MATTHEW DENNIS. Matthew Dennis, twenty-five years old, a reporter for the Daily Observer who had been assigned to cover the attacks after Charles Kraus had phoned the police, swung out of his seat as the train pulled into the station. He had spent the afternoon in Manhattan and was returning at the height of rush hour. It was all his boss’s idea: ride the train into the city with the morning crowd, listen to the talk, get a feeling for the mood. Ride the train back, keep your ears open, give us the word on the train, the word out in the lot. Circulation was way up, everyone was following the story. Matthew had been against the whole scheme. Better to make the rounds of the neighborhoods, interview uppermanagement types on Sascatuck Hill, talk to the guys in the gas station next to Sal’s Pizza, but who was he to turn down a free trip to the city, and besides, he’d had some good conversations down and back and had typed up most of them on his laptop. Everybody had a theory: the man would next strike at midnight, the man was an ex-cop, the man was seeking attention for a reality show. In Matthew’s view the attacker was following a pattern, but one that was difficult to pin down. He’d begun with four men, then turned to women; he’d begun in the station parking lot, then changed to a parking lot in town, to a residential street, to a living room at night. It appeared that what he liked to do was raise an expectation and suddenly swerve away — he liked taking the town by surprise. Matthew walked along the platform, exchanging a few words with Charlie Kraus. Then he stood by the steps for a while, looking down at the lot: the lights were on, though the sky was still dusk-blue. People walked in careful groups, looking around, making sure. A man came up to him and asked for a light. Matthew had stopped smoking a year ago. The man was in his mid-thirties, sharp-featured, a solid build; except for the zippered jacket, he could have been the stranger. A woman laughed: a high, nervous laugh, like a laugh rehearsed for a play. “My husband picks me up,” he heard someone say. “I don’t park here anymore.” Matthew walked down the steps. In the morning he’d first parked near the station, then changed his mind and chosen a spot farther away. He needed to walk with the crowd, listen to what people were saying, study their faces. His job on the paper was strictly temporary, until something better came along, or until he could get going on a book, but he liked it well enough, it might lead to something, you never could tell. He turned quickly when he heard what sounded like a half-stifled cry. It was only a girl who had stumbled in her heels and was clinging to her boyfriend’s arm. Everyone was thinking about the stranger, looking around. Matthew had his own theory, which he sometimes believed: that everyone had a secret, a shameful thing they had done, and the reason they feared the stranger was that he made them remember that thing. He himself, for example, had done some things in college he’d rather forget. He stepped up to his car, bent over to glance through the window — one of his ideas was that the stranger concealed himself in parked cars, which he knew how to open — and placed his key in the door. He heard a step, a single crunch of gravel, and turned with a feeling of excitement and intense curiosity. The man in the trench coat had already raised a hand, and as the palm cracked against his cheek with a force that brought tears to his eyes, Matthew was aware of the look of stern anger in the stranger’s eyes, as if he were delivering a judgment.

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