The quiet man nodded for the supervisor to accompany him across the plaque to the holes.

"Will you say something?" demanded the supervisor angrily. "Van Riker says you're going to give me an explanation. I told him it would be the first time I ever heard you talk. Now, talk."

The quiet man looked at the three-foot holes and then at the supervisor he had lived with for so long without looking, without talking, making an effort not to listen to anything more important than a request to pass the salt. He had even stolen the picture of the supervisor's family that had been on his desk because he did not wish to look at the three young boys and smiling woman. He had thrown the picture, frame and all, into the maximum-disposal bags that were burned at the site every day.

"There's a reason why I didn't talk to you all this time," said the quiet man. "I didn't want to get to know you."

He brought the .45 out of his shoulder holster and put the first bullet between the supervisor's eyes. The heavy slug sent the head snapping back, as if a baseball bat had collided with it. The body followed. The supervisor hit the plaque. The body twitched violently and then was still. The quiet man returned the gun to the holster but did not put on the safety catch.

He dragged the supervisor's feet over to one of the holes on the side of the marble monument, then dropped the feet over the edge. He grabbed the shoulders and pushed them toward the feet, and the supervisor's corpse slid down into the hole, his head only eighteen inches from the top of the bronze plaque, which looked like a giant blowup of a penny atop a match box.

When the quiet man reached for his .45 again, he felt the wetness of the handle and realized his hands were covered with blood. He knelt on the plaque and leaned down into the hole, the gun stretched out in front of him. When it touched the supervisor's head, he fired three times. The splattering bone fragments, brain, and blood gushed up into the quiet man's face as he fired the last rounds of certainty.