"You don't really plan on trying to meet him, do you?"

"Meet him? Who said anything about meeting him?" Julia laughed playfully. Her green eyes turned all feline. "We're not going to find out anything interesting by meeting him. What we need to do is wait until he goes out—I mean, the guy has to come out eventually—and then we'll sneak inside to explore."

That was the audacity that rendered Julia so alluring, the same leap-and-then-look mindset that would get her hooked on heroin three years later. The intensity stamped on the girl's delicate features frightened Lizzie—but she found this danger magnetic, disarming. It mattered nothing to Julia that her own father and older brother were among the "concerned citizens" going door to door with petitions aimed at driving the sex offender from the neighborhood.

Julia added that, according to her brother, Alice Benbow, crippled by age and disappointment and a progressive lung ailment, no longer left her first-floor bedroom. So as long as they kept quiet, they'd have free roam of the house.

"You're not afraid, are you?" Julia asked.

Lizzie gnawed on the string of her sweatshirt hood. Headlights panned the playing field as a station wagon made a U-turn in the elementary school parking lot. "I just don't get what you're expecting to find," said Lizzie. "Do you really think he's going to leave stuff lying around?"

"You are afraid," snapped Julia.

"Okay, I'm afraid. Why shouldn't I be afraid?" Lizzie lowered her voice. "I've got enough stress without worrying about getting raped and murdered."

Julia laughed again. "Nobody is going to get raped and murdered," she said, accentuating Lizzie's concerns so they sounded foolish. "At least, we won't. Not if we're prepared."

She reached into her purse and withdrew a double-edged boot knife. Lizzie instinctively raised her hand to her throat.

"See, we're fine," said Julia. "Besides, he likes boys."

*           *          *

Lizzie's veranda offered an unobstructed view of Alice Benbow's bungalow, so the girls ensconced themselves on the porch and waited. Although Bill and Myra Sucram weren't the type to suspect mischief, Julia insisted that they set up a pair of easels and paint the autumn foliage, just in case their constant presence on the terrace drew notice. To Lizzie, this seemed like overkill—yet she dutifully filled her canvas with bright hues of amber and vermillion. Meanwhile, her partner brazenly painted the Benbow dwelling itself: a flawless facsimile, down to the stars on the tattered curbside flag and the tire treads on Alice's rusting wheelbarrow.