“Did he say what he was going to be doing?”

“He said … he said he might try to work on the boat, I think. I really don’t remember.”

“Oh. That’s funny.”

“What is?”

“I stopped by the dock on my way home. The harbor master said he hadn’t seen Hooper all day.”

“Maybe he changed his mind.”

“He was probably shagging Daisy Wicker in some hotel room.”

Ellen heard the stream slow, then dwindle into droplets. Then she heard the toilet flush.

9

On Thursday morning Brody got a call summoning him to Vaughan’s office for a noon meeting of the Board of Selectmen. He knew what the subject of the meeting was: opening the beaches for the Fourth of July weekend that would begin the day after tomorrow. By the time he left his office for the town hall, he had marshaled and examined every argument he could think of.

He knew his arguments were subjective, negative, based on intuition, caution, and an abiding, gnawing guilt. But Brody was convinced he was right. Opening the beaches would not be a solution or a conclusion. It would be a gamble that Amity—and Brody—could never really win. They would never know for certain that the shark had gone away. They would be living from day to day, hoping for a continuing draw. And one day, Brody was sure, they would lose.

The town hall stood at the head of Main Street, where Main dead-ended and was crossed by Water Street. The building was a crown at the top of the T formed by Main and Water streets. It was an imposing, pseudo-Georgian affair—red brick with white trim and two white columns framing the entrance. A World War II howitzer sat on the lawn in front of the town hall, a memorial to the citizens of Amity who had served in the war.

The building had been given to the town in the late 1920s by an investment banker who had somehow convinced himself that Amity would one day be the hub of commerce on eastern Long Island. He felt that the town’s public officials should work in a building befitting their destiny—not, as had been the case until then, conducting the town’s business in a tiny suite of airless rooms above a saloon called the Mill. (In February, 1930, the distraught banker, who had proved no more adept at predicting his own destiny than Amity’s, tried, unsuccessfully, to reclaim the building, insisting he had intended only to loan it to the town.)

The rooms inside the town hall were as preposterously grandiose as the exterior. They were huge and high-ceilinged, each with its own elaborate chandelier. Rather than pay to remodel the interior into small cubicles, successive Amity administrations had simply jammed more and more people into each room. Only the mayor was still permitted to perform his part-time duties in solitary splendor.

Vaughan’s office was on the southeast corner of the second floor, overlooking most of the town and, in the distance, the Atlantic Ocean.