Milton parked outside Andrew Brady’s house and they split up and set to work. He had purchased a stapler and staples from the copyshop and he used them to fix flyers to telegraph poles and fences. He went door-to-door, knocking politely and then, if the residents were home, explaining what had happened and what he was doing. Reactions varied: indifference, concern, a couple of the residents showing mild hostility. He pressed a copy of the flyer into the hands of each and left one in the mailboxes of those who were not home. It took Milton an hour to cover the ground that he had volunteered to take.

He waited for Trip at the car and stared up at the plain wooden door to Andrew Brady’s house. The doctor had been the subject of several conversations with the other residents. He had visited the library that morning and his research, together with the information he was able to glean, enabled him to build up a more comprehensive picture. He was an interesting character, that much was obvious, and the more he learnt about him, the more questions he had.

Brady had moved into Pine Shores in the middle 1990s. There was the doctor himself; his French wife, Collette; and their two young children, Claude and Annabel. Brady was the son of an army general who had served with distinction in Korea. He had followed his father into the military and had apparently enjoyed a decent, if not spectacular, career. Unable to work on the frontline after he lost his leg, he was moved into an administrative role. It had evidently been a disappointment after his previous experience. He gave an interview to the local press upon his appointment as Chief of Surgery at St Francis Memorial Hospital explaining that while he would always love the army, and that his military career had made him the man he was, he was a man of action and not suited to “riding a desk.” He wanted to do something tangible and “make a difference in the community.”

The family appeared to be affluent. Their house was one of the more expensive in the neighbourhood and there was a Lexus and an Audi in the driveway. A couple of the neighbours made awkward reference to his leg; it wasn’t usually obvious that he was lame, a fact that Milton could attest to. He wore shorts in the summer, though, and, then, it was evident. The prosthesis was a cream colour, mismatched with the tan that he always developed from working in his garden. One of the women that Milton spoke with, a blue-rinsed matriarch who was full of spite, said that she found it distasteful that he would put his leg “on show” like that. Milton humoured her and was about to take his leave when she looked at him with a mixture of lasciviousness and conspiracy.

“You know how he lost it? He told you what happened?”

“Yes — a bomb in Iraq.”

She chuckled. “He usually tells people that.”

“There’s another story?”

“It was a car crash,” she said, delivering the news with an air of self-satisfied smugness. “I don’t know all the details, but the story is that he’d been drinking. It was on the army base out there. He got drunk and drove his car into a tree. They had to amputate the leg to get him out.”

There were some who spoke with a guarded warmness about the Bradys. Andrew and Collette were gregarious to a fault, becoming friends with their immediate neighbours. Andrew had been elected to the board of the residents’ association and it appeared that most of the other members were on good terms with him. There was Kevin Heyman, the owner of a large printing business. There was Charles Murdoch, who ran a real estate brokerage with another neighbour, Curtis McMahon. Those families were close, and there was talk of barbeques on the Fourth of July and shared festivities in the winter. The closeness wasn’t shared with all, and for all those who described Brady as friendly and approachable, there were others who described him as the head of a closed and overbearing clique. While some spoke of his kindness, often visiting the sick to offer the benefit of his experience, others saw him as a loud-mouthed braggart, looking down on his neighbours and claiming status in a way that invited resentment.

Apart from suggestion that he might not have lost his leg in Iraq, Milton heard other stories that called his honesty into question. The most troubling concerned his professional reputation. During his time at the hospital there had been a serious road crash on the Interstate outside of San Mateo. A truck loaded with diesel had jacknifed across the 101, slicking the asphalt with fuel so that a series of cars had ploughed into it. The resulting fireball had been hot enough to melt the metal guardrails that ran down the median. Brady had been forced to resign in the aftermath of the crash after local reporters suggested that he had embellished his role in the recovery effort. He had claimed that he had driven himself to the scene of the disaster, and, badging his way past the first responders, he had made his way into the heart of the inferno and administered first aid to survivors as they were pulled from the wreckage of their vehicles. The fire service later denied that he had been present at all, and stated that he would never have been allowed to get as close to the flames as he had claimed. In another incident, Brady recounted the story of being on his boat in Richardson Bay when a yacht had capsized and started to sink. He boasted that he had swum to the stricken boat and pulled a man and his son to safety. It was subsequently found that there was no record of a boat getting into difficulty that day and no father and son to corroborate the story. An anonymous source even suggested that Brady had not even been on the water.

He had not taken another job since his resignation and the suggestion had been made that there had been a large pay-off to get rid of him. He had retreated to Pine Shore and made himself busy. He took it upon himself to act as the resident physician, attending neighbours and offering help that was sometimes not welcome. He rather ostentatiously attached a police beacon to the top of his car and monitored a police scanner for the barest sniff of an emergency so that he could hurry to the scene and offer his help. He had assisted locals with minor ailments and had attended the owner of a chain of delicatessens in the city when he complained of a soreness in his arm and a shortness of breath. He worked hard, seemingly intent on gaining the trust and respect of the community, but continually told tales that were simple enough to debunk and, when they were, they damaged the good that he had done. He suggested that he had worked with the police. He boasted that he was a qualified pilot. He spoke of having obtained a degree in law through distance learning while he was in the army. He seemed almost too eager to resolve any given crisis, no matter how small.

It seemed to Milton that Brady was intent upon making himself the centre of the community. His role as the chair of the residents’ association seemed particularly important to him, and there was grudging acceptance from many that he did good and important work to make Pine Shore a better place to live. But not everyone felt the same way. More than one person confided to Milton that there was bad blood when it came to the committee. The chairmanship was an elected post and it had been contested when the previous incumbent had stood aside.

The other candidate in an election that was described as “pointlessly vicious” was Victor Leonard.

Trip opened the passenger door and slid inside.

“How did it go?” Milton asked him.

“Got rid of all of them.”

“Learn anything?”

“That this place is full of crap. You?”

“The same.”

Milton told him what he had learned about Brady.

“He told others that he worked in Washington after coming out of the army. Homeland Security. He’s full of shit, Mr. Smith. How can we trust anything he’s told us?”