Ryder put on his down jacket and heavy boots. He took his bicycle out and rode past the little shops in the town’s main street. The moon set. He looked back and couldn’t see the road behind him. Ahead were the Sutter Lane houses.

His part of town, the Yankee part, was zoned for three acres. The houses were big and smooth lawns were open to views of the Sound, road, beach. There were a few oaks on the lots, some forsythia, a few willows, but no hedges or fences.

But here the lots were smaller and hedges surrounded the houses like seawalls or shields, as if the Sutter Lane people were protecting themselves from an invader the Yankees didn’t know was coming.

Most of the houses were dark. Even the porch lights were out. The main floor of the house they used for a shul was dark, too, and he was ready to go back and finish his sermon for the funeral, wondering why he’d come here at all. Then he noticed a light in the basement at the back of the building.

He leaned the bike on its kickstand and went up the path toward the light. Hedges surrounded him, blocked out the street light; and he felt enclosed, like a man in a maze. He got to the window, squatted on his heels, and looked inside.

The basement was finished. Bright green linoleum covered the stone floor and knotty pine paneling hid stone walls. It looked warm, dry, welcoming, and he half expected to see an old man in skullcap studying the Talmud by candlelight . . . the antithesis of everything Hawkins had told him. But the room was empty. The basement was very deep, the window was high and small, and he had to lean his head against the glass to see the far wall. The light came from a child’s night lamp shaped like a pig sitting on a kitchen stool. The only other thing in the room was a big wooden box. The top of the box almost touched the ceiling and it was at least six feet wide. The back of it was against the far wall; the sides he could see were rough wood, which was odd considering how carefully finished the rest of the place was. The front of the box was covered by a heavy cloth drape with flowers on it. It reminded him of fabric remnants his wife brought home to use for dish towels or to make pillows with. The floor was clean, and he noticed a rim of darker wood on the wall along the floor, as if it had been washed recently and hadn’t dried yet.