They’d added on in the back—a second story, in brick. They’d added brick pillars to the front.

He hated it.

They’d also taken down the evergreen in the yard and planted two smaller elms. Had the tree died? Had it come down in a storm?

They had children. Three girls and a boy. Two older kids in school and two little kids, one of them a baby.

His research told him they hadn’t bought the house fifteen years ago when it had been stolen from him. They’d bought it nine years ago. But they’d been the ones who had taken out the permit to add on. They’d been the ones who had changed the color of the exterior.

They had been the ones who had torn out his mother’s garden. The tree. Put up a stupid mailbox on the street with painted daisies and the name RICHMOND.

He hated them, the bastards. They had ruined his mother’s house. They added an addition that went up and back, and thus her garden was gone. Bright flowers she coaxed out every spring from the cold earth.

They had taken, destroyed, the last part of her on earth.

He flipped his knife in the small space. Flipped, caught. Flipped, caught. Balanced it on the back of his hand.

Three fingers. Two fingers. One finger. Perfectly balanced, and a plan started to form.

This house on Vine was not the Richmond house. It was his house, and he would make certain that they damn well knew it.

He flipped the knife again and put it down. Then he drove down the block out of the neighborhood and went back to the freeway heading east, exited the next off-ramp, and returned to Ogdenburg’s house.

The lights were off now. A faint light shone in the kitchen window. But the house felt asleep.

Still, he had to be sure. He parked around the corner in a driveway where the house was set far back, so he wouldn’t wake the owners. Turned off his car.

Waited.

Waited.

Just after two in the morning, a patrol car drove past his parked vehicle, which was now covered with a thin layer of moisture from the damp night. Drove up the street, around the corner. Slowly. Looking for him. Not seeing him.

He was hiding in plain sight, and it gave him a perverse sense of pleasure that he was only yards from the police, but they didn’t see him. Didn’t know he was waiting, watching.

The patrol left. He’d wait ten minutes.

Nine.

Eight.

He pulled out his knife and flipped it.

Seven.

Six.

The countdown excited him, reminding him that when he hit zero, when he killed the principal, that he would be three days away from his final justice.

How long did he have before the cops returned? Thirty minutes? Sixty? Were they patrolling at regular intervals, or trying to trip him up?

He breathed in; he breathed out.

One more minute...

He smiled, started his car, and drove three minutes to a street that had no road access to Ogdenburg, but had a trail that went right to his deck.