I EXPLAIN WHAT I CAN say with reasonable certainty, handing off to Benton what I would to other officials who have a right to know. But I’m nicer about it and we’re holding hands as we walk through trees, rooftops peeking over them to our left, the glinting dark river to our right.

“An electrical charge passed through the pendant she had on, magnetizing it,” I’m saying. “She was thrown off her bicycle, lacerating her scalp. Some of her belongings were scattered, and based on glass in her hair,” I conclude, “I believe this happened at the same time the lamp exploded. But I can’t tell you much more than that when she’s not been examined at the office yet.”

“It’s sounds like you’re talking about lightning.”

“Similar, yes. But not quite, which is baffling. Lightning could account for the burn caused by the pendant but not the peculiar threadlike linear burns she has. I honestly have never seen anything like this before.”

“Which brings me to the question we wouldn’t want anyone to know we’re asking,” Benton says. “Is it possible we’re dealing with some sort of DEW, a directed-energy weapon?”

“As opposed to what? Heatstroke? A heart attack?” I’m aware that the leather insoles of my ruined shoes make quiet squishy sounds as I walk.

“As opposed to sabotage,” Benton says. “Such as doing something to booby-trap the lamp or an Endless Pool so that they malfunction catastrophically.”

He turns to look behind us as if he can see the shattered lamp with its swath of exploded glass. But all of that is under the tent. It’s like looking back at a black hole at the far end of the dark park with its smudges of illumination, and I detect people moving about almost invisibly. They keep their distance from us, watching in the velvety blackness, their tactical lights probing and flaring.

“This is what the Bureau is thinking?” I ask. “That someone targeted two different people in two different places with what’s basically weaponized electricity?”

“Like a particle beam, a laser, a rail gun that uses energy instead of projectiles. The technology’s out there. It’s been only a matter of time before something terrible happened.”

“And the delivery system in these two cases?”

“Something like a long-range laser gun. A manned aircraft. Or much more problematic would be a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle converted into a weapon of assassination or mass destruction.”

“As in a drone you can buy off the Internet?”

“This is what we’ve been anticipating, and you’ve been hearing me say it for a while, Kay. A drone is going to take out a major passenger jet, a government building, a world leader. Sufficiently weaponized, a drone could take out a lot more than that. We’re waiting and watching because it’s a certainty when the capability is there.”