In the pitch-dark, Sister Vigilante says, it would hit—bam—a bolt of black lightning.

 

 On July 13, sunset at 8:33 with civil twilight over at 9:03, a woman named Angela Davis had just left work at a dry cleaner’s on Center Street when nothing hit her square in the middle of her back, breaking her spine so hard it lifted her out of her shoes.

 

 On July 17, when civil twilight ended at 9:01, a man named Glenn Jacobs stepped off a bus and started up Porter Street toward 25th Avenue. What nobody saw, it slammed into him so hard his ribcage collapsed. His chest punched in the way you’d crush a wicker basket.

 

 July 25, civil twilight ended at 8:55. Mary Leah Stanek was last seen jogging along Union Street. She stopped to tie one tennis shoe and check her pulse against her wristwatch. Stanek pulled off the baseball cap she wore. She turned it backward and put it back on, tucking her long brown hair up under it.

 

 She headed west on Pacific Street, and then she was dead. Her face torn loose from the skull and muscle underneath.

 

 “Avulsion,” Sister Vigilante says.

 

 What killed Stanek, it was wiped clean of fingerprints. Clotted with blood and hair. They found the murder weapon wedged under a parked car down along 2nd Avenue.

 

It was a bowling ball, the police reported.

 

 Those smudged, greasy-black bowling balls, you can buy them at any thrift shop for half a buck. You can pick and choose, they have bins of them. Somebody buying over a stretch of time, say one ball each year from every junk store in town, that person could have hundreds. Even in bowling alleys, it’s simple to walk out with an eight-pound ball under your coat. A twelve-pound ball tucked in a baby stroller, a barely concealed weapon.

 

 The police held a press conference. They stood in a parking lot and someone threw a bowling ball down, threw it hard against the concrete. And the ball bounced. It made the sound of a pile driver far away. It bounced high, taller than the man who threw it. It didn’t leave a mark, and if the sidewalk were sloped, the police said, it would keep going, bouncing higher, faster, bouncing downhill in long strides. They threw it down from a third-story window in police headquarters, and the ball bounced even higher. The television news crews got it on tape. Every station played it that night.

 

 The city council pushed for a law to paint all balls bright pink. Or neon yellow, orange, or green, some color you could see flying at your face down a dark side street late at night. To give people just a moment to dodge before—blam—their face is gone.

 

 City fathers, they pushed for a law to make owning black balls a crime.

 

 The police called it anonspecific-motive killer.Like Herbert Mullin, who killed ten people to prevent southern-California earthquakes. Or Norman Bernard, who shot hobos because he thought it would help the economy. What the Federal Bureau of Investigation would callpersonal-causekillers.

 

 Sister Vigilante says, “The police thought the killer was their enemy.”

 

 The bowling ball was a police cover-up, people said. The bowling ball was a red herring. A monster wannabe. The bowling ball was a quick fix to keep everybody calm.

 

 On July 31, the sun was six degrees under the horizon at 8:49. That night, Darryl Earl Fitzhugh was homeless, sleeping on Western Avenue. Open across his face, Fitzhugh had a paperback copy ofStranger in a Strange Landwhen his chest was crushed, both his lungs collapsed, and his heart muscle ruptured.

 

 According to one witness, the killer came out of the bay, dragging itself over the lip of the seawall. Another witness saw the monster, dripping ooze, squeezing up from the storm sewer. These same people said the forensic evidence was consistent with a hard backhanded slap from a giant lizard walking on its hind legs. The ribcage collapsed was sure proof the victim was stepped on by some dinosaur throwback.

 

 Something dashed past, other people said, something low to the ground, too fast to be an animal. Or it was a maniac run amok with a fifty-pound sledgehammer. One witness, she said we were being “smote” by God from the Old Testament. Swatted by something with a huge paw. Black as the black night. Silent and invisible. Everyone saw something different.

 

 “What matters,” Sister Vigilante says, “is, people need a monster they can believe in.”

 

 A true and horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it’s just us versus us.

 

 Working the tip of the knife blade under another nail, she says, What’s important is, the crime rate went down.