps taking
hold here and there in the bare dirt. Other plots were littered
with hardened clods, uprooted trees, and smashed-up homes. Most
lots had what looked like open graves at their centers -- these
"graves" the exposed cellars of demolished homes.
    Ahead, maybe two blocks (though it was
hard to tell where the blocks had been,) Z saw a couple of houses
still standing.
    That's right.
    A couple. Two, like Calder said. Side
by side to the left of the road. Leaning inward in a vain attempt
to comfort one another in their grief for fallen
comrades.
    No other "targets" available, Z
continued to drive toward the houses -- going slowly, dodging
chunks of concrete tumbled into the road as a result of
demolition.
    The first house coming up was what his
Mother would have called a bungalow or maybe a Cape Cod, a house
with a tiny porch covered by a peeked tar-paper roof, the sides of
the house shingled a faded brown. Under normal circumstances, a
home that would look .... cozy. Instead of mournful. Instead of
resembling one of the last two ragged leaves clinging to a
late-fall tree.
    Slowing, Z picked out the battered
metal numbers above the porch: 2607.
    Making the house coming up,
2609.
    Continuing to drift, Z looked ahead to
the house next door (the last on the block,) a house deserted:
weeds growing in the yard; a knee-high, used-to-be-white, picket
fence across the front, the wire fence-gate open, sagging, the
house built on the pattern of a small ranch, its warped clapboards
a paint-chipped white.
    Z pulled up to park.
    Normally -- particularly in "open
surveillance" situations like this -- Z would have gotten right
out, gone up to the boxy "ghost house," and knocked on the
door.
    Getting no answer would be his excuse
to look in the windows to see what he could see.
    It was just that, this time, there was
no need to approach the house.
    There wasn't much he could learn by
looking in the windows, after all, the house build on a standard
floor plan. To the right was the usual, one-car garage, its badly
warped door pulled down. There would be a tiny living room behind
the front door. At the back-right of the living room, a plaster
archway would lead to a short crossing hall providing access to two
bedrooms, the larger one to the left behind the living room.
Straight ahead would be a tiny bath. Right of that, a large kitchen
with an eating area that served as a dining room. The smaller
bedroom would be behind the garage.
    No attic.
    Possibly a basement or, at least, an
old-fashioned root cellar.
    Z had seen houses like this before.
They were all alike.
    As Z sat in the car with the afternoon
heat "raining" through the Cavalier's steel top -- wanting to leave
but unable to do so -- he finally had to admit to himself he was
avoiding this "fixer-upper" because there was something he didn't
like about it.
    Was it because it reminded him of the
cramped house where his mother had her final illness? Except that
this house was a cube instead of a rectangle and built of wood
instead of limestone. Judged objectively, the only resemblance
between the houses was in Z's twisted memory.
    Damn, memory!
    There was no help for it. To do his
duty as a professional, Z had to go up to the house.
    Opening the car door, using both hands
to pry himself out of the small driver's seat, straightening