“It’s still a mess in there,” the cop called. But Hawkins kept going. They’d shut the door but it swung open when he pushed it and he went inside. Most of the clay had been washed up by now, but there was still a faint familiar smell in the house. The chandelier was broken and slivers of glass shone in the corner of the foyer. He went into the living room, saw clay at the edge of the rug, and followed traces of it out onto the porch. Then he turned back, meaning to look in the dining room and even upstairs, but the clay smell seemed to grow stronger and he was getting quick images of the basement in Brooklyn. The smell made him gag and he went back to the foyer and out the door into the fresh air. The blond cop was waiting for him.

“I told you it was a mess,” he said.

“Where’s your chief?” Hawkins asked.

They directed Hawkins back to their station, to the second-­floor offices in the Town Hall that they shared with the tax collector. The moon was bright and he could see the Sound from the chief’s window. The chief was tall and thin and he looked very tired.

He’d been going since five that morning, he told Hawkins, since Golda called. The press had been there all day with minicams and mikes, and he couldn’t get over how cold-­blooded they were. “I mean, here’re the dead kids and their mother, and they just film away like it’s a dope bust on Forty-­second Street.” Then he showed Hawkins the color pictures they’d taken. Hawkins took deep breaths and the chief, who was watching him, took the pictures away.

“Don’t look, what’s the sense.”

Hawkins looked out of the window but he could still see the woman’s fuzzy slippers that had somehow stayed on her feet. Finally he raised his head. The other man’s eyes looked kind and worried. Hawkins smiled, “I’m okay. I need a favor from you.”

The chief nodded.

“Share what you get on this . . . anything at all.”

“Why?”

Hawkins said, “It’s an old case”—he thought of Relkin —“from the forties,” he said.

“Real old. Some kind of vendetta thing?” the chief asked.

“Yes,” Hawkins said, “but it’s a department matter. I can’t tell you any more.”

“I don’t want to know any more,” the chief said.