Then, as he was getting into the Navigator to return it to where it had been, a cold jet of water from a sprinkler pop-up lashed across the back of his designer suit from his shoulders to his waist.

His blue eyes practically smoked with fury, and he almost started pounding on the steering wheel with the heels of his hands. But a memory cut in, from an anger management therapy session he’d been ordered to take part in several years before. The therapist had concentrated on techniques to ratchet down his destructive rage: count backward from ten, breathe deeply, clench his fists, and pretend he was squeezing oranges.

Squeeze your oranges, he could almost hear her soothing voice saying to him. Then flick, flick, flick off the juice.

He gave it a try. Squeeze and flick. Squeeze and flick.

The sprinkler jet shot across the Navigator again, pissing into his face through the open window.

“I’ll show you anger management, you idiot bitch!” he snarled, and stomped on the accelerator.

Spraying grass and chunks of limestone, the SUV hurtled straight through the garage and into the back wall at thirty-five miles per hour. The crash was like a bomb going off in a phone booth, with studs splintering and clouds of drywall dust billowing through the air.

He managed to switch off the ignition around the deployed air bag, then squeezed himself out of the seat. Things were nice and quiet now, except for the hiss of the cracked radiator and the soft spattering of the lawn pop-ups.

“That’ll teach her,” he said.

Then he stopped dead.

Teach her. Teacher.

That was it – the perfect name he’d been looking for!

“Erica, you finally did one useful thing,” he said softly.

He shook the Treo out of his damp suit coat and blooped it on.

At the bottom of his mission statement, below “Best wishes,” he typed across the glowing screen: “The Teacher.”

One last time, he checked the recipient boxes to make sure the address for the New York Times was correct.