It started out like any typical day in suburbia. Percolators perked, toasters toasted, garage doors opened to disgorge cars heading toward the freeway. Everything was beautifully ordinary, until the shadow that was cast across the crosswalk caught Hewson's eye.

He got that sinking feeling. That feeling that something is not quite right.

Hewson looked over at the man that was casting the shadow. It was just a guy standing there waiting to cross the street. So what was his problem? But the feeling remained. It squirmed inside him creating frustration in the pit of his stomach.

A car behind him honked.

He blinked and looked ahead. The light was green. Hewson took his foot off the brake and gunned it. He shook his head and muttered nothing in particular.

Things at the office were fairly typical that day. But it just didn't feel right to Hewson. No matter how much he tried to immerse himself in work his attention kept being drawn back to the tense knot in his stomach. His day was off.

It's nothing for god's sake, he would reassure himself. Just get back to work.

At around eleven he felt compelled to call his wife. No particular reason. Sometimes it just felt comforting to hear her voice - to share in the normalcy of her day.

She didn't answer. Must have gone out, he figured. That was just as well - it would probably have felt embarrassing to call her for no good reason.

Hewson was an obsessive-compulsive. He knew that, but being aware didn't help. A feeling is a feeling and you can't rationalize it away.

The police detective arrived at his office sometime after two o'clock.

Hewson listened in stunned silence to the description of the scene. His wife's friend had discovered the body when she showed up for coffee. The intruder probably hadn't meant to kill his wife, the detective explained. There was no evidence of sexual assault, but she was so badly beaten that...

"I'm very sorry, sir," the detective sighed. "We have nothing to go on. We've found no witnesses"

"He's about 35 years old. Five foot ten or eleven," said Hewson softly.

"What did you say?"

Hewson lifted his head and looked the detective straight in the eye. "He's wearing a green windbreaker. He has glasses."

"How? How do you know that?"

"Because he didn't fit. He didn't belong there. What was he doing in my neighborhood at seven-thirty in the morning? He didn't fit."

The feeling in his stomach was diffused now, pervading his whole body with a black sense of dread.

At least he would never have an off day again.

The life he'd known was gone. His feet couldn't touch bottom. There was no bottom. There was no normal. There could be no "off" when there was no normal.