He paused just long enough to put on a pair of glasses, pull a list from his pocket, and begin reading. “Patty Afantakis, formerly of Roslindale, now Patty Margolis of West Roxbury; Leanne Sullivan of Roslindale, who I understand is now in Las Vegas; Paul McFetridge of New York City, out in Idaho now; Jason Stockover of Cos Cob, Connecticut, New York City, and now some town in France that I can’t pronounce, but I got right here.” He waved the list over his head but barely broke cadence. “And there were four Gregory kids: Ned, Cory, Jamie, and Peter Gregory Martin.”

He turned the list over, as if there should have been more names. He leaned into the microphone and said, “There was also an au pair named Lexi Sommers, who is now married and living in New York City, and there was a young man on the gate who’s now the chef at the Captain Yarnell House down there in Brewster—and every one of those people knows my daughter was alive at the Gregory compound that night.”

There was a stirring in the crowd, a murmur that became almost a clamor. Someone shouted out a question. Bill didn’t hear it.

“District Attorney White has all that information, he’s had most of it for years, and he not only hasn’t questioned the Gregorys, he hasn’t hardly talked to any of the people who were there.”

“Mr. Telford!” a woman journalist shouted.

“The question is why?” Bill said, and now he was shouting because everyone else was.

The woman’s voice was the most persistent. I recognized her. She was from WBZ-TV in Boston, the CBS channel. “Mr. Telford! Mr. Telford! Are you saying the Gregorys had something to do with the murder of your daughter?”

“Damn right I am. It was Jamie Gregory, hit her with a golf club. Then he and his cousin Peter dragged her body out to the golf course and left her there. And Mitchell White’s been covering up for them ever since.”

And with that, Buzzy totally lost control of the proceedings. The crowd was in an uproar, and he never got to talk about the Indian casino or the local drug problem or the illegal immigrant problem or any of the other points in the outline I had prepared for him to use in his campaign announcement.

3

.

IHAD BEEN WATCHING FROM INSIDE THE BUILDING, LOOKING THROUGH a tall, eight-paned window on the first floor, with a good view of the backs of Buzzy and Bill. I did not want to present myself because I was supposed to be away, out of state, carrying on Mitch’s investigation. Anyone, however, could have seen me enter Town Hall from the South Street side or, for that matter, seen me over the past several days going in and out of Buzzy’s office in Bass River or in and out of Alphonse and Caroline Carbona’s house over in Sandwich, where I was staying in their spare bedroom.

So it was not a complete surprise when a hand slid under my arm and seized me by the wrist. It could have been Chuck-Chuck, Pierre, any one of the Gregorys; it could also have been Roland Andrews or someone else in Josh David Powell’s employ. It could have been Josh David himself. The hand was very strong, the fingers long, but the touch was more comforting than threatening.

I took a chance. I didn’t try to pull away. I didn’t even turn. I just said, “Hello, Barbara. I’m glad you’re here.”

The hand squeezed.

“All right,” a voice whispered in my ear, “I’ll go along with you. I don’t want to work for those bastards anyway.”

CAPE COD, November 2008

BUZZY GOT TROUNCED. BUT NOT BY MITCH.

Two days after the debacle on the lawn outside Town Hall, Buzzy made the announcement that if Mitchell White did not drop out of the race, he was going to issue a press release detailing the full extent of Mitch’s “personal and historical” relationship with Senator Gregory.

Mitch and the Gregorys released their hounds to bay in the newspapers and on the local radio about the impropriety of making personal threats in a campaign. The most prominent bayer of all was the very same talk-show host who had been playing the piano at the Senator’s Palm Beach house on the night of the rape of Kendrick Powell.

Jimmy Shelley responded to one of the host’s most vitriolic diatribes about Buzzy’s intention by phoning in and asking the host if it was true that he was there on the night of the rape. The host went wild. He could barely contain himself, shouting over the airwaves that the caller, “Jim from Hyannis,” was nothing more than a provocateur and reminding listeners that there had never been a conviction, a prosecution, even a finding of probability that there was a rape.

“It’s easy to attack the Gregorys,” he screamed. “Easy to blame them for anything and everything if you’re some extremist reactionary who doesn’t like the idea of universal healthcare, after-school programs for our children, and equal tax burdens for all. Oh, sure, blame the Gregorys because they’re always out there in the public eye. They don’t run, they don’t hide. And if you need a boogeyman, someone to fault because your own relationship is falling apart, you’ve lost your job, or your kid doesn’t make the soccer team, there they are—the folks who seemingly have everything and are the antithesis of losers like you, Jim from Hyannis, and anybody else who spreads these vicious, unfounded rumors.

“Because let me tell you, Jim, you sanctimonious, supercilious sultan of slop, I was there, as were scores of other people like me. And I heard nothing, saw nothing, and the first I knew that anybody was even alleging anything was days later, when a girl, a young woman, who maybe had way too much to drink, apparently told her very rich daddy that something had happened. And the local prosecutor investigated and found nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. You hear that, Jim? So how about you just stuff your nasty rumors and get on to something important? We’re taking a break.”

But Buzzy’s promised revelation had its effect. Mitch, no doubt cognizant of what Buzzy meant by “personal and historical,” or maybe Stephanie, or maybe even the Senator himself, made the decision not to run the risk that Buzzy would expose the full extent of the relationship between the Senator and the Whites. Mitch held a press conference in which he announced there was nothing to Mr. Daizell’s reckless accusation, but it was the very fact that such accusations could be made that had soured him on the whole political process. Yes, he could win in the upcoming election, but why would he want to subject himself and his family to such personal attacks? He was sick of this kind of damning by innuendo, and he had other ways of serving the public. He had been offered and was accepting the post of deputy general counsel to the Health Resources and Services Administration in Washington, D.C.

Mitch did not depart without a final act, however. He urged all citizens, all voters, all right-thinking people, to get together and support his chief assistant, Reid Cunningham, a dedicated public servant with impeccable credentials and unblemished character. And to show the public what Reid could do, Mitch was appointing Reid acting district attorney while Mitch himself was going to use his accrued vacation time to take immediate leave.

Reid accepted the reins and promptly denounced Buzzy as a one-note candidate. “That young fellow may be running against the Gregorys,” Reid declared, “but I’m no Gregory. I’m a career prosecutor, and I’m here to do a job, not stir up tabloid publicity.”