This was the real Tunnel, he observed, the after-dark Tunnel. Pitch black, or as close as you’d want to get. Quieter. Scarier. More fun. At night it was a carnival funhouse for the bigger kids, the ones with cars and a girl to impress. The softening asphalt had become badly rutted after years of nocturnal traffic, and the tire-worn grass just off the road and between the trees had completely given up and refused to grow. There were other places in Isherwood to hang out like the IGA parking lot and Dante’s “new” pizza place and the video arcade, but as long as the weather held out the Tunnel was the place. It was a warped kind of tunnel of love, a make-out lane where Vincent Price or Rod Serling would feel at home amid the twisted trunks and heart-carved bark. Once the motor was turned off, the silence would close in, and wind would sift through the trees like a whispery voice, and the arthritic limbs overhead would sway and send the dimmest of shadows to dance on the ground around them, and that was where the stories always began. The escaped psychopath with a hook for a hand. The vanishing hitchhiker in the mud-spattered prom dress. The rapist glimpsed hunkered in the backseat of a woman’s car. Each would tell a story more horrific than the last until the girl jumped into her young man’s arms, or vice versa. And the rest . . .

He could pick out the individual cars now as he cruised slowly by: most had pulled far enough off the road so as to be obscured by weeds and trees, but a few were in plain view. There was a glimpse of bobbing heads and bare legs here and there, and one couple was clinched on the hood of a Mustang, seemingly oblivious to the nip in the air. But most were hidden behind well-steamed windows.

Bean was always amazed when he patrolled the Tunnel at just how loose kids were today. Not that he was a prude. He’d had his share of sexual escapades over the years and was more than happy to discuss them in detail with anyone who cared to listen. But these were high-school kids. Hell, when he was in high school, copping a feel was a week’s worth of bragging. Nowadays . . .

There was nothing here, at least nothing he should be concerned with. No brawls with jealous boyfriends, no out-of-town punks looking to cause trouble, no unwelcome advances from overamorous suitors. It was a comparatively quiet night. How boring. Might as well cut it short and call it a night.