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beg. “I have to know who he is. He killed my mother, and I hate him!”
    Dr. Peterson gives me a quick look. I’m startled myself at the bitterness I can taste in my words.
    “Take it easy, Stacy,” Detective Johns drawls. “Just try to relax. We’ll ask some questions, and see if you can come up with the answers.”
    He uses the telephone on the table next to my bed. The receiver almost disappears inside his hand. Whilehe makes his call Markowitz asks me to go over the physical description I have given and try to add to it. He asks a lot of questions: Did I hear a shot? How close was I standing to the back door? Had I heard a car on the street before it all happened? And how old was the guy I saw?
    “A few years older than I was,” I tell him.
    “Someone you knew at school?”
    “No. Older. He goes—went—to high school.”
    “How old was he?”
    I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that they burn. “I should know!”
    “He lives in your neighborhood? Your mother knew him, too?”
    “Maybe. Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
    I try so hard, but I still can’t see the murderer’s face.
    Finally Markowitz pauses. “I think that’s it for now,” he says.
    “Wait. Let me ask you something,” I say. “Why was this guy in our house? Why did he kill Mom?”
    “It’s listed as robbery,” Markowitz answers. He looks at Dad, and Dad nods.
    “He took my wife’s wallet out of her handbag,” Dad says. His voice rises as though he still couldn’t believe what he’s telling me. “And it was only ten or twelve dollars. She asked me that morning if I’d stop by the bank on the way home from work.”
    “Ten dollars? And he killed her?”
    “One of the policemen who came after it had happened said he guessed the killer was someone lookingfor money to buy drugs, and he probably thought the house was empty. Maybe he panicked.”
    “Why did it have to be Mom?” I cry out. “Mom was gentle and loving and funny and kind. And she trusted everybody!”
    Even when I was a very little girl, I wanted to be like Mom. But I wasn’t like her at all. I’d get mad and shout and stamp, and Dad would march me off to my room to “think things over” and cool down. Thinking things over never seemed to help much.
    Dad sighs. “Honey, we just don’t know what was in the—murderer’s mind. There’s no way of knowing.”
    “We’ll know when we arrest him!”
    They look at me, and Markowitz says, “To make a solid case, the DA needs two kinds of evidence: an eyewitness to place someone at the scene of the crime and physical evidence that the person was there.”
    “I’m the eyewitness! I’m going to remember! I am! And you must have something from the house!” I think about some of the detective movies I’ve seen. “What about fingerprints? Could you look for fingerprints?”
    Dad reaches down and takes my right hand. His forehead is wrinkled with worry. “Calm down, Stacy. Don’t get overexcited.” He looks at Dr. Peterson as though he were begging for help, but Dr. Peterson just gives a barely noticeable shake of his head.
    “Granted, fingerprints can last for years,” Markowitz tells me, “but chances are any fingerprints were cleaned up long ago.”
    I impatiently tug my hand away from Dad’s. “But what about when the police investigated after Momwas murdered? Wouldn’t they have taken fingerprints then?”
    Markowitz nods. “We’ll pull the file and see what they’ve got. There may be a chance they got some prints. Maybe even some clear ones. Obviously, if they had them, they didn’t get a make on them; but maybe our boy’s been in trouble since then, and we’ll be able to match them. There may be some other physical evidence that may help. With luck they’ll have the bullet that killed your mother. We won’t know till we check it out.”
    “What good will the bullet do without the gun?”
    “It might be worth something. It might not. It’s our job to find out.”
    “Will you