“So, in other words, Andy can tell you what he finds out, but you can’t investigate on your own.”

“Right, but I can shadow Andy and I’ll know if there are any loose strings.”

“If there are, I’ll expect you to pull them.”

“Of course.”

Matt thought it over, then nodded slowly. “I guess that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

“And we’re damned lucky we got that much. I half expected him to tell me I’d be arrested if I set foot in the state of Georgia.”

“All right. Do what you have to do without getting fired. In the meantime…” He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the ID of the call coming in. He looked across the room to his daughter. “I can’t keep putting these guys off indefinitely. Sooner or later, I have to talk to them.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’m no coward, Dorse. Don’t ask me to act like one. If I made a mistake…” His face went white, as the full implication of his having made a mistake sunk in.

“Just don’t talk to anyone for a while, okay?” She walked to him and knelt down. She understood what had just occurred to him, and knew he must be in terrible pain as a result. “We’re going to find out what happened, Pop, back then, and now. We’ll put it all together, I promise.”

“Jesus, Dorse, I can’t believe this is happening.” He ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed it across his chin. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Beale all but admitted that he’d killed her.”

“After how many hours of questioning, Pop?”

He shot her a look.

“Listen, the first thing I was told when I showed up in Hatton was that the cops knew who did it, that the kid had all but come right out and confessed. They told me this kid, Beale, had had the hots for Shannon Randall big time, but other than let him drive her home from school once in a while, she didn’t have any use for him. We spoke to her girlfriends, they all said the same thing. And he admitted to having picked her up late that afternoon; one of her friends said she saw the girl in his car an hour or so after he claimed to have dropped her off, and that the car was heading out of town, in the direction of the lake. He finally admitted the girl had been in his car-he couldn’t keep denying it because we found her things in his car. But he said he never left town, so we know he lied about that.”

“Because a witness saw him.”

“Right. And you know yourself, one lie leads to another. A suspect lies about one thing, chances are he’s lying about something else.”

“Did he ever confess, Pop?” she asked softly. “You were there when he was executed. Did he ever admit that he killed her?”

“No.” Matt suddenly looked like a balloon that was leaking air. His voice dropped and he could not meet her gaze. “No, even then, at the end, he didn’t admit to a damned thing. Still swore he was innocent.”

“Pop, we’re going to have to consider that he was telling the truth.”

“Jesus, Dorse, if I made a mistake,” he whispered, as if he’d not heard a word she’d spoken. “If I was wrong back then, that means…”

He looked at her through eyes dark with growing despair. “If Eric Beale did not kill Shannon Randall…dear God, I sent an innocent kid to his death. God forgive me, I watched an innocent boy die…”

Matt stood at the end of the drive and watched his daughter’s car grow smaller and smaller, then finally disappear around the first bend on Dune Road. He sighed and looked up at the sky as if hoping to see something other than what he saw every time he’d closed his eyes since Dorsey had given him the incredible news: Eric Beale’s face moments before his execution, eyes wide with fear and confusion, skin so pale as to be almost transparent, mouth moving in prayer.

His stomach wrenching, Matt went into the house and directly to the bathroom, where he dry heaved for the fourth time that day.

When he was done, he went back outside, hoping to find a place to sit and figure out what to do next, but he was uncomfortable everywhere he went. He set out on foot down Dune in the same direction Dorsey had driven. The cattails grew twelve feet tall along this side of the marsh, and he was just as glad for it. There’d be little traffic this time of day, but he had no desire to stop and chat with whoever might be driving through.

He was still working on getting past denial, to a phase where he could think. He’d lain awake all night trying to make sense of it all. How could something that had seemed so certain, so sure, have been so insanely wrong?

He walked along the sandy shoulder to where Dune met up with Hook Road, and took a right onto Hook, barely noticing what he was doing and giving no thought to where he was going. His pace quickened as he neared the inlet where the old lighthouse lay in ruins. The road narrowed to one wide dirt lane and a bit more, and the tall reeds on either side gave him little shelter from the sun overhead. Some slight breeze set the grasses dancing, their hushed rattle the only sound other than his breathing and his footfalls.

The lunch spot that had once been housed in the base of the light was gone now, pushed down in a hurricane several years ago. The roof had collapsed to one side, and swallows had come to build nests almost as soon as the rain had stopped falling and the wind had ceased to blow. They swooped around Matt as if they barely noticed his presence. He walked past the lighthouse to the sturdy pilings that still stood like fearless sentinels and looked across the inlet to the bay.

He exhaled deeply and blinked back the tears behind his dark glasses.

He walked to the end of the rickety pier with no thought that it could very well collapse under his weight and lowered himself so that he was sitting with his feet dangling just above the water. He remembered another time, a lifetime ago, when he’d sat in this very spot with Bernie. He’d been nervous as all get-out, the engagement ring in his pocket and his heart in his throat. He tried really hard, but he couldn’t see her there anymore. He remembered how she looked, her dark auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, sunglasses perched on the edge of her nose, her legs long and tan-but he just couldn’t see her there.

All he could see in his mind’s eye was Eric Beale sitting at the table between two public defenders-both fresh out of law school, the low men on the county’s legal totem pole-as the trial had progressed.

Matt squeezed his eyes shut against the image, but it was still there. The boy’s mother and father sat next to each other but apart, a void between them, the kind of void that sits between strangers. Matt had never seen them speak to anyone, not even each other, so detached were they from the proceedings. He remembered thinking how odd it was, the way the parents had never turned to each other for comfort throughout the entire trial, as if each had shut out everyone else. Someone had told him that they were both alcoholics, and he had wondered if that might explain the sense of disconnect he had when he looked at them. Especially the father. Matt had never gotten the feeling that the father was actually there in the courtroom with the rest of them the way the mother was.

Jeanette, her name was, Matt just remembered that. Jeanette Beale sat through every minute of every day as if watching a movie she wasn’t enjoying. Her eyes rarely left her son. The father, on the other hand, showed up sporadically, and even then hadn’t seemed to be affected by what was going on.

Matt was aware it was only a matter of time before his phone began to ring and he’d have to answer it. He’d told Dorsey he wasn’t afraid to face the press, that he wasn’t a coward, and he’d meant it. What he hadn’t said was that he was afraid he’d have to face Jeanette Beale and explain to her how he’d been so wrong. That his mistakes had caused the son she’d obviously loved to die.