Five minutes later, Brody marched out the back door. He tore the lid off the garbage can and threw it aside. He reached in and pulled out the cat’s corpse. He took it to his car, pitched it through the open window, and climbed in. He backed out of the driveway and screeched away. A hundred yards down the road, in a burst of fury, he turned on his siren.

It took him only a couple of minutes to reach Vaughan’s house, a large, Tudor-style stone mansion on Sprain Drive, just off Scotch Road. He got out of the car, dragging the dead cat by one of its hind legs, mounted the front steps, and rang the bell. He hoped Eleanor Vaughan wouldn’t answer the door.

The door opened, and Vaughan said, “Hello, Martin. I …”

Brody raised the cat and pushed it toward Vaughan’s face. “What about this, you cocksucker?”

Vaughan’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“One of your friends did this. Right in my front yard, right in front of my kid. They murdered my fucking cat! Did you tell them to do that?”

“Don’t be crazy, Martin.” Vaughan seemed genuinely shocked. “I’d never do anything like that. Never.”

Brody lowered the cat and said, “Did you call your friends after I left?”

“Well … yes. But just to say that the beaches would be open tomorrow.”

“That’s all you said?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You lying fuck!” Brody hit Vaughan in the chest with the cat and let it fall to the floor. “You know what the guy said after he strangled my cat? You know what he told my eight-year-old boy?”

“No. Of course I don’t know. How would I know?”

“He said the same thing you did. He said: ‘Tell your old man this—“Be subtle.” ’ ”

Brody turned and walked down the steps, leaving Vaughan standing over the gnarled bundle of bone and fur.

10

Friday was cloudy, with scattered light showers, and the only people who swam were a young couple who took a quick dip early in the morning just as Brody’s man arrived at the beach. Hooper patrolled for six hours and saw nothing. On Friday night Brody called the Coast Guard for a weather report. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to hear. He knew he should wish for beautiful weather for the three-day holiday weekend. It would bring people to Amity and if nothing happened, if nothing was sighted, by Tuesday he might begin to believe the shark had gone. If nothing happened. Privately, he would have welcomed a three-day blow that would keep the beaches clear over the weekend. Either way, he begged his personal deities not to let anything happen.

He wanted Hooper to go back to Woods Hole. It was not just that Hooper was always there, the expert voice to contradict his caution. Brody sensed that somehow Hooper had come into his home. He knew Ellen had talked to Hooper since the party: young Martin had mentioned something about the possibility of Hooper taking them on a beach picnic to look for shells. Then there was that business on Wednesday. Ellen had said she was sick, and she certainly had looked worn out when he came home. But where had Hooper been that day? Why had he been so evasive when Brody had asked him about it? For the first time in his married life, Brody was wondering, and the wondering filled him with an uncomfortable ambivalence—self-reproach for questioning Ellen, and fear that there might actually be something to wonder about.