LeFleur hesitated. What kind of game was this guy playing? He knew what happened. He was the one who did it. Was he feeling out LeFleur to see if he knew? Should he arrest this man right now? On what charge? And with what? He had no gun, no cuffs. He didn’t know how dangerous the guy was. Stall. Find out more.

“It was just a raft,” LeFleur said.

“Were there signs of life?” Dobby asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Any clue that someone had been in it?”

LeFleur collected his breath.

“Look, Mr.—”

“Dobby.”

“Dobby. That raft had to travel two thousand miles to get here. That’s two thousand miles worth of waves, storms, wind, sea life. What chance would anyone have against all that? For a year?”

Dobby nodded, as if hearing something he’d already told himself.

“It’s just that . . .”

LeFleur waited.

“My cousin. He found a way to get through things. He had a tough life. Really poor. He could’ve given up many times. But he didn’t. When I read about the raft, I thought maybe, crazy as it sounds, he found a way to survive that, too.”

“You flew all the way down here to find that out?”

“Well . . . yeah. We were really close.”

A car turned down the street, its headlights sweeping across them. LeFleur scrambled to the left, Dobby to the right. Now they were on opposite sides of the pavement. LeFleur racked his brain for more details from the notebook. He needed to get back to it, to learn everything about what part this Dobby had really played.

An idea formed in his mind. Risky. But what choice did he have?

“Where are you staying, Mr. Dobby?”

“In town. A guesthouse.”

LeFleur glanced at his porch, and the lantern that illuminated it.

“Would you like some supper?” he asked.

* * *

An hour later LeFleur was sipping Patrice’s goat water soup and forcing a smile as Dobby talked. Patrice had taken it in stride. Her husband had come home with a foreign traveler. Could they add a chair at the table? It wasn’t something that happened often, but privately, she welcomed it. The isolation they’d endured since Lilly’s death had settled like a shadow inside their house. Any new visitor was a light.

“What part of Ireland are you from, Dobby?” Patrice asked.

“A town called Carndonagh. It’s way up north.”

“Did you know they call Montserrat ‘the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean’?”

“Is that so?”

“Because it’s shaped like Ireland. And a lot of people who came here years ago were Irish.”

“Well, I left Ireland when I was a kid,” Dobby said. “I grew up in Boston.”

“When did you leave Boston?” LeFleur asked.

“When I was nineteen.”

“College?”

“Nah. I wasn’t much for school. Neither was Benji.”