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answer. “Don’t worry about him,” he manages to say.
    Don’t worry? Oh, sure. I grip the arms of the chair. But the telephone rings. Someone at the front desk tells Dr. Peterson that two detectives from the Houston Police Department have arrived, that they want to talk to me.
    Dr. Peterson opens the door wide and leans against the wall, arms folded, waiting for the detectives to join us.
    “You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.
    “I don’t have anything important to do,” he answers. “A head transplant, but that can wait.”
    “I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
    “Doctors never baby-sit. Their fees are too high.”
    “I’m not going to laugh at your jokes. It will only encourage you.”
    Two tall men block the door for a moment. Smoothly one steps aside, then follows the other into my room. They look the way I’d imagine detectives should look. Their business suits are taut across their broad shoulders, and they’re both big men. They have brown hair, and one has a mustache. It’s their eyes, I think, that label them as detectives. It doesn’t matter that the mustached one has brown eyes and the other has blue. I know they really see me, every detail of me, and they’re trying to probe below the surface, poking at the doors to my mind.
    Markowitz and Johns, they tell me and shake handswith Dr. Peterson. Markowitz has the mustache. I’ll try to remember that.
    A voice comes from the doorway, and Dad appears. “What is this? Stacy, are you all right?”
    Dr. Peterson fills Dad in, and everyone goes through the introduction thing again.
    Dad shakes his head. “I don’t think Stacy is up to this yet.” But his words come out in a question, and he’s looking at Dr. Peterson, not at me.
    “Stacy can handle it,” Dr. Peterson says.
    “Hey, look at me, Daddy. I’m dressed and out of bed. I’m feeling a lot better. Honest!” I stand up and give Dad a hug.
    He hugs me tightly, awkwardly. The shock I feel takes away the comfort I used to feel in my father’s hugs. My head once fitted snugly against his chest, and now I find myself looking over his shoulder. We stand back and stare at each other.
    “You might want to sit down, Stacy,” Detective Johns says to me. “We won’t be long. Just a few questions.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, then takes them out again. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. I bet he’s trying to stop smoking.
    “It’s about that newspaper article, isn’t it?” Dad asks as I move away from him and sit in the only chair. Everyone else is standing, and it makes me feel kind of strange.
    “Yes,” Detective Markowitz says. “Stacy, according to the interview you gave the reporter for the
Evening News
, you saw a person run out of your house, the person who shot you.”
    I nod. “But—”
    “It’s been four years,” Detective Markowitz adds. “How good is your memory? If we show you some books of mug shots, do you think you might be able to recognize him?”
    The sound that comes out of my mouth is a kind of desperate wail, and it shocks me as much as it does everyone else in the room. “I can see it happening in my mind,” I tell them. “It’s almost like a movie, running over and over. He comes out of the back door and stands there, staring at me. And I know him. I know that I do. But I can’t see his face!”
    The detectives glance at each other quickly, then back at me. Johns rubs at an invisible spot on his chin. “Maybe it would help if you tried to describe exactly what you saw at the time,” Markowitz says.
    And Detective Johns adds, “Like what he was wearing. Jeans? A T-shirt? Maybe a white one?”
    “Yes, jeans,” I say quickly. “But not a T-shirt. It was kind of a plaid shirt—red, I think. Yes, red, but faded, and the sleeves were rolled up.”
    Markowitz is writing. “Very good. What else?”
    “What else? Uh—he has a gun in his right hand.” There’s a long pause as I try hard to remember. “Help me!” I