he happiest place on the entire planet, my ass ... Derek called me into the office, his voice an out-oftune reed instrument in my earpiece, just as I was herding a dozen sunburned tourists and their jabbering children off the teacup ride, which had broken down for the third time in a week. "Carl, we need to see you immediately," Derek said. "Headquarters, now." He acted as if being a security day-shift lead made him Batman, or at least Commissioner Gordon. Sure, he had military and a little police experience on his resume, and since 9/11 that was all anybody valued in security. The downing of the Twin Towers changed everything at the park-not because terrorists have ever shown up on Huck Finn's Island or among the mannequin pirates on the splash-splash boat ride, but because the new security hires all thought they were better than the rest of its, especially me. My twenty-three years of experience counted for nothing to them. All that mattered was that I'd been hired during a "kinder, gentler" period of American history, sans military or police experience, when former school teachers like me were considered adequate for the job of herding tourists off broken-down attractions, managing crowd-control during the fireworks display, or busting preteens for smoking cigarettes on the sky ride. I knew the new breed thought of me as a middle-aged, hefty embarrassment, particularly after I became literally the last of the "old guard." I knew how much they wanted to put rat ears on my head, shove a tail up my ass, and send me out the main gate forever. But I always did my job and there was nothing they could do to get rid of me-at least, not until the day Derek called me away from the teacups.

When I got to the security office, Derek wasn't even involved in the inquiry.

It was Jeffrey, the department head, former FBI, who asked me to take a seat in the conference room, which I'd visited only once before, in '98, to help plan a birthday party for one of the secretaries. The room hadn't changed. Dozens of large, framed photographs of the park's long-dead founder lined the walls. Two grim Anaheim city policemen entered, their handcuffs jangling on their polyester pants and their boots echoing across the linoleum floor. They sat at the long table, accompanied by a lawyer from corporate, a stenographer, two interns, and a video technician. Excepting the cops, everyone wore standard employee name tags-first names only. Bob, Tom, Steve ... Friendly, huh? But how else would you expect employee relations to be at the world's happiest place? The video technician made final adjustments to a small camera pointed in my direction, then indicated we could begin.

"We're videotaping for legal purposes," Jeffrey said, his smooth delivery more like that of a weatherman than a topcop. He was weatherman handsome too. All he needed was a name like Dallas Raines or Johnny Mountain and his toothy grin would have been on TV screens instead of here in my face.

"What's this all about?" I asked.

"We've had a complaint," Jeffrey said, indicating a manila folder on the desk. "A female guest in her teens filed a report that says you followed her around the park, leering at her."

"What?" I recalled no particular young lady. How could I? Every hour of every day I saw thousands of girls in their teens walking around the park (just as I saw thousands of sour-faced, divorced fathers scrambling to keep up with their children, thousands of overwrought mothers toting handywipes and pushing strollers, thousands of obese tourists reeking of sweat and tanning lotion, thousands of school-age boys and girls who moved like flocks of birds from one "land" to the next, thousands of retirees in souvenir T-shirts and sun visors, thousands of foreigners in baseball caps, thousands of chattering children in pirate hats, thousands and thousands and thousands of everything ...). "One paranoid guest files a complaint and you call me in for this inquisition?"

Jeffrey smiled. His manner remained friendly but coldblooded, doubtless a technique learned at Quantico. He turned his chair to face me directly. "Need I remind you that here at the park we do not tolerate dissatisfaction in any form from any of our guests."

"Sure, but one report-"

He interrupted: "Are you suggesting that following only one young woman around the park, bothering her with unwanted and aggressive sexual attentions, is acceptable?" He straightened in his chair, his expression growing stern.

"Aggressive sexual attentions?" This was outrageous. The others at the table averted their eyes. At first, I assumed they were embarrassed to be part of this kangaroo court. But after a moment I realized they were embarrassed for me, as if I'd actually done something wrong. "Look, I don't even talk to guests, male or female, unless they talk to me first. So even if I happened to be following an attractive young woman, it would only have been out of boredom, nothing more."

"Is following an attractive young woman `out of boredom' a part of your job description?" Jeffrey asked.

"I was speaking hypothetically."

"But if one actually did such a thing?" he pressed.

"Well, no. Obviously, it's not part of my job description, if I did such a thing."

He nodded, smug, and turned to the video technician across the table. "Run the video, please."

Every square foot of the park is covered by cameras, primarily for the legal department's use in defending lawsuits (as opposed to the stated purpose of busting criminals or terrorists or nine-year-old boys pocketing souvenir pencils from the gift shops). The particular time-stamped surveillance footage compiled for our viewing showed me walking directly behind a nubile park guest who wore a revealing halter top and very short shorts. From the angle of the camera it appeared that I may indeed have been staring at her ass. But one angle proved nothing. Unfortunately, they had more than one angle-the video cut to another camera that picked up where the first left off, capturing the two of its moving in single file through the Land of Cliched Yesteryear to the Land of Harmless Adventures and on to the Land of Saccharine Fantasy, the footage from all the cameras edited together to form a single, incriminating sequence. I didn't remember the girl, though for a few minutes of a particular day she had undeniably engaged my attention. It was not pleasant to observe-the security guard uniform made me look heavier than I actually am (and everyone knows video adds ten to twenty pounds to anyone's appearance); additionally, I was old enough to be the girl's father and my attentions toward her, isolated and edited in this manner, were humiliating.

Jeffrey turned to the stenographer. "Will you please read back to us what Carl said after I asked him if following young women `out of boredom' was part of his job description?"

"There's no need for that," I interjected.

The stenographer looked from me to Jeffrey, awaiting direction.

At last Jeffrey indicated to the stenographer to remain silent.

I'd had enough. "Okay, fine. I won't follow any women around the park, ever again. Okay?"

Jeffrey was not satisfied. "Why don't you tell us why you left teaching?"

"That's irrelevant ... it was in the late '80s, for God's sake."

Jeffrey pulled a paper from a file. "On your application here you indicated that you resigned from your teaching position."

"I did."

"We dug a little deeper, contacting the school district, and discovered that you were pressured to go. Why don't you explain?"

"Look, I never touched anybody."

"No one said you did. Please answer the question."

"One of the girls needed a little watching over. She was just a freshman, a lonely kid. My concern was only for her safety. Would I be in this uniform if I didn't take an interest in the welfare of others?"

"You `maintained surveillance' on this girl after school hours?"

"Well, that's generally when the bad things happen. . ."

He nodded. "Bad things, indeed."

"Look, I'm not some kind of stalker, if that's what you're suggesting."

Jeffrey shrugged. "It's not me who suggests it. It's you, Carl. It's your behavior."

The silence and averted eyes among those gathered around the table suggested they concurred.

In this manner, the security department had its way with me.

Over the next half hour we arrived at a settlement that reduced my retirement benefits by 50 percent. The lawyer had all the paperwork ready. He was very friendly. I merely had to sign at the places he'd marked with colorful, sticky arrows. A child could have done it.

"Why now?" I asked as the inquisition came to its inglorious end. "After all these years?"

Jeffrey nodded. "You're right, it's our oversight. We should never have hired you. But at least we identified the problem before any serious harm was done."

Harm? I never touched anybody-not in all these years.

Happiest place on the planet, my ass ...

So you can imagine my surprise when five weeks later I got a call at home from none other than supercop Jeffrey.

"How've you been?" he asked, exuding his weatherman charm.

"Fine," I said, though I'd actually not been so good. It's funny, but that overpriced, overcrowded, oversanitized amusement park, known the world over for its fairy-tale castle, which is actually made of plaster so thin that on that last day, as my former colleagues marched me across the park on my way out forever, I was almost able to punch my fist right through it ... well, despite all that, the place gets into your blood. The truth is, I missed the park as one misses a lover. Hell, more than one misses a lover. It's been three years now since Mandy went back to her old job in Bangkok, where I'd met her on a humid night, paid her bar fee, and then won her heart with my tales of foiling the amorous antics, petty thievery, and juvenile pranks of park guests (everybody the world over has heard of the park, and being in its employ is almost like being a celebrity). The first gift I ever gave Mandy, the first acknowledgment of my deeper-than-mere-business feelings for her, was my spare name tag from the park, which I'd brought along on vacation in hopes I might indeed meet a young woman worthy of wearing it. So, sure, I suffered sleepless nights after Mandy left me. We'd had a good eighteen months and I really thought she loved her new country and our little apartment. Nobody likes losing a lover or wife or whatever. But losing the park proved harder yet, almost enough to make me start drinking again. There's no place like it, unless you count its iterations in Florida and overseas.

"I want you to know I didn't enjoy doing what I had to do, Carl," Jeffrey said over the phone.

What did he want from me, sympathy?

"It's the bitch end of the job, let me tell you," he continued.

I'd be damned if I'd let him know how bad I'd been feeling. "Well, I've been great, Jeffrey. How're things at the park?"

He laughed. "As if you care anymore, right?"

I pretended to laugh too. "Right you are, Jeffrey."

It didn't make matters easier for me that my garden apartment, which I'd only recently cleared of the last signs that Mandy had ever inhabited it with me, was barely a mile from the park's front gate. Every night at 9:30, when the fireworks display started, the sounds of explosions would jerk me away from whatever TV show I'd been employing as distraction. Boom, boom, boom! I felt every sonic reverberation in the deepest part of my chest. I've always loved fireworks. Most nights I'd still walk onto my tiny patio to watch them-gunpowder flowers blossoming over the park, red, white, and blue. Boom, boom, boom! When that became too painful, I'd close my eyes. But even then I couldn't help picturing the thousands of guests lined along the park's main avenue or along the banks of its circular river, their eyes turned heavenward, a scene I helped supervise for years. Afterward, the quiet on my patio was even more painful than the display itself-silence and the drifting away of the smoke clouds into the night sky. Who wouldn't miss a place like the park, a place that offers to all (except me, now) a simulation of life designed to surpass the real thing. Losing it had made me almost angry enough to want to hurt somebody. But I'd be damned if I'd let Jeffrey know how I felt about these things.

"Carl, can you meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast?"

The head of park security, former FBI, wanted to eat with me?

"Carl, are you still there?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Yeah you're still there, or yeah you'll meet me?" he asked.

"Why do you want to have breakfast with me, Jeffrey?"

"Look, I know you were good at your job, Carl."

I did my job but I don't know that I was actually good at it. I only know that I showed up every day.

"Have you found employment yet?" Jeffrey asked.

"I've got a lot of irons in the fire," I said, a lie.

"I may have a job for you, Carl."

"Me? Why?"

After a moment of silence: "Maybe I feel a little guilty about the way it went down with you, Carl."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

What the hell did I have to lose?

We met the next morning at a Carl's Jr. across the street from the main library on Harbor Boulevard and Broadway, three miles north and a world away from the park. He chose the place. Fast food didn't seem like much of a gesture toward reconciliation. Was the Carl's Jr. a play on my name? There were plenty of tourist joints around the park that served better breakfasts. And there were restaurants near the stadium and diners and cafes farther east in Orange or Tustin where park employees often went to escape the crowds and to enjoy food that was less generic than tourist fare. I asked myself what Sherlock Holmes would have made of Jeffrey's wanting to meet here and I arrived at this: the Carl's Jr. at Harbor and Broadway was a place we'd likely not be seen by anybody who knew either of us (most of the patrons and some of the employees didn't even speak English). Only three miles from the park, we were virtually guaranteed of being strangers to anyone we might meet.

In this, I was right.

But it was the last time I'd be right for a long while.

I parked my Camry next to Jeffrey's SUV.

He sat at an inside booth, nursing a coffee and browsing the morning paper. He grinned when he saw me and extended his hand to shake without sliding out of the booth to stand. "Morning, Carl." He was dressed "resort casual," khakis, loafers, monogrammed golf shirt. The face of his expensive wristwatch was black and of a width and diameter about half that of a hockey puck. I'd come in my suit and tie, which felt ridiculous in a Carl's Jr. But this was a job interview, wasn't it? And my Aunt Janice always said that one can never be overdressed, either for church or for a business meeting.

I slid into the booth across from Jeffrey. "So what's this all about?"

"Maybe you want to get yourself a coffee and a roll before we get started," he said, folding away his newspaper.

I was hungry (after all, this was supposed to be breakfast) so I did as he suggested.

"Well, that ought to fill you up," Jeffrey said when I returned with my tray.

A coffee, orange juice, jumbo breakfast burrito, and side of hash browns . . . Why not? This wasn't a Weight Watchers meeting! But Jeffrey looked at my tray like it was piled with fresh, steaming shit. He couldn't resist putting on superior airs. I'd seen it in my days at the park. Fine, he was Ivy League. Then Quantico. Good for him. But what kind of former undercover agent is constitutionally unable to conceal his smugness at least some of the time?

"I'd like to engage your assistance," he said.

"What?"

"It's about my wife."

I put down my breakfast burrito.

Jeffrey leaned toward me over the Formica tabletop. He smelled of expensive cologne, which mixed strangely with the greasy odors from the breakfast foods. He pushed my tray toward the napkin dispenser against the wall and tapped his fist on my forearm, a "man's man" gesture of intimacy. I fought the impulse to pull away.

"You're a good man, Carl," he said. "I knew it even when I was letting you go, but I had no choice."

"Yeah?"

"Look, I know damn well that corporate policy and fear of litigation should never trump a man's twenty years of good service," he continued. "But you'll have to trust me that I had no choice. Do you trust me, Carl?"

It was actually twenty-three years, but I didn't correct him. "Would I be here otherwise, Jeffrey?"

"Good." He leaned back into his side of the booth.

I picked up the breakfast burrito and took a bite, unsure of what else to do.

"I want to employ you as a private detective," he said.

Once again I put the burrito down. "Me?"

He nodded.

"Why?" I asked.

"I need you to shadow my wife."

"Oh? I see. But still ... why me?"

"It's a delicate job, Carl." He lowered his voice. "Look, I'm well known in law-enforcement circles. You understand that. Every city in this county has its own little chief of police, but just as there's only one park, one citadel, there's only one me. So I can't go to a regular agency. You know that the park expects only the most respectable behavior from its top employees. And also from their wives . . ." He looked to me for some kind of response.

"Oh, right."

"I need to know the truth about her. But I can't allow anything unsavory to ever get out. Understand, Carl?"

"Sure."

He looked around the Carl's Jr. When he was sure nobody was paying us any attention, he removed from his front trousers pocket a roll of cash held together with two rubber bands. He set it on the tabletop and then slid it across like a shuffleboard disc into my lap. "It's two grand, all in twenties," he said. "It'll get you started on the job."

I hadn't held so much cash in my hand at one time since my vacation in Bangkok (where cash passes out of your hand instead of into it).

"I need your help, Carl," he said, his expression suddenly strained.

They sure as hell didn't teach this at Quantico, I thought. It turns out the bastard was as pathetic a human being as the rest of us. (Or so I believed at the time.) Anyway, I admit I enjoyed his muted anguish. But I was clever enough not to show it. "Okay, Jeffrey. I'll help you."

He removed a reporter's notebook from his back pocket and gave it to me. "You got a pen?"

I patted my shirt pocket. No pen.

He gave me a Bic.

"You might want to note down what I'm about to tell you," he said.

"Right." I flipped the pad open. Just like that I was a private eye.

Jeffrey's wife Melinda was thirteen years his junior. They had no children together, though on weekends Jeffrey's four young daughters from two previous marriages occasionally visited their home, which was located near the golf course on a quiet cul-de-sac in Anaheim Hills. It was a million-and-a-half-dollar property. Melinda held no job, but kept busy with volunteer work at the children's hospital in Orange. She worked out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at a Pilates studio on Imperial Highway and on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a private trainer (female) at the twenty-four-hour fitness club. Her body was well toned. She drove a two-year-old, leased Mercedes E-class and her blond hair was just the right shade for her skin color, just the right length for her bone structure. She got her manicures, pedicures, and facials at a salon on Lakeview that was run by a Vietnamese woman named Tran, and she shopped for groceries at the Vons Pavilions in the Target shopping center on Weir Canyon Road. She rarely ventured off the hill to the flats of Anaheim, which were generally too seedy for one of her refined sensibilities. In conversation at the tennis club she poked fun at the park and all it stood for, assuming a position of cultural superiority, even though it was the park that provided her husband with the means to keep her in luxury. She seemed a predictable third wife for a man like Jeffrey. No surprise there. What's funny is that you might not suspect a woman like her would also appeal to a man like me, but after shadowing her for just a day or two, I found myself becoming very fond of her, despite her superficialities, her arrogance, and the fact that, quite literally, she didn't know I existed.

"She's seeing another man," Jeffrey had told me at Carl's Jr. that first morning.

But I discovered nothing that suggested infidelity. Not in the first week, nor in the second, nor the third. I faithfully kept at it, every day and every night. Melinda took conversational French classes at Fullerton College on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7 to 10 and enjoyed a few happy hour margaritas every Wednesday with her girlfriends, some of whom were actually as well groomed and physically fit as she was.

Otherwise, she was rarely out of the house after dark. Further, I can say with certainty-because I'd snuck into the backyard to peek through a window-that there was nothing illicit about the two consecutive afternoon visits from the plumber; also, the Latino gardeners and the Polynesian pool boy merely did their jobs, unlike the stereotypical shirtless lotharios you find filling their professions in porno films. Melinda wasn't seeing anybody and nobody was seeing her (except me, of course). Even Jeffrey saw little of her, working long days that often stretched past midnight. I thought Melinda must be the loneliest woman in the world, poor thing. But I kept my notes and my increasing faith in her goodness to myself. Jeffrey had instructed me never to contact him, which was just as well as I'd lost my cell phone a few days before he hired me as a PI and hadn't had time to replace it since I'd started shadowing his wife.

Actually, I was glad to be rid of my cell phone.

It felt good to be cut off from everyone in the worldexcept Melinda.

Of course, I did speak in person to some of those in her life. For example, I used one of the hours when Melinda was in the Pilates studio to visit her dry cleaner, who occupied the same strip mall. I initiated conversation with him by pretending to be one of her neighbors. He agreed with me that she was always very friendly. Unfortunately, I couldn't get details from him about the particulars of her cleaning and laundering needs (such as whether he'd ever been asked to work out unusual or incriminating stains on either her outer- or underwear). Believe me, I took the job seriously. I was thorough. Melinda's French teacher at Fullerton College, a sixtyish woman called Madame Juliette, who I'm not sure believed that I was a visiting professor from Cypress College, told me only that Melinda had exceptional pronunciation and above-average vocabulary skills. When I met Melinda's supervisor at the children's hospital in Orange, a small man in a wheelchair, I claimed to be a reporter for the O.C. Weekly who wrote the "Volunteers Among Us" column. He told me Melinda had a wonderful way with children and lamented the fact that she and Jeffrey were childless. The receptionist at the Anaheim Hills Tennis Club told me, after I'd slipped her a series of twenty-dollar bills, that half of their married members cheated on their spouses, often hooking up with their mixed-doubles partners, but that Melinda was in the faithful 50 percent, a paragon of marital constancy.

The woman was an angel.

Why would I ever want to murder her?

But wait, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Approximately three and a half weeks into my surveillance, Jeffrey called me at my apartment at 2:30 in the morning. The lateness of the hour was not as distressing as it might seem; after all, I was only ever home between midnight and 5 a.m., otherwise always shadowing Melinda, and so the middle of the night was the only time I was available for communication.

"You're a hard man to reach, Carl."

This was the first I'd spoken to Jeffrey since Carl's Jr. Now, in the background of his call, I could make out the sound of light traffic, as if he were phoning from the side of a freeway. "I've been on the job, Jeffrey." My answering machine was empty so he obviously hadn't tried that hard to reach me.

"Good man," he said.

I liked being called that. "I've compiled copious notes about your wife's every move these past few weeks," I said. "That notebook you gave me is just about full. And I'm pleased to report that, to date, my observations indicate-"

"That's fine, Carl," he interrupted. "We'll discuss your observations later. Now, I want you to just listen to me."

"Oh, okay."

"Tomorrow I want you to take the day off. Get a haircut, go to a movie, wash your car, whatever. Just stay away from Melinda. It's critical that she not suspect she's being watched."

"Oh, I've been very careful about that, Jeffrey." Or had I left more of a footprint that I thought? Maybe talking to a few of her neighbors the day before hadn't been such a good idea.

Jeffrey continued: "Now get this part right, Carl. At 11 o'clock tomorrow night, not a moment later, not a moment sooner, I want you to park your car in front of my house. Bring your camera. I'll see that the front door is unlocked and the silent alarm turned off. Just quietly walk in."

"Now wait a minute," I said. "I'm not so sure about breaking and entering and-"

Again, he cut me off. "It's my goddamn house, Carl. You won't be `breaking and entering' because I'm inviting you to enter, understand?"

"Oh, right. But why?"

"Because tomorrow night the other man will be there, in bed with my wife."

What other man? I thought. "How do you know, Jeffrey?"

"Trust me, I know."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"Take a picture of them together. That's all. Then get out. The master bedroom is at the back of the house."

This was an ugly business. But it was a little exciting too. And while I still privately doubted that the Melinda I'd observed these past weeks was actually having an affair, the prospect of seeing her naked and in flagrante delicto (and photographing it!) held an undeniable appeal. I didn't know if I wanted to be right or wrong about her. I'm sure you understand.

"Any questions, Carl?"

"Where will you be during all this, Jeffrey?"

"Don't worry about me, buddy. I'll be all right."

I hadn't been worried about him.

"I'll call you at this same time tomorrow," he said.

I slept little that night and the following day passed at a snail's pace despite the fact that I followed Jeffrey's advice by getting a haircut, washing my car, and seeing a matinee. After eating a hamburger for dinner at the Carl's Jr. where Jeffrey and I had breakfasted (call me sentimental), I returned to my apartment to watch jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and three CBS sitcoms. I left my apartment only after the fireworks ended at the park. I cruised up and down Harbor Boulevard for forty minutes, casually observing the tourists on the sidewalks outside the motels. They were all shapes and sizes, though I'd guess they tended a little more toward fat than the national average. At 10:30 I turned off Harbor and headed east on Katella Avenue past the Angels' stadium to the 57 freeway, then I took the 91 to Imperial Highway and headed up Anaheim Hills Road almost as far as the golf club. I parked in front of the darkened house at 10:56 p.m. (I know the exact time because I jotted it on the last page of my reporter's notebook.)

At 11 P.M. I pushed open the front door, which was ajar, and went inside.

Darkness. Silence.

There seems little point in my describing the interior of the house except to say it was what you'd expect in such a neighborhood-stylish and neat. I didn't take it in much beyond that. Interior decorating is not my thing. Besides, my mind was elsewhere. I flipped on my flashlight. The hallway that led to the back of the house was lined with framed photographs of Melinda and Jeffrey smiling together in various locations, such as Japan, France, Florida. I turned a corner and saw the closed double doors that led to the master bedroom. Still, no sound from within. Surely, no sex. Melinda was likely just sleeping inside, alone. That'a girl, I thought, only halfdisappointed by what I was not going to get to see.

Of course, I still had to open the bedroom door and look inside just to be sure. It was my job.

I wish I hadn't done it.

By the light of a reading lamp burning beside the king-size bed, I saw Melinda sprawled on the rumpled bedspread, her vacant eyes open and askew. Most of her clothes had been ripped off her body. I knew right away she was dead. Poor Melinda. There were red marks at her throat and blood on one of her swollen lips. She'd been knocked around and then strangled and then, you know ... It was ugly. Even twentythree years of working security at the park doesn't prepare you for something like this. At first, I didn't know what to do. Had Jeffrey been right about a lover in the house, a lover turned murderer? Had I arrived only a few minutes too late to save poor Melinda? Or might the killer still be hiding in the house? I turned and looked around the room.

But I was alone.

At least, I was alone until the police arrived just three or four minutes after I'd entered Melinda's bedroom.

Jeffrey hadn't shut off the silent alarm, the bastard.

"Officers, officers!" I shouted as they burst into the bedroom. "I was just about to call you!"

They pressed around me, their automatic weapons pointed at my face, and shouted for me to show my hands and to lay spread-eagled on the floor, which I did. My training in security prepared me for such treatment; they were only taking proper precautions.

Still, I tried to explain: "The killer may still be in the house!" I shouted. One of them wrenched my arm behind my back to apply the cuffs. They weren't interested in what I had to say, though one of them recited my Miranda rights. "Look, you've got it all wrong, guys! I work for Jeffrey, I'm private security!"

Somebody hit me hard with his elbow in the back of my head. My face hit the floor and I tasted blood.

Then he hit me again.

The next thing I knew I was in the back of a patrol car.

"Just shut up!" the driver said every time I tried to explain.

It was not until an hour later in the police interrogation room that I realized how completely I'd been set up. Should I have seen it coming? Maybe, but I possess a trusting nature. And Jeffrey is a formidable enemy, particularly when you don't know he's your enemy. The interrogator told me that "poor, distraught" Jeffrey had managed to communicate through his tears that he'd had no contact with me whatsoever since the day he fired me from the park. No phone calls, no meeting at Carl's Jr., no private investigation.

He'd lined it all up: The videotaped testimony from my hearing at the park suggested I had a history of "stalking"; my subsequent firing suggested I had motive to get revenge on Jeffrey (by taking away the love of his life, just as he'd taken away the park from me); my reporter's notebook, confiscated at the time of my arrest, indicated I'd been following Melinda for weeks, noting her every move; my interviews with some of her neighbors and so forth reinforced the idea that my attentions had been "obsessive"; my being in the house at roughly the time of her murder, and the broken lock on the front door ... well, that seemed to speak for itself. Not good, any of it.

Obviously, Jeffrey killed her. Surely, you can see that. My part, as patsy, just made it a "perfect crime."

But nobody wanted to hear that.

The staff at the Carl's Jr. did not recall Jeffrey and me ever having eaten there, but why would they as it had been almost a month previous? The calls from Jeffrey to my home phone, the most recent of which had occurred the night before the murder, proved to have been placed from my own lost cell phone, which Jeffrey must have stolen from my apartment before initiating his plan.

My attorney advised me to cop a plea.

I told him to go to hell.

When the DA started rooting around in my past, things got no better. I still don't know how they thought they'd ever locate Mandy in Bangkok. She doesn't exactly work a desk in an office-besides, she's probably going by another name these days. That's how it works there. Just because immigration has no record of her ever exiting the U.S.A. doesn't mean she didn't go back, for God's sake. There are a million ways for girls to get around bureaucrats! I'd never have hurt Mandy, however much she hurt me. And who'd have guessed that the student I took such an interest in during my last year of teaching was shortly thereafter murdered? My sixth sense alerted me to her need for special protection. I was right! Do I get no credit for that? If the school district hadn't gotten in my way all those years ago, she might be alive today. Any inference now of my having killed her is ridiculous. Look, whose past wouldn't reveal unseemly coincidences if put under a microscope? Yours? I doubt it.

Maybe I'll cop a plea after all.

But let me ask you this: after all my years working in park security (which is a branch of law enforcement, after all), do you think I'm fool enough to commit a murder and leave every clue pointing to me? Of course not! Any true detective of the Sherlock Holmes ilk would understand that the vast number of details that seem to incriminate me, actually exonerate me! Besides, if I did kill poor Melinda, then much of this report is a pure fiction. Talk about fantasy-land! And knowing what you know about me, do you honestly believe I'm capable of making something like this up?