RAYMOND SORENSEN. That afternoon, a little before one o’clock, Ray Sorensen, a cable repairman at the end of his lunch break, walked out of the Birchwood Avenue branch of the First Puritan Savings Bank, where he had deposited his paycheck and withdrawn eighty dollars from the ATM. The money would get him through the next couple of days, with a lottery ticket thrown in. The Sunday landscaping gig ought to see him through the rest of the week, though he was a month late on his car payment and he might have to cash out his savings account to pay down his credit-card debt. The sky as overcast, a fifty-fifty chance of rain; he had to drive out of town and check a power line at a property up by the lake. As he walked toward his truck, a man stepped from the row of high bushes that grew on the concrete divider, walked between two parked cars, and turned toward the bank. As he drew near Sorensen, he swerved toward him and began to raise an arm. Only then did Sorensen remember the article he had glanced at in the paper that morning. He’d been amused; it had nothing to do with him. The slap was so sudden and so strong that for a moment he didn’t understand what had happened. By the time he shouted “What the fuck!” the man in the trench coat was already walking away. Sorensen started running after him. The man stepped onto the divider and disappeared behind a high bush. Later Sorensen told the police that the stranger just seemed to vanish into thin air — though maybe he’d had time to cross to the other side of the lot and climb the fence separating the bank from the house behind it. Sorensen searched behind every bush on the divider. He walked up and down the lot, circled the bank, then returned to his truck and drove out to his job. Only when he arrived home at 5:45 did he read the paper again. He thought it over and phoned the police.

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