The only exception was in the little alcove over the fireplace. In my home my parents used to keep silly souvenirs in there—tiny wooden clogs from Amsterdam, a little Eiffel Tower, other family knickknacks. Peter had set up a little row of die-cast model toys. Intrigued, I asked, “May I?” Peter shrugged. I reached up and brought down a fat green aircraft. It was a Thunderbird Two, heavy and metallic-cold. I turned it upside, trying to see a manufacturer’s date. Something rattled in its pod. On the edges of the wings and along the base the paintwork was chipped and worn away.

“It’s a Dinky original. Nineteen sixty-seven,” Peter said.

I cradled it in my hands like a baby bird. “I never had one of these. My parents got me a plastic snap-together substitute.”

“Without a detachable pod? I sympathize.”

“They didn’t understand. This must be worth something.”

He took it back and restored it to its place. “No. Not without the original box, and it’s hardly in mint condition.”

“Much loved, though.”

“Oh, yes.”

I stepped toward the big gear-laden table. I could smell Johnson’s Pledge, I realized, and it struck me that the Thunderbird toy had been free of dust. Up on the desktop screen was what looked like a prototype Web page. It was complex, crowded, and partly animated; it showed stanzas of music that cycled rapidly, along with a kind of binary code I didn’t recognize. Peter stood awkwardly beside the table, big hands wrapped around his coffee cup.

“This is your work?—Peter, I hate to admit it, but I don’t know a damn thing about what you do now you’re retired from the cops.”

He shrugged. “After the funeral you had other things on your mind.” There was a note in his voice, a subtext. I’m used to it. “But you got interested when you saw me on TV. Well, that’s okay. I make a living from Web design, mostly corporate sites, and game design.”

“Games?”

“Web-based, multiuser. I was always good at computer games. It’s something to do with a facility for spotting patterns in patchy and disparate information, I think. It made me a good copper, too. That and being out of control.”

“Out of control?”

He grinned, self-deprecating. “You knew me, George. I was never much in control of anything about my life. I was always awkward socially—I could never figure out what was going on, stuff other people seemed able to read without thinking about it.” He was right about that. In later years, we, his friends, even speculated he might be mildly autistic. He said, “You see, I’m used to being in situations where I don’t know the rules, and yet making my way forward anyhow. Decoding a chaotic landscape.”

“So is this one of your games?”

“It’s a personal project.”