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The headlights on the bus lit just in time to spotlight the driver for the briefest moment. The face he turned their way, as he skillfully avoided a collision, was as innocuous as his car. Heather wouldn't have been able to describe him, would have hardly noticed him, except she'd fought him once tonight, then joined him for a drive around Tucson while they pumped each other for information.

“Damn!” Heather said. “It's the psycho.”

“Psycho, I'll say he is,” Jardine agreed, belatedly pounding on her horn, which evidently worked as irregularly as the headlights.

Hailey added a low growl.

“Follow that car,” Heather said.

Jardine laughed. “Sure, as long as he stays in first gear.” The woman jammed her foot onto the accelerator and the bus coughed, lurched, died. It took a while to get it restarted, then it refused to exceed thirty-two on the speedometer. The psycho was long gone by the time they got to the south edge of the U of A. By Speedway, his tail lights had become long-term memories.

***

Sheriff English pulled his black and white to a stop in front of the courthouse. The building was still dark. The crowd had gone home. There was, of course, no sign of Supervisor Macklin's car. The man must have come only out of curiosity, the sheriff realized. Without power to the building, he couldn't work and there was nothing to keep him there. English pulled out his cell phone, found the supervisor's number in his address book, and punched the call button furiously.

“Macklin,” a voice answered.

“Mr. Supervisor. This is Sheriff English. I owe you an apology.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I'd like to come deliver it to you, sir. Are you home?”

“You really have gone bananas, haven't you sheriff? This is not an appropriate time.”

“Listen,” the sheriff said. “I need to talk to you and your boys right away. Where are you?”

“Have you been drinking, man? Never mind. I don't care. I'll be calling an emergency meeting of the board at ten this morning to consider your behavior and your role in tonight's catastrophe. Be there. In the meantime, leave me and my sons alone.”

“Sir, I don't have that option,” the sheriff began, but he was talking to dead air.

What to do? The supervisor lived two miles south of town. It could take ten minutes to cross Buffalo Springs and get there, then more time to get back if the Macklins weren't home. After that, still more time would be required to find another of the kids who might be involved. All of them lived in or near town, but he could waste a lot of precious minutes before he found the right one. Or they might all be involved. But his money was on the Macklins. Especially after Heather told him about the connection with that businessman in Tucson. Maybe Mrs. Kraus could get the man to….His cell rang and he popped it open and found Mrs. Kraus was one step ahead of him.

“I got him,” she said. “He's right here.”

“Got who?

“Fig Zit,” she said. “He's standing here, right in front of me.”

“The Ball kid came back?”

“No,” she was breathing fast. “The monster in the computer. I've got him on my screen right now. He's telling me what he's gonna do to me. Got me, my character that is, paralyzed and unable to fight back. Keeping me just barely alive while he tells me how he's gonna come over here to Doc's office and rip my heart out.”

“He knows it's you, Mrs. Kraus?”

“Oh, yeah. Says even my Glock won't be no help against his magic because it doesn't just live in the computer. Says he'll be coming through the door any minute….”

“Does he know I'm not there?”

“Yes. He's taking special pleasure in telling me how, when he's done with me, he's going after you.”

“Mrs. Kraus, those boys don't live where they could have seen me leave Doc's office. Or seen me between there and the courthouse. So how…?”

“Hold on. I'm getting one of them whispers down in the corner. It's that tech at Worldcraft. Hot damn! He's redefining my character. Replacing my armor with stuff that's well nigh impervious. Giving me some weapons they haven't even released into the game yet. And, he says the only user in our area who's logged on right now is the Miller boy.”

That couldn't be. The Millers lived out of town. Isaac Miller couldn't know where the sheriff was. Or couldn't know from home. But he might know if he were at the We Fix It shop on Main. The sheriff hadn't thought of that. Ed Miller, the man who'd bombed his brother's place and the courthouse, had lived in a converted shed out back of the shop. Isaac Miller and his family lived out near Mad Dog. But evidently Isaac was at the shop.

“Keep him busy, Mrs. Kraus,” the sheriff said, spinning a U-turn in front of the courthouse and pointing his cruiser toward Main Street.

“You bet I will,” Mrs. Kraus said. “I just shrunk him down to pint-sized and stuffed a rancid weretoad up his nose. He ain't doing much threatening at the moment.”

The sheriff should have activated his lights and siren on the two blocks back to Main Street. But he was already yanking his door open and maneuvering himself, his walker, and a sawed-off shotgun out the door before he thought about it. There were lights on behind the blinds drawn over the windows in the front of We Fix It. And excited voices exchanging blame just inside. The sheriff reached down and tried the door knob. It wasn't locked.

***

Mad Dog was faintly aware of movement. He was in a car, but he couldn't remember why or where it was going. And then the car stopped and someone opened a door behind him and did something to his feet. They closed that door and came around the car and opened another door. Someone applied snips to a plastic cord attached to his hand cuffs. Where had the hand cuffs come from? In fact, where was he and how had he gotten here?

“Get out of the car.”

That would be the cop who'd decided not to kill Mad Dog. It was beginning to come back to him now, or bits of it. One of the things he remembered was the cop had never told him he was under arrest or read him his rights. He thought about complaining about that and then remembered the taser.

“Get out of the car, I said.”

Mad Dog tried and couldn't get his muscles to cooperate. He only managed to topple over on his face. It hurt, but he already hurt so many places that this new one didn't matter much.

The cop grabbed Mad Dog by his collar at the nape of his neck and dragged him out the door. Mad Dog managed to get his cuffed hands under him and keep his face from dragging along the sidewalk. But even when the cop tried to lift him, Mad Dog couldn't get his feet under himself in order to stand. Finally, the cop gave up and left Mad Dog kneeling. He watched a drop of blood fall from his nose and splash on a cracked sidewalk through which a few bits of dry Bermuda grass poked and waited patiently for rain.

The cop stepped away from Mad Dog for a minute and then there were two cops. Each one grabbed Mad Dog by a shoulder. They dragged him up an ancient flight of concrete stairs to what seemed to be a loading dock, then over to a battered wooden door that a guy in a suit held for them. There was a hall, and at the end of it, another door. Inside that, an office. At least that was what it said on the pebbled glass that made up its top half. No one had labeled offices this way for the last half century and that made Mad Dog think he probably wasn't someplace they were going to offer him a phone call or an attorney.

Mad Dog didn't get much of a look at the place before the two men shoved him. He lost his balance and ended up on his hands and knees, facing a scuffed wooden floor. His muscles wouldn't cooperate yet, but his mind had begun grasping details again, and trying to sort them out.

“He was as good as dead, Chief, then he started shouting lawsuit. Got some citizens interested. So I brought him in, like you said.”

Chief? Mad Dog didn't get it. If the police chief was here, Mad Dog should be in jail, getting fingerprinted and photographed and having his belt and shoelaces confiscated.

“No problem,” someone said. “I know what we'll do with him.”

Mad Dog managed to raise his head. He could sense the two cops who'd carried him in, one at either shoulder. They were both in uniform—shoes, pleated slacks. A big man in a cheap suit leaned against the edge of the desk. Another, in the kind of suit you couldn't get off the rack, sat behind it. The standing one opened his mouth and spoke—a smoker's voice.

“So, Dempsey, you got someone else in mind for him to kill before we nail him in the act?”

Dempsey? Was he the guy behind the desk? Was he a police chief? None of this made any sense.

“Yeah. He'll kill another cop,” the man who might be chief said. “I'm thinking he'll make another attempt on Parker. And succeed this time, though we'll take him down in the process.”

***

Parker's cell rang, interrupting her discussion with Captain Matus. She'd swung by University Hospital to see what was happening in the hunt for Mad Dog and found the captain in need of a ride. And, more importantly, the captain had become an ally, someone else who wanted to find Mad Dog for a reason other than to gun him down.

They sat in her car near the Campbell Avenue exit, comparing notes and planning strategy. So far, they'd come up pretty much blank on the strategy thing. Campbell was dead empty. No one had gone by recently, not since a little silver car flew past heading north.

Parker's cell rang and she snapped it open and answered. All she got was lots of static.

“Hello,” Parker said. “Anyone there?”

The static crackled back at her in a way that almost sounded like words.

“You're breaking up. Say again.”

She held the phone away from her and checked the caller's number. It was showing a Kansas area code.

“…arker? Is…you?” her cell phone crackled.

It sounded like a woman's voice.

“Hello, Sergeant Parker here,” she said, but the signal was gone again, lost to static and finally silence.

“I think that was Heather English,” she told Matus.

“Good,” he said. “She's got my car keys.”

Parker's cell rang again. “Heather?” she answered.

“Who? Is that you, Parker?” Assistant Chief Dempsey's voice held all the warmth of deep space.

“Yes, sir.”

“I understand you're in the field looking for this Mad Dog guy.”

Parker turned and looked at Matus. “If you're speaking of Mr. Harvey Edward Mad Dog, Chief Dempsey, yes. Captain Matus of the Sewa Tribal Police and I have joined up to try to locate him.”

“Matus is with you? Well, that's fine. Real fine. Anyone else?”

“No,” Parker said.

“Good. I think I can put you on this Mad Dog's trail,” the Chief said. “He's been spotted in the downtown area. If you get right down here, you and Matus may be able to help us talk him in.”

Dempsey was the guy who'd issued the force's coded shoot-to-kill order. Had he changed his mind? Had he decided she and Matus were right and Mad Dog might not be a killer after all? The man was a misogynist and a fool, but he hadn't risen through the bureaucracy by making catastrophic mistakes like this one with Mad Dog.

“We can be there in five minutes, sir.”

“Good,” Dempsey said. He gave her an address and told her he'd meet them out front. “Hurry. I need you here before the SWAT team assembles. You understand?”

She did. “On our way,” she said.

“Mad Dog?” Matus' eyebrows raised with the question.

Parker nodded, folding her cell back into its holster.

“Then let's go.”

Parker hit the accelerator. There was only one vehicle moving anywhere within sight and it was on the far side of the street. She didn't bother turning on her flashing lights or her siren, and never gave the old flowered VW bus a second glance.

***

The sheriff went into the Fix It shop behind his shotgun. It wasn't necessary. There were no armed people inside. Not unless you counted the one on the monitor. Mrs. Kraus' avatar, towered over a teddy bear-shaped imp with Fig Zit's face. The mini-Fig Zit ran around in circles while hearts and flowers bloomed in the air about its head.

Inside the room, two teenage boys remained completely oblivious to the sheriff and his shotgun, shouting back and forth at each other across a pair of keyboards and enough ultra-modern computer equipment to launch a global nuclear war.

“How could…?”

“Why won't…?”

“Got to…”

“Security wall…”

The sheriff made his way into the room. “Step away from the computers,” the sheriff said. “Lie flat on the floor and put your hands behind your heads.”

“Analyze code…,” one said.

“New hack…,” the other interrupted.

The sheriff thought about putting a round through their monitor to see if that might get their attention, but the screen went suddenly blank all by itself. A flashing LOST SIGNAL message appeared and shut off the flood of their voices.

“You're under arrest. On the floor. Now!” the sheriff shouted.

“Cable's down,” one said.

“Can't be.” The other kid actually jumped to his feet and ran past the sheriff to the door without appearing to notice anyone was there. “Somebody cut it.” He shoved some blinds aside and peered out onto Main Street. A familiar engine started out there. The boy confirmed it. “Frank. Frank Ball cut it at the pole.”

The sheriff leaned over and slapped one cuff on that kid's left wrist. He attached the other to the handle of a roto-tiller that, according to the tag, Pete King had brought in for repair.

“This can't be happening,” the remaining boy chanted, over and over, like a mantra. The sheriff used his spare set of cuffs to fasten the kid to the swivel chair he occupied.

That finally got the boy's attention.

“You didn't have to do that, sheriff,” he said. “It's only a game.”