I was willing to consider Tim’s theory. Of course I was. But when he winked at me and said, “It’s not as complicated as you think, Shane,” all I heard was “Listen, sweetie, get a grip. This isn’t Law & Order.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

His eyes got marginally larger. “Just . . . I know you’re used to crazy cases in the city. Around here, the explanation’s usually pretty simple.”

“A missing person and a ton of blood. You think that’s simple?”

“Not simple,” he said, flushing. “Simple’s not the right word. But this is a missing persons case.”

“That was called in as a murder. Everything I’ve seen so far leads me to believe that’s what we’ve got. So I’m thinking we should take them back to the station.” I said it quick, knowing my resolve wouldn’t last. I didn’t know if I could trust it, but if my intuition about these people was right, I didn’t want to be alone with them on the island for one more minute. “We’ve got the two boats. You drive one, Norton will take the other.”

“Take them all in? In this weather? Shane, come on. It’s rough on the water, getting worse all the time. We have to question them here. On the off chance we need to make an arrest, then we can—”

“A man is missing without a trace! We’ve got critical evidence up there that’s deteriorating with every passing second!”

“We’ve got no body,” Tim said. “He could still show up—what then? Do you want to be the one to explain why we’re clogging up headquarters with eight witnesses to a nonexistent crime?”

“You know as well as I do that murder and a corpse aren’t mutually exclusive. We don’t need a body. We don’t even need the murder weapon, not if we’ve got a confession or enough circumstantial evidence. It’ll take hours to question everyone, and it’s already nearly noon. We’ll be here all day. If we stay, we could get stuck.”

“Yeah, but not, like, forever.” Tim showed me the side of his face and looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re acting weird. What’s this all about?”

Shit. Pull yourself together, Shay. “It seems like a bad idea, us against them.”

To my absolute horror, Tim laughed. “There are two of us, and we’re both armed. I think we can handle them for a few hours, don’t you?”

He looked tickled, like this wasn’t a homicide investigation but some sort of weekend team-building retreat. I wondered why he didn’t share his theory with me sooner. Was he humoring me all morning? Did my efforts to probe our witnesses amuse him? So much for the two of us being on the same wavelength. “You’re a BCI investigator,” I said, suddenly furious. “You were trained to solve murders. Why does it feel like you aren’t doing your fucking job?”

The smile melted from Tim’s face. After a beat he said, “No, that’s fair. I should have prepped you better. That’s on me. Look, I’ve been working for the New York State Police in this region for seven years. You want to know how many homicides I’ve seen during that time?”