He went to the kitchen and returned with two bagels and a platter of glistening papaya slices.

"Tell me everything," Joey said, her eyes shining.

"Under no circumstances."

Stranahan's two least favorite topics of chat were, in order, the women he'd married and the men he'd killed. Of the latter, Raleigh Goomer, the crooked judge, was the most well known, although others had come before and after. All the killings were by most moral standards justified, from the North Vietnamese Army regulars he'd shot in a firefight to the slow-footed hit man he'd impaled with the sword of a stuffed marlin. They made for colorful stories, Stranahan supposed, but none he wished to share with a young stranger.

Joey said, "I guess I should be scared of you."

He shook his head. "Other way around."

"I told you, Mick, I don't want to kill Chaz. I can't even squish a darn palmetto bug without feeling guilty. But he needs to pay for what he did."

"What have you got against prisons?" Stranahan asked. "Trust me, ten years at Raiford will rock your husband's little world worse than anything you can dream up."

Joey popped a crescent of papaya into her mouth. "Assuming he's convicted," she said, "which ain't exactly a slam dunk. Not without eyewitnesses, or at least a motive. Am I right?"

"There's got to be a motive, Joey. There's always a motive."

"Look, I haven't got all the angles figured out. But let me tell you-Chaz is slicker than pig snot on a doorknob, or however the saying goes."

"Close enough," Stranahan said.

"The thought of me against him in court, it's too scary. I can't take that risk."

Stranahan appreciated Joey's misgivings. Trials in South Florida were famously unpredictable.

"Before I met Chaz, he worked for a cosmetics company," she said. "He was their big scientific hotshot, the one they'd trot in to testify how safe their perfumes were. He showed me a tape of himself on the witness stand, and you know what? He was good, Mick. I can totally see a jury buying his act."

Stranahan knew that he should tell her to trust the system, but he couldn't say the words with a straight face. He'd seen more than a few cold-blooded monsters stroll out of a courtroom scot-free.

"So where do we stand?" Joey asked him. "What're you going to do with me now?"

He was pondering a reply when he noticed a blaze-orange helicopter approaching low from the ocean. Strom spotted it, too, and began barking insanely, leaping in circles.

Joey's hat fell off when she tilted her head to see the aircraft, which flew directly over them and slowed to a hover. Stranahan could make out the Coast Guard spotter, positioned at an open door. The man was wearing a white helmet and aiming binoculars, and almost certainly he was searching for Mrs. Charles Perrone, believed lost at sea.

To end it, Stranahan had only to stand up, wave both arms and point toward the woman in the yellow sundress-the one who had hastily ducked back under her floppy hat and was now eyeing him anxiously.

How easy it would be, he thought, and how tempting, too, because honestly he was too old for this shit.

Yet he didn't wave or point or signal to the chopper in any of the usual ways. Instead he reached for Joey's left hand and brought it to his lips, lightly but long enough for the Coast Guard spotter to see him do it.

So that the searcher would conclude, as any observer might, that the woman in the sundress wasn't a castaway but obviously the wife or girlfriend of the lucky middle-aged guy at the picnic table.

And, sure enough, the helicopter buzzed away. They watched until it was a bright dot in the soft blue distance. Satisfied that he'd done his job, Strom stopped barking and curled up. A flock of perturbed gulls materialized overhead.

"Thank you," Joey Perrone said to Stranahan. "Does this mean I can stay?"

"I must be nuts," he said.

The call from the Coast Guard came at noon sharp.

"I can't believe you're giving up!" Chaz said. His bags had been packed for an hour. "My wife's out there in the water somewhere- what if she's still alive?"

"The odds are very slim. I'm sorry, Mr. Perrone."

Chaz checked out of the Marriott and drove home feeling relieved and emboldened. He had committed a flawless crime. Thirty-seven hours had passed since he'd heaved Joey overboard, and not so much as a single hair had been found. The ocean had done its job.

Entering the house, Chaz experienced a wave of-what was it?- not remorse, but more of a carnal longing. The place smelled lightly of Joey's favorite perfume, a scent that never failed to arouse him. It was much more subtle than the fruity slop that Ricca wore, Chaz thought. Maybe I can talk her into switching brands.

He listened to a score of choked-up phone messages from friends of Joey who'd read about her disappearance in the paper. Chaz pondered his good fortune to have wed a woman with practically no family, extended or otherwise, to make a fuss. Chaz had never even met his wife's only brother, and he wondered if the news of Joey's death would dislodge the reclusive Corbett Wheeler from his beloved New Zealand.

At first the sight of Joey's clothes in the closet unsettled Chaz. He felt better after sweeping the hangers clean, and better still after expunging the bathroom of all her soaps, creams, scrubs, moisturizers, exfoliants, lotions and conditioners. Methodically he went around gathering his wife's belongings and piling them on their king-sized bed. He took everything except one intriguing lace bra and a pair of panties, which looked as if they might fit Ricca if she dropped a few pounds. Also exempt from removal was Joey's jewelry, worth at least ten or twelve grand.

Chaz had no containers large enough to hold all his wife's stuff, so he drove to the delivery bay of a nearby BrandsMart and scored some jumbo cardboard boxes. Upon returning, he saw a gray Ford sedan in his driveway, and Karl Rolvaag waiting on the front step.

To avoid the appearance of embracing widowhood, another murderous spouse might have left the boxes in his car, out of the jaded detective's sight. Chaz, however, was resolved not to let himself be intimidated or thrown off course.

"Whatcha got there?" Rolvaag asked. "Is that one of those new Humvees?"

Wordlessly, Chaz unlocked the front door and backed inside with the boxes. He went directly to the bedroom, the sallow cop following at a courteous distance.

"I can't stand to see all her things here. It's just too damn painful," Chaz said. He began tossing Joey's dresses and blouses into a box that had once held a forty-inch Sanyo. "Everywhere I turn, there she is," he went on somberly. "I can't even bring myself to unpack her suitcase from the cruise."

Rolvaag looked on thoughtfully. "Everyone reacts different to a shock like this. Some people, they won't touch anything in the house. They leave every single item exactly as it was before, and I mean everything-linens, dirty laundry. You'd be amazed. Won't even throw out their loved one's toothbrush-they keep it standing in a cup by the sink. Sometimes for years this goes on."

Chaz continued to fill the box. "Not me. All these things to remind me, I'd be too depressed to get out of bed."

"What're you going to do with all of it?"

"I haven't decided. Give it to charity maybe."

The detective reached in and picked up a tortoiseshell hairbrush. "May I take this?"

"Be my guest," Chaz said automatically. Then, after a moment's thought: "Can I ask what for?"

"Just in case."

"Yeah?"

"In case something turns up later," Rolvaag said, "a body part or whatever. I don't mean to be graphic, Mr. Perrone, but it occasionally happens."

"Oh, I see. You want a sample of Joey's DNA."