*
Among all the hearsay and innuendo that steadily made its rounds over the course of the next few weeks, predictably very little had anything to do with facts. Because there were few. One: Eduardo Mendez was dead, or at least someone of his general height and build (the fire had been started with a large amount of gasoline and had burned excessively hot). Two: Sheriff’s deputy Franklin Benoit had been killed by at least two if not three shots from a Winchester .30-.30. It was thought Mendez had owned such a gun after certain acquaintances were interviewed, but none was ever found in the burned-out wreckage of the house. Three: the children, one boy and one girl, were undocumented and obviously of South American descent, judging from the dialect of Spanish they spoke to one another. And four: though this was really more speculation than fact, that Meeta was mentally unbalanced. Of course, this conclusion was based solely on her behavior the night of the raid (she’d come close to scratching an officer’s eyes out when he reached for the children), and had absolutely no relation to any psychological examination of any kind. Tests were and would continue to be forthcoming but owing to the nature of the report, would never reach the eye of the Public. But this did little to stop tongues wagging. The fire was dowsed, the bodies (or what was left of them) buried, the children put under State protection, and Meeta relegated to the lost, dank rooms of a basement ward for psychotics in upstate New York. And with her departure so too went the remaining smoking tendrils of interest after the gluttony of the fat had been chewed from the story.