The two men shook hands. “You’re the fellow from Woods Hole,” Brody said, trying to get a good look at him in the fading light. He was young—mid-twenties, Brody thought—and handsome: tanned, hair bleached by the sun. He was about as tall as Brody, an inch over six feet, but leaner: Brody guessed 170 pounds, compared to his own 200. A mental reflex scanned Hooper for possible threat. Then, with what Brody recognized as juvenile pride, he determined that if it ever came to a face-off, he could take Hooper. Experience would make the difference.

“That’s right,” said Hooper.

“Harry’s been tapping your brain long-distance,” Brody said. “How come you’re here?”

Meadows said, “I called him. I thought he might be able to figure out what’s going on.”

“Shit, Harry, all you had to do was ask me,” said Brody. “I could have told you. You see, there’s this fish out there, and …”

“You know what I mean.”

Brody sensed his own resentment at the intrusion, the complication that Hooper’s expertise was bound to add, the implicit division of authority that Hooper’s arrival had created. And he recognized the resentment as stupid. “Sure, Harry,” he said. “No problem. It’s just been a long day.”

“What did you find out there?” Meadows asked.

Brody started to reach in his pocket for the tooth, but he stopped. He didn’t want to go through it all, standing on a dock in near darkness. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Come on back to the station and I’ll fill you in.”

“Is Ben going to stay out there all night?”

“It looks that way, Harry.” Brody turned to Hendricks, who had finished tying up the boat. “You going home, Leonard?”

“Yeah. I want to clean up before I go to work.”

Brody arrived at police headquarters before Meadows and Hooper. It was almost eight o’clock. He had two phone calls to make—to Ellen, to see if the dinner leftovers could be reheated or if he should pick up something on the way home, and, the call he dreaded, to Sally Gardner. He called Ellen first: pot roast. It could be reheated. It might taste like a sneaker, but it would be warm. He hung up, checked the phone book for the Gardner number, and dialed it.

“Sally? This is Martin Brody.” Suddenly he regretted having called without thinking the call through. How much should he tell her? Not much, he decided, at least not until he had had a chance to check with Hooper to see if his theory was plausible or absurd.

“Where’s Ben, Martin?” The voice was calm, but pitched slightly higher than Brody remembered as normal.

“I don’t know, Sally.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You went out there, didn’t you?”

“Yes. He wasn’t on the boat.”

“But the boat was there.”

“The boat was there.”

“You went on board? You looked all over it? Even below?”

“Yes.” Then a tiny hope. “Ben didn’t carry a dinghy, did he?”