On the beach the man with the child shouted, “Hey!” He was not sure what he had seen. He had been looking toward the sea, then started to turn his head when an uproar caught his eye. He jerked his head back seaward again, but by then there was nothing to see but the waves made by the splash, spreading outward in a circle. “Did you see that?” he cried. “Did you see that?”

“What, Daddy, what?” His child stared up at him, excited.

“Out there! A shark or a whale or something! Something huge!”

The boy’s mother, half asleep on her towel, opened her eyes and squinted at the man. She saw him point toward the water and heard him say something to the child, who ran up the beach and stood by a pile of clothing. The man began to run toward the boy’s mother, and she sat up. She didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was pointing at the water, so she shaded her eyes and looked out at sea. At first, the fact that she saw nothing didn’t strike her as odd. Then she remembered, and she said, “Alex.”

Brody was having lunch: baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas. “Mashed potatoes,” he said as Ellen served him. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“I don’t want you to waste away. Besides, you look good chunky.”

The phone rang. Ellen said, “I’ll get it,” but Brody stood up. That was the way it usually happened. She would say, “I’ll get it,” but he was the one who got it. It was the same when she had forgotten something in the kitchen. She would say, “I forgot the napkins. I’ll get them.” But they both knew he would get up and fetch the napkins.

“No, that’s okay,” he said. “It’s probably for me anyway.” He knew the call was probably for her, but the words came reflexively.

“Bixby, Chief,” said the voice from the station house.

“What is it, Bixby?”

“I think you’d better come down here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, it’s like this, Chief.…” Bixby obviously didn’t want to go into details. Brody heard him say something to someone else, then return to the phone. “I’ve got this hysterical woman on my hands, Chief.”

“What’s she hysterical about?”

“Her kid. Out by the beach.”

A twinge of unease shot through Brody’s stomach. “What happened?”

“It’s …” Bixby faltered, then said quickly. “Thursday.”

“Listen, asshole …” Brody stopped, for now he understood. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone.

He felt flushed, almost feverish. Fear and guilt and fury blended in a thrust of gut-wrenching pain. He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore. He had to take the blame, but it was not rightly his. It belonged to Larry Vaughan and his partners, whoever they might be. He had wanted to do the right thing; they had forced him not to. But who were they to force him? If he couldn’t stand up to Vaughan, what kind of cop was he? He should have closed the beaches.