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leaned toward him until she felt the warmth of his face, which meant that he would feel hers. If she knew men, he would stop thinking and start trying to get even closer.
    “Paul, this could be important.”
    “I didn’t really know him well,” Paul said. “I don’t think anyone did.”
    “So what about him and the other two?”
    “I heard Dexter and Don messed him up. That was the rumor. He never came back to school for sophomore year.”
    There it was. She almost ran to the pay phones to call Tillotson, but she decided to get the whole story first.
    “So this was the summer of ’eighty-seven?”
    “Right. We were having ‘voluntary’ practice, because supposedly the coach couldn’t call official practices until September. Voluntary, my butt. Nobody who missed them would ever get to play. Not that I ever played anyway. One year of JV was enough for me.”
    Again she felt like getting rough with him. Instead she waited for him to finish.
    “How did it happen?”
    “I told you what Dexter is like. He’s a bully. Don wanted to be just like him, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t brutal enough, and he didn’t know how to pick his shots.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “He didn’t know how to avoid a guy who could give him a real fight. Dexter never made that mistake. Don picked James, and it turned out James was the wrong guy. That was the rumor, anyway.”
    “So Don got his butt kicked and went crying to Dexter?”
    “That would be my guess. And they went looking for James. And the rumor was, they found him. Since nobody ever saw him again, they must have gone too far with him.”
    Shooting him in the head was definitely going too far. Unfortunately, it made sense.
    “You never told anybody?” said Diana.
    “Would you?”
    “Maybe not,” she said. “Kids that age get pretty tribal, as I recall. Adults aren’t in the tribe.”
    And the moment she graduated, she had joined the adults.
    “But you’re not a kid anymore, Paul. Since you’re here, I think you know it’s time to speak up for James.”
    He was closing down. She could see it.
    “And it’s time to make Dexter and Don take responsibility. I think that’s also why you’re here.”
    Paul sat sullenly for another moment.
    “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said.
    He lurched to his feet, as if he couldn’t wait to get away.
    “It won’t go away, Paul.”
    She watched him go. After a moment she got up and bused their trays, which she hadn’t expected to do. A well-mannered young man who also wanted to get into her pants would normally have taken care of that chore.
    I blew that one, she thought.

Chapter Twelve
    Tillotson’s cell phone rang.
    He had crossed four names off Rennert’s list without leaving his desk in his apartment. Maybe there was a point to this whole Internet thing.
    On the other hand, nothing that kept him in this apartment was entirely a good thing. He had furnished the apartment in Separated Middle-Aged Man Modern, which meant the few pieces of furniture that his wife had let him take. Only his desk was really his own. His wife had taken one look at his face and let him have the desk.
    The paint on the walls was a shade of yellow that should never have been born, but doing something about it would be a commitment to staying awhile.
    And so he concentrated on his list, futile as it was.
    All four men were still living. Three had left the area completely, and the fourth was the owner of record of a pizzeria with mob connections. That meant something. Rennert seemed to straddle the border between government and business, if there really was a line at all. In New Jersey, that would make it hard to ignore the Mafia. Rennert must have some kind of arrangement with them, but unless that proved to be part of the John Doe murder case, Tillotson didn’t plan to go there.
    “Hello.”
    Immediately he grimaced. He was a cell phone veteran by now. When was he going to learn to glance at the caller ID and spare himself