"Okay." He touched her lips and smiled. "Look, it's just a log!" He zipped up the jacket and shivered, smiling. "It's too cold for man or beast. Damn it, Mom, this winter you've got to do it."

"Fly down to see Mike?" She sighed. "Maybe, if real estate picks up next year."

"Promise?"

"I promise." She nodded, watched him go. Tiff was suddenly standing beside her, an arm around her waist.

"Come on, Ellen," she said softly. "Let's finish up the wine."

The foghorn growled and the dread returned. They turned and went inside.

***

Bump...scrape... bump... scrape... In Amity Harbor the restless thumping of the piling on the channel buoy had caught the attention of the great white shark. The sound drew the creature toward the buoy as a magnet draws a nail.

Its tail, shaped like a boomerang in flight and as tall as a man, swept lazily from side to side, stirring the bottom and raising great clouds of silt. A vortex like a minor whirlpool followed it on the surface.

The shark continued, turned away, drifted awhile, and turned toward the buoy again.

***

The Old Pavilion on Amity's waterfront—a relic of the early 1900s and long-gone tourist days-was awash in floodlights. Its sweeping veranda would act next week as a stage for the Amity Christmas Show, and parents and friends would shiver on the lawn below, wishing the thing were done.

But tonight was only rehearsal. Sean could hear the high school band for blocks. He eased his jeep through the teenage beauties preening their hair and parked as closely to the dock as he could get. He took his stocking cap off the seat, checked his six-celled flashlight, and climbed out.

He passed beneath the age-worn banner: AMITY ANNUAL CHRISTMAS PAGEANT. On the porch, Emil Tarkanian, the band instructor, led "The First Noel." Most of the assembled angels in the girls' chorus behind him would be squirming tonight in backseats of cars along country roads, but now their fresh faces shone with piety and their voices were sweet and clear.

Below, two little girls stood on a stepladder, decorating the papier-mâché hump of a camel—Justin Barlow's riding horse—with ribbons of red and green.

Amity, Amity...A picture-perfect town with a picture-perfect name, and beneath the surface, currents as foul as any anywhere on earth.

The elders had turned against Sean's father in the Troubles, when it suited them, and now that Martin Brody was dead, he was a hero to them all. If Sean could ever get his mother and Tiffany to leave, the town would never see him again.

He sighed, boarded the police boat, and turned the key, hoping it would not start. The ancient engine labored for a moment, then fired. While it warmed, he drew a rusty boat hook, a grappling hook crusted with salt, and some worn three-quarter-inch nylon line from the gear locker in the cockpit. Everything he needed, unfortunately, was there.