Lex refrained from snorting, instead raising an eyebrow. "Oh?" The silence continued. It was a trick he'd learned from his father--people dislike silence in conversations and will try to fill it, even giving away valuable information just to avoid feeling uncomfortable.

However, while he could see that Maynard was uncomfortable, he could also see that his lips were clamped shut and he had an intransigibly stubborn expression on his face. After another moment, Lex's curiousity made him cave in. "So what would you have called it if you'd killed me, then?"

"Defense," the boy muttered, then spoke more clearly. "You represent a threat to the stability of your state government. It has to be defended from people like you." An unspoken "dummy" hovered in the air.

Lex realized that this could all too quickly deteriorate into an "am not-are so" match and changed tactics. "Louise Redden? Was she a threat to her state government?" She was the most recent death.

"She was betraying defense secrets." Lex somehow doubted that an heiress known for her vast wealth and equally vast lack of intelligence or interest in anything beyond animal welfare and her wardrobe would have been able to take in anything complicated enough to constitute a defense secret. Unless somehow poodles were central to national security in a way that even his mind couldn't grasp. He was starting to lose his temper with the situation and with the killer.

"She wouldn't have known a defense secret if it had paraded up and down with a sign and introduced itself as well. You killed her for some other reason."

"Believe what you want. It's the truth."

"William Putney? Don't tell me that his plans for cheap hydroelectric systems were a threat to the government or a state secret."

The young man looked confused for a moment. "I don't remember him."

"Last October. You threw him out a window, I believe."

"Oh. He was threatening the life of an elected official."

"The only thing that he was threatening was oil."

"You're lying."

Lex smiled. "Why would I lie to you? After all..." He let Maynard see that he was holding another meteor fragment. "I hold all the cards here."

"No matter how much you torture me, I'm not going to betray this country." Lex felt a momentary admiration, not for the sentiment, but for the way he nearly kept his fear out of his voice and face. Somebody less cued to recognize tiny signals might have missed it entirely, but he saw the dread flicker quickly over his face.

He crouched so that he could better see and be seen, willing even to lose the advantage that standing gave him in his need to know more. He made sure his own voice was assured, not showing his own inability to understand or his frustration. "This country? Do tell me how you serve it by killing off people who have nothing to do with politics or government. Population control?"

"They were enemies of this country, and you are, too."

Lex abruptly tired of the conversation, which seemed to dead-end at each path. "Take a look at this, then. See who your victims really were." He tossed the papers inside the cell and watched as Maynard reluctantly gathered them up and glanced at them. He'd leave the youngster with that and see what would happen.

Before he was more than a few feet away, Maynard called, "What does 'vertebrae' mean?" He sounded out the word cautiously but more or less accurately.

"Vertebrae? Bones that make up the spine."

"What about 'inconclusive'?"

"Something that's not positive." He frowned as he watched the young man, who was obviously reading quickly but at what Lex guessed was at most a sixth-grade level.

"'Hypothesis'?"

"A theory." He thought of simpler terms. "Something that you think explains something."

Maynard looked up, as if studying Lex, and in a tone so grudging that Lex had to hide a laugh, said, "You must be very smart."

He couldn't help a smirk. "Without a doubt, but those are words that a decently-educated high schooler would know, they're hardly technical terms."

"Well, *I* never heard them before, and I've had *good* teachers."

"I'd doubt that if I were you." Lex was starting to put the pieces together. A mind full of platitudes and rote statements, but kept deliberately ignorant...combined with that strength...but weakened by the meteors...what if somebody had realized a meteor freaks had real potential as a weapon? "Damn. I bet my father would wish he'd thought of that first," he said, under his breath.

"Maynard," he said, levelly.

"What's that?"

"Isn't that your name?" He rather wished he had picked something else, but that sprang to mind first.

"No, my name's Cl-" The boy raised his eyes from the papers he was still laboriously reading and glared. "You tried to trick me," he accused. Lex hid a grimace. The tiny moment of even just a fractional rapport was gone. But now he had more to go on. Including a hypothesis.