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raised in her wounded hand and pointed at him. Everything stopped. He wanted to duck, to leap out of the way, but it was too late.
    He heard Dominick yell.
    Then he heard a shot and then another.
    A cold numbing pain sliced through his shoulder. And he thought: This is damned unfair and I don’t want to die.
    Brammerton, Massachusetts
February 2001
    Rafaella was dreaming about Freddy Pithoe, and then, quite suddenly, she jerked awake, eyes wide and ears fully tuned. It was quiet as a tomb, not a sound, just echoes of the shots she’d heard in her dreams. She started to get out of bed, when she felt a pain in the left side of her body. She rubbed her shoulder and her arm. An odd pain, as if she’d been struck, hard.
    It was weird, no doubt about it. Maybe she needed a vacation. She was letting Freddy Pithoe get to her. She stuck her feet into her decade-old Mickey Mouse slippers and pulled on a ratty pink robe. She went into the living room and flicked back the curtain. The street below was quiet, as usual, and the newly fallen snow undisturbed. There were no backfiring cars, no irate old men yelling at each other, and no testy retired ladies twittering at their poodles, nothing to account for the shouts and the gunshots she’d heard so clearly.
    Rafaella went into her kitchen, saw it was near dawn, and made some coffee. As she waited, she rubbed her shoulder and her arm. They felt numb now. It was weird.
    Those wretched shots. Dreams had to come from something. Rafaella shook her head. Of course, she’d been thinking violent thoughts. She’d simply translated the awful ax murders into gunshots because the other was too horrible for her to handle, even her subconscious.
    She poured herself a cup of the fresh Kona coffee and sat at her small pine kitchen table. Forget the stupid dream, she told herself. She thought instead of her run-in with Lieutenant Masterson that afternoon. Sure he owed Al a favor, but it was obvious that he was thinking the favor had been paid, in full. He had a big beefy face, a paunch, and he sweated a lot. He’dstopped Rafaella on her way in, demanding, “You want to see the nut case again?”
    “Yes, I would. I sure do appreciate it, Lieutenant.”
    “You’ve already seen him twice. Twice! You wanna see me go down? What are you doing? Writing his biography?”
    She wondered if he was serious. She had written a biography of the dashing French resistance leader Louis Rameau, DeGaulle’s right hand. “No,” she said, keeping her voice pitched low, very respectful and deferential. Louis Rameau had also been quite the ladies’ man, unlike Benny Masterson here.
    “One more time, kid, and that’s it. You got it? You tell Al that he’s pushed me too much on this one. And you keep your trap shut. No one’s to know, no one’s to find out.”
    “I’ll tell him, Lieutenant. No one will find out, I swear. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”
    As he walked away, he turned back, saying, “Oh, yeah, kid, you come up with anything, you tell me, you got that?”
    “Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll come to you right away.”
    He’d given her a sour look, then shrugged. “There’s nothing to find, but just in case you think you have something, you call me, or I’ll have your head.”
    But Freddy had refused to see her. The guard told her that he’d vomited up his guts just an hour ago. The food probably, he’d added, the franks and beans had looked sickening enough.
    Tomorrow, she’d thought, first thing tomorrow morning. It will be all over.
    Rafaella drank the rest of her coffee and took herself to the shower. Today was the day. It was very early, but she didn’t care. She was too keyed up now. She bundled up against the twenty-degree weather and reached the Metro station at just after eight in the morning. The dream had faded now, even though her left side still ached a bit.
    Thank God Freddy had agreed to see her. Thank God Masterson hadn’t told the people not to let her in