Alex had gone from working a commercial fishing boat to a charter. An Alaskan fishing boat doesn’t mean jumping into the water. He never seemed like a strong swimmer to her. Just a few weeks ago, she had yelled at him to come back to the beach when the waves were tossing him around and around like tumbling laundry.

She decided not to tell the detective that she already knew that Alex had drowned. “I keep calling him.” It was a true statement. “Still no return call. And as of last night, his pickup truck still hasn’t moved from the lot. Something’s not right.”

She had looked for Alex at his house first, then checked the docks, then began circling past his usual haunts. She eventually found his truck parked in the public lot off West Lake Drive in Montauk, but no Alex.

In retrospect, she had been too honest with Detective Decker when she initially filed the report. Too defensive. It was her own inner voice, judging her. Maybe if she had lied and said they were engaged, or if she had not mentioned her family’s animosity toward Alex, the cops would have treated it more seriously.

Her family—the Hodges. It wasn’t a name that meant much west of the Shinnecock Canal, but here on the East End, it was backed by a tiny bit of power. Her father was one of five siblings who all had their little piece of the industries that mattered—a land surveyor, a contractor, a pool builder, a realtor (the one sister in the family), and, in her father’s case, a mason. They deserved to be listed in a local dictionary under the word synergy—enough long-term roots, contacts with the city folks, and goodwill with everyone else that they carried some weight. And it was no small secret that her family deeply disapproved of her relationship with Alex.

“Actually, we impounded the truck this morning,” Decker said. “I’m just down the street from your house. Are you home now? Can we talk?”

This is it, she thought. At least he’s finally going to tell me that my boyfriend is dead.

Decker arrived wearing shades on his head, which annoyed her. She opened the door and led him to the kitchen table. She didn’t offer him coffee, even though she already had a mug for herself.

“I have a few follow-up questions,” he said.

Go ahead and tell me, she thought. Pull off the Band-Aid. Maybe I won’t even cry again. I might be all out of tears.

“You mentioned before that you thought something bad may have happened to Alex,” Decker said. “That someone might have had ill will toward him.”