At the end of the path, just ahead, where it gave onto the bypass road and their parked car, they saw a woman from the camp—the younger sinewy one, with the wild hair and the man’s shirt and dirty surf shorts. A bath, a comb, and clean clothes might have made her desirable—she wasn’t old, late thirties maybe, and though she had the leathery look of the others, and their watchfulness, she had health, a sturdy posture, and an air of defiant confidence.

She called out “Hey!”

“How did you get here so fast?” Olive asked.

“I take the other way. We got a quick way out in case the cops come and we gotta make a quick escape.”

But they walked past her.

“I can help you. I know the guy.”

Olive turned to face her.

“Give me some money and I can find his stuffs.”

Olive said, “You know the guy that was killed?”

The woman squinted, pursed her lips, looking grave, and nodded slowly. “Was a great guy. Haole guy. Was a shame he pass.”

“The other woman back there said his name was Jeff.”

“Rhonda stupid. She don’t know nothing.”

“What was his name?”

“They don’t have names here, just nicknames.”

“What was his nickname?”

“I forget—my memory junk. Being as it’s my medication.”

“You have his things?”

“Most of them. I was afraid the other ones might cockaroach his stuffs, so I hide them. Even the cops, I didn’t show them.”

A smiled floated at the woman’s lips and trembled there, and when she winked at Sharkey, she seemed younger, flirtatious, a look of canny calculation altering the light in her complexion. Then she turned to Olive, fixing her eyes on her—sisterly, conspiratorial, seeking an answering smile. The woman was about Olive’s height but bony, legs apart, her dirty feet in frayed flip-flops, her posture insistent. She put one hand out, level with her waist. The dirt was dark in the ingrained lines of her palm, her fingernails black—a skinny hand asking to be filled.

“What’s your name?”

The woman pressed her lips together, hesitating. Then ungummed them and said, “Lindsey.”

Olive put a twenty-dollar bill into her hand and the fingers trapped it and closed over it.

“When?”

“Give me a few days. And another twenty.”

“We’ll be back Thursday. To the camp,” Olive said. “You’ll get the other twenty then.”

“Thursday’s good,” the woman said, and she jammed the money into the pocket of her shorts.

In the car Sharkey said, “The cops could have done that. Why didn’t they?”

“Because the man didn’t matter,” Olive said. “Don’t you see? Homeless, poor, living under a tree. Why should they care?”

“But you heard the woman. They went there looking for personal effects.”

“She probably figured they were worth something to her.”