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At midnight one night he met Rusty in front of the old lady’s house. Then they ran around and around her house, swinging their propane lanterns and chanting “Odobee dumba lawee” over and over again. All this, including the chant, was Rusty’s idea.

“Why are we doing this?” Otis asked Rusty at one point.

“We’re driving her mad.”

Inside Mrs. Archer’s house, lights went on and Buster began barking.

“I bet she’s mad, all right.”

“Not that kind of mad. This kind of mad!” Rusty held the lantern up to her face and swung it in time to her chant, a hideous, leering grimace on her black-painted face, and Otis laughed so hard he nearly peed his pants. Which was okay, because it meant they had to extinguish their lanterns and call it a night.

The next step, Rusty decided, was to sneak into Mrs. Archer’s house while she was at church with Rusty’s family. Rusty was certain that Mrs. Archer had given her mother a key to her house but had no way of knowing which key it was, so she swiped her mother’s entire key chain early Sunday morning and even pretended to look for the keys with her father, acting just as puzzled as her parents about what could’ve happened to them. She told Otis all about this grand act of deception while they were fumbling at Mrs. Archer’s front door, trying key after key in her lock, the dumb dog Buster barking his fool head off.

Finally they found it and let themselves in.

It was a disappointingly bland house. Buster followed them around, wagging his tail. They opened her cupboards and helped themselves to some Lay’s sour cream and onion potato chips and Entenmann’s powdered donuts, leaving crumbs on the counter. They leafed through her Time magazines and Tallahassee Democrats stacked up beside the coffee table.

In her bedroom they rifled through her old lady underwear and jewelry. Rusty helped herself to a pair of rhinestone clip earrings. There was a big bed with a pink bedspread and it looked soft and inviting. Otis lay down and folded his arms behind his head. The bedspread felt slippery beneath his calves. The pillow under his head was down filled and the pillow slip had pink roses on it. It smelled like old lady perfume. How kinky. He was lying on an old lady’s bed.

“Look!” Rusty said, pointing.

On the bedside table sat an old-fashioned framed photograph of a little girl in a winter coat and fur hat, her hands stuffed into a fur muff, and she was laughing. Snow was falling all around the girl, but she was laughing. What was so funny? “Is that her?” Otis said. “Mrs. Archer, you think? When she was little?”

“It’s evidence,” Rusty said, and snatched up the photograph. “Probably some little girl she killed. One of her victims, right? The police will want to see this.”

For some reason, her saying this ridiculous thing made him want to kiss her. “Come here,” he told her, and opened his arms.

Clutching the picture, she dropped down hard on the bed beside him and rolled over next to him. Rusty. Rustifer. Beatrice. She smelled like herbal something, like she’d just taken a shower. He wrapped his arm around her neck and brought her down close and they lay side by side and kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, her showing him how to do it. It was pretty nice, very nice, but not nice enough. After a few more kisses he rolled over and pulled her underneath him. Oh, yeah. This was nicer. Much nicer.

“What the hell? What are you doing?” She struggled underneath him. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

“What do you think I’m doing?” He tried to kiss her again, but she struggled again and he let her go.

She slipped out from underneath him and sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him. Her shoulder blades, under her thin T-shirt, looked like a child’s. “I need to collect more evidence,” she said.

“You’re taking this game a little too far,” Otis said. “This is a game, right?”

“I’m serious, jerk!” Suddenly, with a grunt, Rusty hurled the picture across the room and it smashed against the wall. “This is not a game!” She whirled and lunged at him, pinning him to the bed, pulling his hair, scratching