“You mentioned nine years,” Reid said, speaking to me. “People have been working on this case all that time and you’ve been messing around with it for how long? Three months? Most of it without authority. And now, what, you’re ready to solve it?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Reid didn’t like the way I spoke back. His mouth locked up. Then Dick asked kindly, “What did you say, George?”

“I said there have been a lot of people doing strange things since Heidi Telford’s death.”

It was hard to tell who was making the little growling noises. Maybe it was me.

“What I have discovered in my four months, Reid,” I said, correcting him, “is that not only was Heidi Telford at the Senator’s home that night, but so were Jason Stockover; Leanne Sullivan; a guy named Paul McFetridge; a girl named Patty Afantakis, who was a friend of Leanne Sullivan’s; and three of the Gregory kids, Ned, Jamie, and Peter Martin.”

Mitch spoke up for the first time. “You know some of those people, don’t you, George?”

I turned my attention back to him, looking at him directly, seeing how far he wanted to go in front of his colleagues. “I know Peter. Jamie a little bit. McFetridge was my college roommate.”

What I was admitting was not lost on the deputies.

“And you think,” Dick said, leaning toward me as far as his stomach would allow, trying to divert me from Mitch, “that all these people were involved in Heidi’s murder?”

“No.”

Relief showed on Dick’s porcine face. He thought we were ready now to end the discussion, get on to something more pleasant.

“But I do think, one way or another, they were all involved in hiding the fact that she was there.”

The smile faded. Dick sat back, defeated.

“Landry, too?” Reid asked.

“Don’t know,” I answered. “The information I’ve gotten so far is that Ned headed him off, told him the big secret they were hiding had to do with the au pair. Asked him, in that very Gregory way, if he couldn’t keep it quiet unless he absolutely had to let it out.” I stopped then. I cut myself off before I related the fact that Mitch had been part of the decision to keep it quiet. Mr. Fuckhead, as Landry had called him.

Maybe Reid didn’t know about Mr. Fuckhead, because he went right ahead and asked, “So Landry agreed? Is that what you’re telling us?”

I nodded. “And he was rewarded with retirement in paradise with the luscious Leanne.”

Dick tried to sum it up. He did it by moving his hand around in the air. “You’re saying that the people who were at the Senator’s house that night know how Heidi Telford died, but they threw Detective Landry off the track, and that somehow this Leanne Sullivan was, what, the bait they used?”

“You got it, Dick.”

What Dick got was a lot of jiggles in his jowls as he mulled that one over. “But,” he said, and then he said the word a few more times, “you’re not claiming that they killed her? The Gregorys, I mean.”

I gathered a line was being drawn, at least in Dick’s mind.

Mitch spoke before I could respond. “The Gregory compound is within walking distance of where Heidi Telford was found,” he said. “Not advisable to walk there in the dark, and it’s probably especially not advisable if you’re an attractive girl in a sexy dress.”

I was about to argue that it wasn’t all that sexy a dress when I remembered that Heidi had not been wearing a bra. Just like Mitch’s wife had not been wearing a bra. The thought distracted me, made me miss something Mitch was saying. I had to ask him to repeat it.

My boss looked annoyed. “I said, I understand you may have learned something else the Gregory boys had to hide. Something about how she may have gotten out of the house.”

Yes, of course, Mitch. You mean what your wife told me about them pushing Heidi through the side gate because she wouldn’t put out for them?

“It seems,” I said, looking directly at the district attorney so that he would know I was at least partially answering him, “that most of the people who were at the Senator’s house that night paired up: Jason and Leanne, McFetridge and Patty, Ned and the au pair. That left Heidi, Peter, and Jamie.”

Mitch White waited for me to get to what he wanted.

“The autopsy showed Heidi had not been sexually molested.” That was Dick, still trying to ride to everyone’s rescue.

“And maybe,” I said, “that’s the key. Two guys, one girl.”

No one picked up on it.

“Peter Martin, that guy’s a doctor now,” Dick said, no doubt giving me one more sign of where this conversation should go.

“And the other one, Jamie, he’s some big-time Wall Street guy now, isn’t he?” This was Reid’s line. Then his brow clouded. “Bundles up people’s debts or something, then sells them to other investors, something like that.”

“I heard he’s making a fortune,” said Dick.

And still nobody responded directly to the prospect I had put in front of them. Finally, however, Mitch sat forward. He actually wheeled his chair to his desk and dropped his forearms on the big ink blotter, a signal that he was about to take a new approach. “Look, George,” he said, “you’ve done good work. But most of what you’re telling us, we knew all along. Not the part about how Landry ended up in Hawaii, but, yes, we had information about Heidi being at the house. The Gregorys have been candid with us. And you’re right, they behaved badly.”

I didn’t say they behaved badly, you craven piece of shit. That was something Stephanie had said.

“The kids were drunk and they were feeling their oats and this townie girl willingly came to their house looking for a good time—”

Townie, that’s a good one, Mitch.

“And then she wouldn’t play their little game, hide the salami or whatever—”

Oooh, another good one, Mitch. You must have been listening to a book-on-tape of colloquial expressions.

“So, yes, they did something they shouldn’t have done. Kicked her out in the middle of the night. Told her to get home any way she could.” Mitch brought his hands together and then opened them until they were shoulder-width apart, the universal sign of resignation, of what-can-you-do? “She was never seen again. They put her in a position of danger, and they feel terrible.”

Who, I wondered, was talking now? The words were coming out of the district attorney’s mouth, but who had put them there?

“Let me get this straight, Mitch. You knew Heidi was at the Gregorys’ and you never told her parents?”

Mitch did the hand movement again, closing them and opening them, although he did not spread them so wide this time. “Who knows what Bill would do with it?”

Like go to the newspapers? I did not say it out loud.

“Thing was, it wasn’t leading us anywhere,” Reid said. “All right, you make the Gregorys look bad, but it doesn’t get us any closer to the killer. Takes us further away, in fact. There was a whole mile along Sea View Ave. that the killer had to pick her up. Another quarter-mile along that pitch-dark street runs next to the golf course.”

“West Street, which is really dark,” agreed Dick.

“Which meant she probably would not have gone down it on her own,” I said.

“No,” said Reid, “she was probably picked up on Sea View and taken there. We figure once she saw where he was going, she”—he paused long enough to make his own little hand gesture—“jumped out of the car and tried to run away. The killer chased her, hit her with what he had.”

“Reid, there was no blood on the ground, remember?”

He was ready for that. “We know she wasn’t killed where they found her. She had grass stains on her knees and clearly had been dragged under the trees, hide her a little bit.”

“If she was killed somewhere else on the golf course, don’t you think somebody would have found the blood?”

“Didn’t have to be the golf course,” Dick piped up. “There’s plenty of shoreline along there. Take her to the parking lot at Dowses Beach. It’s just down the road, around the corner. She sees what’s happening, jumps out. He chases her to the water.” Now he demonstrated, clasping his hands and raising both arms over his right shoulder. “Hits her there, it all gets washed away.”