He’d parked half a mile away, near a condominium complex just off Bayshore Boulevard. No one would notice or remember his car. It was after midnight on a hot evening alive with the song of katydids. He followed the street beside the bay with a Dolphins baseball cap tugged low on his forehead. Sunglasses, even at night, covered his eyes. The headlights of a few cars lit him up from behind like a silhouette, but otherwise he was alone. At West Alline, he followed the sidewalk in the darkness to the abandoned home on the corner.

Most of the other houses around him were unlit, but he heard the blare of party music from open windows half a block away. There were voices from people in the garden, but he couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see him. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted down the street.

He dodged the fallen branches on the driveway. The front door was sheltered by overgrown hedges, and the lamppost near the steps had been shattered by rocks. NO TRESPASSING signs were posted on the door and the front windows. He’d first broken in three weeks ago, and since then he’d replaced the lock, so he had his own key. It would be weeks before the bank discovered the invasion. Or maybe the police would arrive first. Either way, by then it would be over, and he would be gone.

He let himself inside and closed the door behind him. The shutup house was musty and hot. The power and water had long since been turned off, leaving the house to cook in the humid summer. He followed a hallway on his left through the mud room to an attached garage, where he slid a backpack off his shoulder and turned on an emergency lantern. Cockroaches scattered, disappearing under the metal shelves and into the rafters. Spider webs made silky nests in the corners. The concrete floor was smeared with oil where cars had been parked for years.

He’d hung a cork bulletin board on the nearest wall, covered with a collage of thumbtacked articles copied from Florida newspapers. Some were only weeks old. Some went back for years.

He studied the headlines.

FRANK MACY GETS EIGHT YEARS ON MANSLAUGHTER PLEA

ONE YEAR LATER, MORE TRAGEDY: FAIRMONT STUNNED BY SON’S SUICIDE

COMMON WAY FOUNDATION INFLUENCE GROWS – AND SO DOES CONTROVERSY

FAIRMONT TO ENTER GOVERNOR’S RACE

He removed a piece of paper from his backpack and pinned it up with the others. This article was new – only hours old – taken from the website of a local television station. It included a grainy photograph of Diane Fairmont from the video feed of an interview conducted in the garden of her estate.

Two blocks away.