Winter Moon

school, she would paint over the graffiti. As before, some of the neighbors would probably help.
        Multiple coats were required over the affected areas because their house was a pale yellow-beige.
        Even so, it was a temporary repair, because the spray paint had a chemical composition that ate through the house paint. Over a few weeks, each defacement gradually reappeared like spirit writing on a medium's tablet at a seance, messages from souls in hell.
        In spite of the mess on her house, her anger faded. She didn't have the energy to sustain it. These last few months had worn her down.
        She was tired, so very tired.
        Limping, she reentered the house by the back garage door and locked up after herself. She also locked the connecting door between the garage.and the kitchen, and punched in the activating code to arm the alarm system again.
        SECURE.
        
        Not really. Not ever.
        She went upstairs to check on Toby. He was still sound asleep.
        Standing in the doorway of her son's room, listening to him snore, she understood why Anson Oliver's mother and father had been unable to accept that their son had been capable of mass murder. He had been their baby, their little boy, their fine young man, the embodiment of the best of their own qualities, a source of pride and hope, heart of their heart. She sympathized with them, pitied them, prayed that she would never have to experience a pain like theirs-but she wished they would shut up and go away.
        Oliver's parents had conducted an effective media campaign to portray their son as a kind, talented man incapable of what he was said to have done. They claimed the Uzi found at the scene had not belonged to him.
        No record existed to prove he had purchased or registered such a weapon. But the fully automatic Micro Uzi was an illegal gun these days, and Oliver no doubt paid cash for it on the black market. No mystery about the lack of a receipt or registration.
        Heather left Toby's room and returned to her own. She sat on the edge of the bed and switched on the lamp.
        She put down the revolver and occupied herself with the contents of the three wallets. From their driver's licenses, she learned that one of the boys was sixteen years old and two were seventeen. They did, indeed, live in Beverly Hills.
        In one wallet, among snapshots of a cute high school-age blonde and a grinning Irish setter, Heather found a two-inch-diameter decal at which she stared in disbelief for a moment before she fished it out of the plastic window. It was the kind of thing often sold on novelty racks in stationery stores, pharmacies, record shops, and bookstores, kids decorated school notebooks and countless other items with them. A paper backing could be peeled off to reveal an adhesive surface. This one was glossy black with embossed silver-foil letters:
        ANSON OLIVER LIVES.
        
        Someone was already merchandising his death. Sick. Sick and strange.
        What unnerved Heather most was that, apparently, a market existed for Anson Oliver as legendary figure, perhaps even as martyr.
        Maybe she should have seen it coming. Oliver's parents weren't the only people assiduously polishing his image since the shootout.
        The director's fiancee, pregnant with his child, claimed he didn't use drugs any more. He'd been arrested twice for driving under the.influence of narcotics, however, those slips from the pedestal were said to have been a thing of the past. The fiancee was an actress, not merely beautiful but with a fey and vulnerable quality that ensured plenty of TV-news time, her large, lovely eyes always seemed on the verge of filling with tears.
        Various film-community associates of the director had taken out full-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, mourning the loss of such a creative talent, making the observation that his controversial films had angered a lot of people in positions of power, and suggesting that he had lived and died for his art.
        The implications of all this were that the Uzi had been planted on him, as had the cocaine and PCP. Because everyone up and down the street from Arkadian's station had dived for cover at the sound of all that gunfire, no one had witnessed Anson Oliver with a gun in his hands except the people who died-and Jack. Mrs. Arkadian had never seen the gunman while she'd been hiding in