HE MEANT to scout the place. He watched television, so he knew I thieves and robbers and that kind, people who did things like burgle houses, they cased joints before a break-in, studied people for the comings and goings, did it a week, sometimes a month. He drove his car early, on a Monday, a few blocks over, locked the doors and walked a path through the woods. He crouched near the treeline behind her house, smoked cigarettes, part of a joint. He admired the rose garden in back. He put a hand through his hair. It was soft from the lice shampoo the nurse gave to him, smelled of strawberries and chlorine. He scratched above his right ear. His head itched less. He watched her parents leave close to eight; first the father, then the mother. She was an inventor, owned a restaurant supply store full of clear plastic beverage pitchers. She conjured one with two wide pouring spouts on the sides, plus the one on front, and her patent wouldn’t expire for many years. Her father worked there, for her mother.

Late afternoon he woke in the same spot. He rubbed his eyes, and then he checked the sun for the time. The mother came home after four. She parked the car in the yard and got out, had a cigarette in her mouth, white, long and skinny. She was tall, wore a knee-length black skirt, and she walked the drive and pulled the smoke a few times, twisted the end at grass lining the walk. She checked to see if the tip still burned, put the stub in a shirt pocket, and then she stuck the key to the brass deadbolt above the doorknob.

The father pulled in an hour later. He was round and short, had dark slicked hair, wore a powder blue oxford, tan slacks with severe pleats. There was a sticker at both sides of the bumper on his four-door burgundy sedan. One read, RIDE A BIKE TODAY! The other, TAKE A HIKE!

Terry watched the house quiet until dark and cut grooves at his left knuckles with the police knife. He pressed hard to break the skin.

Next morning he went back, worked again at his knuckles with the knife and watched Alice’s parents turn their cars, exhaust from the tails like great storms in the early weak light. He watched them back down the drive, same as the morning before. He waited a half hour, folded the knife and stuck it to his sock pulled high above the bootlip. He wrapped his hand in part of his shirt and held it tight at the cuts, and then he squeezed a fist and waited for blood that did not come back.

The house smelled clean and quiet, like fruit, or snow. In the main room he stood at the mantel and stared on the pictures; one of Alice a baby, one of her sister Nora in Colorado. She stood on a great field, the whole of the world behind, bright and blue and absent of cloud. She held her arms high. Terry picked up the frame, turned it over. It was silver, glass at the front. He looked at the wood floor. He dropped the picture, and then he bent down and gathered it up. The glass cracked. He got a few pieces on the floor, tossed them at the ashes in the fireplace and covered them over, and then he put the silver frame in the fire and covered it too. He folded the picture and stuck it to his back pocket, looked again at the one of Alice on the mantel, turned it facedown.

He opened closet doors in the hall and looked inside at their brooms and winter coats. He stood at the open doorway of her parents’ room at the end of the hall and crossed his arms over his chest. He lit a cigarette, went inside and sat down on the bed, knocked ashes in the pillows, and then he went to the bathroom and put the cigarette in the toilet.

Alice’s room was next to her parents’. The walls were bare. He opened drawers at the water-stained dresser; towels, sheets. In the bottom right there were a few of her things; Virgin Mary night light, old black camera, cassette tapes, a picture of her and her sister and mother and father in front of a Christmas tree with white lights, yellow coffee cup filled with pennies. He closed the drawer and sat down on her bed. He pressed one hand into the mattress, got the picture from his back pocket and held it up and read the back and looked on front at her sister in the field. He lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling and let the picture sit flat on his chest. The fan moved slow and dizzy. He pulled the pale blue cover at one side of the bed over his shoulders, put his face into it and breathed hard through his nose. He meant to smell her, but nothing, and then he was asleep.

Her mother stood above him and smoked a cigarette, one arm crossed a slant on her chest and tucked beneath the other one. She held the cigarette high, near her face, blew smoke in the room. He blinked hard a few times to make sure. She knocked ashes to a hand.

Did you think I wouldn’t know you were here? she said.

He thought a moment. No words came. He pushed the spread back and sat up. She moved easy through the room, got a small wood chair at one corner, drug it over and sat down. She tapped ashes at her hand again and closed a fist. She wore the silver hoop earrings Alice used to pierce her ear. He thought to pull one out, and laid one hand over the other in his lap. She put the cigarette in her mouth, and leaned toward him, took his hands and turned them over and put her thumbs on the cuts. He studied her eyes, pinched in the smoke, took his hands from her and jammed them beneath his arms. He got up off the bed and straightened the pillow and then the spread. He turned back to her; if he didn’t ask, he never would, the question in his head a gleaming bone. They burned her to ash, but past that fact he didn’t know what, and it confused him, thought and blood and heart turned to that.

What did you do with her? he said.

Her mother was quiet.

Is there a jar? he said.

She stood up, went over to one wall and opened the window. She took long, quick pulls. He put his eyes to the floor, then lifted his face. She kept hers at the window. She finished the smoke, thumped it to the backyard and then she lit another.

Is she on the mantel? he said.

She kept her face at the backyard and pulled on the smoke and blew from her nose.

Is she in a jar? he said.

She turned quickly, and glared at him.

In a trunk with a combination?

She didn’t speak, kept her face at his.

What?

She shook her head.

Is something wrong with you? she said.

I need you to tell me.

She looked away

No one talks like that, she said.

She kept at the window and her cigarette, a quick hard drag and then another, ash tapped to the sill.

He went on a run and did not think to stop. The trees rushed past were dead or sleeping.