“Hey, Chief,” Hendricks said, walking up to Brody.

“Hey, Leonard. What are you doing here?”

“I was just passing by and I saw your car. What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out what the hell Ben Gardner’s doing.”

“Fishing, don’t you think?”

“That’s what he’s being paid to do, but it’s the damnedest fishing I ever saw. I’ve been here an hour, and I haven’t seen anything move on that boat.”

“Can I take a look?” Brody handed him the glasses. Hendricks raised them and looked out at sea. “Nope, you’re right. How long has he been out there?”

“All day, I think. I talked to him last night, and he said he’d be taking off at six this morning.”

“Did he go alone?”

“I don’t know. He said he was going to try to get hold of his mate—Danny what’s-his-name—but there was something about a dentist appointment. I hope to hell he didn’t go alone.”

“You want to go see? We’ve got at least two more hours of daylight.”

“How do you plan to get out there?”

“I’ll borrow Chickering’s boat. He’s got an AquaSport with an eighty-horse Evinrude on it. That’ll get us out there.”

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of—let alone in—water above his head gave him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and an ache in his stomach—essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody’s dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t guess we’ve got much choice. Maybe by the time we get to the dock he’ll already have started in. You go get the boat ready. I’ll stop off at headquarters and give his wife a call … see if he’s called in on the radio.”

Amity’s town dock was small, with only twenty slips, a fuel dock, and a wooden shack where hot dogs and fried clams were sold in cardboard sleeves. The slips were in a little inlet protected from the open sea by a stone jetty that ran across half the width of the inlet’s mouth. Hendricks was standing in the AquaSport, the engine running, and he was chatting with a man in a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser tied up in the neighboring slip. Brody walked along the wooden pier and climbed down the short ladder into the boat.

“What did she say?” asked Hendricks.

“Not a word. She’s been trying to raise him for half an hour, but she figures he must have turned off the radio.”

“Is he alone?”

“As far as she knows. His mate had an impacted wisdom tooth that had to be taken out today.”

The man in the cabin cruiser said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s pretty strange.”

“What is?” said Brody.

“To turn off your radio when you’re out alone. People don’t do that.”