The following morning Katherine attended Chessa's funeral, taking Damien with her. It was a private affair conducted in a small cemetery on the outskirts of town, attended only by the girl's family, Katherine and Damien, and a balding priest who read from the scriptures while holding a folded newspaper over his head to ward off the persistent drizzle of rain. Fearing the publicity that would surround their attendance, Thorn had refused to go, entreating Katherine to do the same. But her need was plain. She had loved the girl and needed to put her to rest.

Outside the cemetery a group of reporters milled about, prevented from entering by two United States Marines, dispatched at the last minute by Thorn from his staff at the Embassy. Unseen among them was Haber Jennings, cloaked in black rain slicker and high boots, positioned in the far trees, scrutinizing the proceedings through a long-distance lens. It was no ordinary lens but a monstrous affair mounted on a tripod; a lens with which he could no doubt photograph two flies mating on the moon. With careful precision his telescopic viewer wandered from face to face: the family weeping; Katherine in a state of shock, the child beside her restless, his eyes roaming the bleak terrain.

It was the child who captured Jennings' interest, and he waited patiently for precisely the right moment to snap his shutter. It came in an instant. A flickering of the eyes and a sudden change of expression as though the boy had been suddenly frightened, then, just as suddenly, soothed. With his eyes riveted on a point far across the cemetery, his small body relaxed, somehow warmed in the midst of the cold, drizzling rain. Swinging his telescopic viewer, Jennings searched the landscape finding nothing but headstones. And then something moved. A dark, blurred object slowly coming into focus as Jennings adjusted his lens. It was an animal. A dog. Large and black, its pointed face distinguished by narrow-set eyes and a lower jaw that protruded forward, exposing teeth, stark against midnight fur. Unseen by all others, it sat motionless as statuary, its attention fixed firmly ahead. Jennings cursed himself for having loaded black and white, for the yellowed eyes added the perfect touch of eeriness to the scene. He opened his aperture so they'd expose stark white, then swung back to the boy, doing the same.

It was a morning well worth the effort, and as he packed his gear Jennings felt satisfied. But somehow he was uneasy too. At the top of a hill he gazed back to see the coffin being lowered into the grave. The child and the dog were small in the distance, but their silent communion was plain.