I stood up, ready to turn and go. The sun had almost disappeared and the temperature was dropping.

"That's the day you're going to hate yourself most-the first time something sneaks into your consciousness before Val does. You'll be angrier at the world than you are right now. Mad at yourself, too, for letting it creep in there. But then it will happen again, more and more often. And each time it does you'll despise yourself for betraying Val's memory with such insignificant thoughts. Until some very distant day, inconceivable now, when the memories assume a balance of some kind, when they bring pleasure with them almost as often as they cause pain."

"That doesn't seem possible to me," Mike said, standing and brushing the sand off the seat of his jeans. "I don't think I can deal with it."

"Nobody does. Nobody wants to."

"You come out here to be near him, don't you? You feel closer to Adam when you're here."

I didn't answer.

"The heavens, the ocean, sand for as far as the eye can see-and not another person around," he said. "Makes you pretty conscious of your own mortality."

He reached into his pocket, removed a black velvet pouch, and handed it to me.

"Open it. Go ahead."

I untied the drawstring and turned it upside down in my hand. Out slipped a diamond ring-a slim gold band with a small brilliant stone in a classic round setting.

"It's very beautiful," I said, holding it up and watching the gem sparkle, reflecting against the shimmering surface of the water. "Did Val-?"

"Nope. A surprise," Mike said. "Valentine's Day. I had it up on a shelf in her bedroom closet that she couldn't reach."

No wonder he'd been so short of money these past two months.

He took the ring from me and loped down the dune toward the edge of the water. I called out after him but I knew there was no way to stop him. I watched as Mike waded into the frigid surf, drew back his arm, and hurled Val's ring into the riptide that was sucking the waves out to sea.

None of us felt much like eating dinner.

More than the landscape and the foliage change when winter comes to Chilmark. Not only the general store closes, but so does every up-island restaurant and inn. No fried clams at The Bite, no lobster rolls at The Galley, no shore dinners at The Homeport, no conch fritters at Cornerway, and no harpooned sword from Larsen's. There was always some clam chowder in the freezer, and I defrosted it for the three of us. Mike barely played with it while we tried to distract him with memories of weekends and evenings that all of us had spent together.

Mike stood up from the table, walked to the bar, and opened the liquor cabinet. He closed it and turned to Mercer. "I'm not gonna drink. It's too easy to get through it that way. Feel like a walk?"

They let themselves out the back door and went off in the dark. I took a book into the living room, added some logs to the fire, and poured myself the drink that Mike had rejected. It was almost ten o'clock by the time they returned.

Mike warmed himself in front of the fireplace for a few minutes before telling us he was going to try to get some rest. He and Mercer clasped each other in an embrace and then Mike grabbed the banister and pulled himself up the stairs.

"I think he's worn himself out enough so that he may actually sleep a few hours," Mercer said, joining me with a glass of vodka.

"Did he talk?"

"Enough. You know he was prepared for, well-the worst-a year ago, when Val's treatments weren't going well. With the cancer in remission, this hit him like such a bolt of lightning I'm afraid it's going to set him back twice as hard."

"What time do you want to head home?" I asked.

"Grab a ferry late morning, if we can. Be in the city by six."

"Did you reach Lieutenant Peterson this afternoon?"

"Yeah. You and I have some catching up to do this weekend. We've lost Mike for the rest of this one."

"I've been making a list," I said, ticking off names with each finger of my left hand. "I'm sure Peterson has, too. We've got to sit down with Professor Tormey, now that we know what the Raven Society is. I'm going back at Gino Guidi, whether or not Ellen Gunsher has been able to rework a deal with his lawyer."

"You guys never got to talk to him about Poe, and there he is, a major benefactor of the cottage."

"Well, we didn't know it at the time. And Emily's pal Teddy Kroon still has questions to answer, as far as I'm concerned."

"It's not the right moment to bring this up with Mike," Mercer said, "but you were with him when he went to that retired cop's apartment, weren't you?"

"Aaron Kittredge? Yeah."

"Mike had asked the lieutenant to get his departmental file. The loo filled me in on that today. Kittredge is my first priority when we get back."

"Why?"

"He left the department without a pension. Had to sue to get it reinstated."

"He told us that. You got the back story?"

"Rubber gun squad," Mercer said. "Got dumped to Central Park."

Trigger-happy cops were relieved of their weapons while the shootings they were involved in were investigated. Those who weren't indicted, but who weren't completely exonerated either, wound up flopped into some uniformed assignment where little harm could come to people in their way. Central Park was one such holding zone-very few human residents, with only squirrels and pigeons to endanger.

"Who'd he shoot?" I asked.

"Think of the story that Zeldin and Phelps told us."

"Of course," I said, closing my book. "Ten years ago-the cop on his way into the Botanical Gardens to talk to Zeldin. Shot a neighborhood kid in the back. Why the hell was he going to see Zeldin in the first place? That had to be at least ten years after Kittredge met Emily Upshaw, so what's the connection? What's the renewed interest in Poe, assuming that's what he was going to Zeldin's about?"

"I've been spinning with that one all afternoon. You with me? We'll get to Kittredge first thing Sunday morning."

Mercer said good night and went upstairs to his room. I turned on the television to watch the late news before going to sleep. Mike's devastating loss had taken my mind off what had happened to me yesterday. My headache had been replaced by a dull throb.

I could smell the coffee brewing shortly before 7A.M. I asked Mercer to have the transit department's report from the rapist's MetroCard faxed to the house, so I could play with it on the long car ride home. The three of us moped around before driving to Vineyard Haven to get on the short standby line for the ferry. By one-fifteen, we were on Route 8, headed for I-95.

Stretched out on the rear seat, my ski jacket pillowed under my head, I unfolded the papers from Transit SIB-the Special Investigations Bureau-and began to scan the report.

The MetroCard had been purchased on January 3, a little over a month ago. It was sold at a newsstand on Fifty-ninth Street. Unfortunately for us the buyer paid cash. A credit card imprint might have solved the case nicely.

I leaned a pad against my right knee, to chart the man's movements. Between eight and eight-thirty every weekday morning, he boarded the downtown Lex at Seventy-seventh Street. I drew a star at that intersection, just a few blocks west of the location of all the attacks. In the evenings between six-thirty and seven o'clock, most of the return trips were from the East Fifty-first Street station, a commercial area surrounded by financial institutions as well as offices and stores of every kind.

There were several random rides, some late-evening trips home, where he boarded the train close to midnight. I would have to compare these dates against the crime occurrences, to see whether he was prowling the neighborhood close to the times of the attacks.