But I did not go that far. I ducked into a hollow in the dunes and set up my little camp. Others had found this spot before. There were the remnants of a fire, burnt black logs, and while I was clearing them out of the way I came across a used condom. I took a stick and flicked it into the sea grass behind me. A seagull thought it was food and made a dive for it, then rose again, squawking in indignation.

I took off my T-shirt and spread it on the ground next to my towel. I put my watch on top of it, along with my car keys, my wallet, and the little radio. I slathered on some sunscreen in a rather haphazard manner and then tossed the tube onto the shirt. It bounced and went into the sand, and I left it there. This little hollow was mine. I could sit here and look out over a berm of sand at the beach, the water, the boats on the bay, the people walking by, and no one would even know I was here unless they looked closely. George Becket, in a nice sequestered place. He’s there and he’s not there. I cracked a beer and sat on the towel with one arm around my drawn-up knees.

George Becket, watching the world go by. George Becket, filled with information about other people’s lives. Lives lived in exotic places, lives that seemed good until you probed. Lives like mine.

Nine people had been at the Gregory compound that night in May many years ago. Peter, Ned, Jamie, Cory, McFetridge, Jason, Leanne, Patty, and, I had to believe, Heidi.

Cory left that night. Heidi was dead the next day. That left seven. McFetridge and Patty, I had learned what I could from them. I could not say the same for Leanne. I could not say anything about Jason.

I had gone to see Jason and he had fled. Why? Why not just talk to me, the way McFetridge had? And how had he known I was coming? I had gone there only by serendipity. I was supposed to see Peter in San Francisco. Supposed to see Peter through Barbara’s estranged husband, Tyler. Who was supposed to be in Sausalito waiting for me. But who wasn’t there after all. Who had been replaced by slippery Billy, who had sent me off to Tamarindo.

Maybe it wasn’t serendipity after all.

Here, George, as long as you’re looking, why don’t you go to another country? I’m sure you’ll see someone there. Except the guy who isn’t there any longer. But look who you found. Someone else you were searching for. Someone who nearly killed you for asking questions.

Is that what really happened?

Sitting by myself, with nothing but the occasional sound of seagulls and the background noise of waves washing into shore, I tried to figure out Leanne Sullivan. Who, if it wasn’t Chuck Larson, had tapped into her patriotic fervor? Could it be one of the other Gregory henchmen? Pierre Mumford? The monster of the muffin house? He had seemed more a protector than a manipulator. Had it been Jason himself? An assignation on the beach, a phone call—even a weekend together afterward—was that enough to cause her to give up her life in Massachusetts and move to Hawaii?

And what life? I didn’t know. Was she a salesclerk? A Pilates instructor? A bank teller? A phlebotomist? An insurance adjuster?

And what was in it for Jason? Preppie Jason and the rough, tough girl from Roslindale. Leanne Sullivan, said by Howard Landry to be sporting the Eighth Wonder of the World, and I had not even noticed. Of course, she had been wearing baggy cotton white pants the first time I saw her and she had been covered by the tails of a man’s dress shirt the second time. A muscular girl with a flat belly—could she have had hidden what Howard said she had? And what it did for Howard Landry, a small-town police detective whose passions were fishing and beer, would that have been enough for Jason Stockover, Mr. La-de-da?

Was Jason like Paul McFetridge, the Paul I used to know? Not so much Mr. La-de-da as Mr. I’ve Got Everything? Mr. Of Course You’ll Do This For Me. Here, love, go off to Hawaii and live with Howard for a while. Then come back. I’ve got this nice little place in Central America, and I’ll be waiting for you.

Hard to figure.

How do you get someone like Leanne to live with a man like Howard? For years. Was it possible she really did love him? Jason and then Howard and then Jason again. Maybe Bob the Exterminator in between.

Maybe she didn’t love any of them. In which case, who was she doing all this for? The Senator? Was that possible? The Senator was rumored to have a ravenous appetite when it came to women, but I had never witnessed that myself. When would I have? I had seen him only the one time in Florida. And then I had spent the rest of my life doing his bidding.

Living in a nice place.

Sort of like Tamarindo. Or Kauai. Or Stanley, Idaho.

All nice places where the people involved never expected to live. People not guilty themselves. People guarding someone else’s secret.

A leg appeared next to me. A very shapely leg attached to a small, very shapely foot. The owner of the leg had not approached from the beach, but from the dunes and trees behind me. It was possible. There was a path that led from the street, went through a thicket of pines and then forked, one way to the estuary, one way to the ocean. I saw the leg, I thought of the condom, I looked up.

Squinting into the sun, I did not make her out right away. A woman with a short white skirt, a yellow halter top, a broad-brimmed hat, sunglasses with sharp edges. The sharp edges gave her away. I leaped to my feet.

“Thought you were in Hawaii,” she said.

I glanced around to see if her husband was with her, to see if anybody was with her.

“Just got back.”

Why was she looking at me that way? And how did she get so short? Was her body always that compact? I tried to remember if I had ever stood next to her before. I certainly had never seen her when she wasn’t wearing something frumpish, something designed to make her look like wallpaper.

It was possible, just possible, that she was not wearing a bra under that halter top. No, that wasn’t possible. Not Mitch White’s wife. I didn’t know where to look. I tried the sand.

“He said you went to talk to Detective Landry.”

Where had she come from? She lived in Dennis, to the east. They had their own beaches in Dennis.

“Hello?” She had a canvas bag over her shoulder. It dropped to the sand, exactly where my eyes were focused. Apparently she was going to stay.

“Yes,” I said. “Well, it’s because of that guy Bill Telford.”

“Anything New.”

“Yes.” I tried looking at the sea. There were a couple of groups of people down at the water’s edge. Maybe she had come with one of them. Except she had come up to me from behind.

“What did you learn?”

What did I learn? What did she know? What was I supposed to tell my boss’s wife? “Not much.”

She pushed me. She put her open hand on my bare chest and gave me a slight shove. “C’mon, George. There’s some reason why you stayed as long as you did. By the looks of you, you must have been mauled by tiger sharks.”

She was talking about my bruises, my splinter marks, my black-and-blues, and the cut on my neck.

Her hand went to my elbow and stayed there. It was a cool hand, and it was making me sweat. I went from looking at the sea to looking at the sky to looking at her. She was having no trouble looking at me. Jesus, Stephanie White was doing a woman thing on me. “You know,” she said, her hand staying where it was, “you have Mitch quite worried.”

“About what?” I wiped my mouth. I kept not looking at her yellow top. I wanted to sit down.

“He says your friend is going to run against him. Mitch is afraid you’re not quite as loyal as he would like a member of his office to be.”

“Mrs. White—” Her hand squeezed my elbow tighter and I stopped. Perspiration was beginning to bead along my hairline.

“Oh, it’s Mrs. White now, is it? I’m not so much older than you that you have to call me that, am I?”