“There’s nothing in the autopsy report about sand on her feet, Dick.”

The office’s brain trust went silent. At least a quarter of a minute passed before Reid shook his head and said, “It’s one of the things … no, it’s the thing that’s made this case so damned difficult. We just don’t know anything other than where she ended up.”

“Hey, guys, she was hit with a golf club. A guy driving around looking for pickups isn’t likely to have a golf club in his car, is he?”

“Why not?” asked Mitch.

“Could have had it in his trunk,” Reid said.

“Or maybe,” I said, taking my hand out of my pocket, stepping a half-step forward and bringing it down so the tip of my index finger hit the surface of the desk, “she was visiting a house famous for its sporting family, a house that was in all likelihood filled with golf clubs, and maybe she angered someone in that house who picked up the first weapon available and hit her with it and then said, ‘My golly, she’s dead, whatever am I going to do with her now?’ And maybe his cousin said, ‘Well, she was hit with a golf club, let’s leave her on a golf course.’ ” I thumped the desk again. “By fucking golly.”

There was silence again, and again it was Reid who broke it. “We don’t know she was hit with a golf club.”

The three men were staring at me and I wondered if this was the end of the interview. The interrogation. Whatever it was. And since I was now certain I was about to be fired, I pushed. “Tell me, Reid, Mitch, anybody who has an answer, was there ever a subpoena issued to search the Gregory houses? Even one of their houses? Ever any attempt to check their golf clubs, see if there was any blood or tissue on any of them? See if any was even missing?”

People in my position were not supposed to talk to people in their positions that way. The moment sizzled, then faded.

“You done?” Reid asked.

I nodded. I didn’t put much effort into it.

“Like we said earlier, the Gregorys have been very candid. They’ve also been very cooperative. Let Detective Landry in their home without a search warrant. Let him look at anything he wanted. You say he got thrown off the track and maybe he did. But after he was off the case, someone else was on it—”

“Pooch,” Dick interrupted.

“Detective Iacupucci, that’s right,” Reid agreed. “They gave him free rein, too. Talk to any family member he wants. Look at whatever he wants. The only thing they asked him, the only thing they’ve ever asked any of us, is not to report anything that just gratuitously embarrasses them. If it’s important in the murder investigation, fine. But otherwise, please don’t just say something that’s going to end up on Fox News, being blabbed about endlessly by Rush Limbaugh. And we’ve tried to hold up our end of the bargain, George.”

“Until I came along, is that what you’re saying?”

“We’re not saying you’ve done anything wrong, George,” Dick told me. His expression was very sincere.

“Like Mitch said, the Gregory family feels terrible about this.” Reid tried to sit up even straighter than he had been, which was probably not possible. “They’ve offered to do what they could for the family, offered a scholarship to the other daughter—what’s her name?”

“Stacey,” said Mitch.

“Arranged for her to get into UMass, even though she didn’t have the grades.”

“That’s our alma mater,” said Dick, sliding his hand back and forth between himself and Reid.

“It was all done as a civic gesture,” said Reid. “She didn’t want to go. But I’m telling you this to show how the Gregorys have let it be known that anything they can do to help the family, they will.”

“As a civic gesture,” Dick repeated.

“Concerned members of the community,” Mitch elaborated.

“Puts us in a difficult position,” Reid said. “I mean, if we have something on them, they have to face the law the same as anyone else. But if we don’t have any direct evidence, if we have only a suspicion, or a rumor, or a funny feeling, well then we need to be careful, don’t we?”

“More careful with them than others,” I said, goading him.

“I don’t have to tell you that, George.” And then Reid went on just as if he had not waved a personal flag of any sort at me. “Take Ned. Why, Ned’s running that nonprofit that provides heating oil for free to seniors and indigents. Peter’s treating, what’s he treating, AIDS patients out in San Francisco. Jamie’s handling a lot of serious money for a lot of important people whose philanthropy keeps Cape Cod going. We don’t want to be unmindful of all that.”

The word hypocrisy was just being rolled into a sentence in my mind when Mitch shocked me with a word of his own, one that changed the whole tenor of the meeting.

“Except—”

My mouth was open, but I gave him the chance to finish.

“None of us wants to be involved in the cover-up of a murder.”

My mouth stayed open. Only my eyes moved.

“You’ve done a good job, George,” said Reid. “We’re all very impressed.”

“Shown a lot of initiative,” said Dick.

“We’d like to reward that,” said Reid.

I remained on guard. But I at least closed my mouth.

“If you really think,” he continued, “that one of the Gregory boys … Peter, Jamie, Ned … killed that girl, then we want you to pursue it. We’ve told you all the reasons we don’t think it’s one of them, but, Lord knows, we haven’t solved the murder doing it our way. So this is what we propose.” He looked to his left. “Mitch, want to tell him?”

“We’re going to put you in charge of the case. We’ve already told Chief DiMasi, told him to give you complete cooperation. We’ve also decided tentatively to budget one hundred thousand dollars for the investigation. Whether you use it to go to Costa Rica, find these people you’re talking about—who was it?”

I made no attempt to help him out. I left that to Dick. “Leanne Sullivan and Jason Stockover.”

“Whatever,” said Mitch. “It’s entirely up to you, but we’re giving you a chance to run your theory to ground.”

“You want me to go to Costa Rica?”

“If you think it will provide us some answers.”

“Because you don’t want anybody to say you’re not following up on my leads, is that it?”

Mitch went a little whiter than he usually was. Which put him about the color of snow.

“Try not to be nasty, son,” cautioned Reid Cunningham.

“We thought you’d be grateful,” Dick O’Connor said, his head slowly rotating in disbelief.

It took a while for anyone to speak again.

“We’re moving you up to an office next to mine,” Reid said. There was reluctance in his voice, as though, now that I had spoken, he, for one, might change his mind. “You’ll be under my direct supervision, but I don’t plan to stand in your way. The only governor on this whole thing, and this is something you have to accept—”

He waited, letting me absorb the importance of this provision, perhaps trying to decide if he should even bother going through with it. “… is that there’s to be no publicity. Not until you’ve really got something, and not until you’ve cleared it with me. Understand?”

I don’t recall agreeing. I just recall standing with my hand still on Mitch’s desk.

“One more thing,” Dick added. “You’ll need an assistant. We assume you’d like Barbara Belbonnet.”

This time I was the one who shocked them.

4

.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE MOVING UPSTAIRS?” BARBARA was not even pretending to be happy for me.

“They’ve got a project they want me to work on.”

“Let me get this straight.” She rose from her chair and stared at me over her computer screen. She did not look particularly alluring. Of course, she had not known I was coming back today. “Ten days ago you went off to Hawaii because some people planted an idea in your head that Mitch tried to cover up the Telford murder in order to protect the Gregorys.”