I looked up at the sky. For some reason I pictured my father in a drunken rage, ready to mete out one of the beatings that were my childhood. I thought how nice it would be to keep myself safe, for a change. I thought how no one could blame me if I did. Because I already had wounds crisscrossing my psyche like a map to hell. And some of them had never stopped bleeding.

“No one could blame you" the voice whispered, "except yourself."

Justine had breakfast nearly ready when I got back to the loft. Omelets and bacon sizzled on the stove. Still-warm bagels from Katz's, a sixty-five-year-old shop just beyond the 7-Eleven, were sliced and spread with cream cheese. A deep red, sparkly liquid filled the blender.

"Strawberries, ice, and sugar," she said, without my asking.

"Everything looks wonderful," I said.

"So you will leave this minute or later today?" She flipped an omelet.

I wasn't expecting the question and didn't answer.

She glanced at me. "I know you have to go. I could see it in your friend's face."

"I told him I'd meet him at the airport in four hours. He's got a tough case on Nantucket. A little girl was murdered."

"Oh, God," she said. "How old?"

"Five months."

She looked at me in that searching way people sometimes do when confronted by man's limitless capacity for cruelty.

"They're saying her adopted brother did it," was all I could think to say. "He's not well."

She shook her head. Without another word she turned off the burners, arranged our food on plates, and poured the strawberry concoction into two glasses. We sat on stools at the granite center island, eating in silence. "You can visit me in Rio or Buzios," she said finally.

"Buzios," I said. "As soon as I can get there." I meant it.

She took another bite, pushed her plate away. "This is a waste of time," she said.

I figured she was upset about my abrupt departure. I expected a scene.

She shrugged. "I don't even like eggs." She peeled off her shirt, tossed it on the floor, and walked over to the bed.

I followed. I could not have predicted how close to losing everything the Bishop case would bring me, but I must have sensed it. Because as my eyes and hands and mouth traveled over Justine, I felt more than passion. I felt the need to tap her spirit, to somehow use her aliveness to inoculate myself against death.

Anderson and I took the forty-five-minute Cape Air flight out of Logan at 1:15 p.m. The nine-seat, single-pilot Cessna bounced a little in the wind, but gave us no big trouble and a pretty view of the sapphire-blue Atlantic on approach. We came in low enough to glimpse the surfers at Cisco Beach and got an eyeful of the island's sprawling, gray-shingled estates.

Nantucket, nicknamed the "Gray Lady," is actually three islands shaped like a fat boomerang, with a couple spits of land broken off one end. Legend attributes its formation to ashes which floated out of the pipe of the Indian giant Moshup, mythic guardian of the natives living on Cape Cod. But if Moshup was charged with protecting his creation and his people, he failed. During the 1700s, Quaker settlers from Massachusetts prevailed upon the kindly Wampanoag Indians to teach them how to fish Nantucket 's waters, hunt its fowl, and farm its soil. In turn, the settlers taught the Indians just enough reading, writing, and arithmetic to sell their land. The Indians learned so well and conveyed so many tracts that their livestock had nowhere left to graze. That loss, together with mainland imports of whiskey and tuberculosis, left Abraham Quary as the last male Nantucket Indian, when he died in 1854.

Whaling was the life blood of Nantucket through the 1800s. Herman Melville used the tragic voyage of Nantucket captain George Pollard, whose ship was rammed by a whale in 1820, as the basis for his masterpiece novel Moby-Dick. Though perilous, whaling was well suited to the Quaker work ethic-and very profitable. Money poured into the island, fueling a building boom that stripped most of its trees, but lined Main Street with mansions, one of the later and most prominent of them being Jared Coffin's three-story home of English brick and Welsh slate.

In every chapter of its modern history, commerce has driven Nantucket ' s growth while exacting bigger chunks of its soul. So it should have come as no surprise when the decline of the whaling industry, accelerated by the fleet's heavy losses during the Civil War, was followed by the ultimate devil's bargain: the growth of tourism. The island slowly evolved into a playground of leisure, wealth, and reverie-enough to make any Quaker blanch. Captain George Pollard's home became the Seven Seas Gift Shop. Jared Coffin's mansion was turned into an inn filled with Colonial-style reproduction furnishings.

The working soul of Nantucket, the part that churned with native instinct and courage at sea, was buried under so much glitter as to be, for all intents and purposes, dead as the last Wampanoag.

On the flight over, North Anderson had told me that Darwin Bishop purchased his Nantucket estate in 1999, just after the IPO of Consolidated Minerals and Metals netted him $1.2 billion. With that kind of windfall, $9.6 million for an eighteen-room spread on about five acres off Wauwinet Road, with views to the ocean and the harbor, must have seemed like petty cash.

CMM mined iron and copper from rich reserves in Russia 's Ukraine. Even with the political instability in that region, the company continued to net massive profits exporting ore to other European nations, Asia, and the United States. Consolidated had hinted at expansion into oil and natural gas, which would propel profits into the stratosphere.

"Does he know we're coming?" I asked Anderson as we took the turn onto Wauwinet.

"If he didn't, we wouldn't make it to the door," Anderson said. He motioned toward a pristine little cottage by the side of the road, with a slate roof, white shutters, and window boxes overflowing with flowers and vines. "He calls that his 'watch house.' "

I noticed two white Range Rovers with smoked windows parked next to the cottage. "Why does he need someone to watch over him?" I asked.

"About a billion reasons, I'd guess," Anderson said. The house looked very much like the clubhouse of a country club, with two dozen canopied windows running along its curved facade. The exterior had weathered to the gray-brown of well-oiled leather. Off to the right of the driveway stretched a pool of Olympic proportions, surrounded by twenty yards of mahogany decking. A grove of green cloth umbrellas sheltered a half-dozen white tables at poolside. Just beyond them, nearer the ocean, I saw a man and a boy playing tennis on a clay court, running hard and raising clouds of dust.

I nodded at the court. "Who are they?" I asked.

Anderson squinted at the players. "Garret, the older son," he said. "I don't know the other guy."

"Garret's not in shock anymore," I said.

"The games must go on," Anderson quipped. We parked and started toward the house. When we were still several feet from the front door, it opened. An attractive woman, about twenty-five, with a velvet complexion and long brown hair pulled into a ponytail, stood in the doorway. She was wearing a pained expression and a short linen dress that hugged her everywhere it should, showing off a Victoria 's Secret figure. Her chestnut eyes were bloodshot, as if she'd been up all night.

"Captain Anderson," she said. Her voice was surprisingly warm.

"Good afternoon, Claire," North said. "How are you holding up?"

She shrugged.

"This is Dr. Frank Clevenger, from Boston. I called Mr. Bishop earlier about bringing him by."

"Of course." She extended her hand. "Doctor," she said, summoning an especially cordial tone, "I'm Claire Buckley."