“This house was once owned by a man named Max Mulgrave,” Olive said.

The man frowned. He turned away and walked a few steps, then he paused and called over his shoulder, “Time to go—I mean, for you.”

“Dead end, dead end, dead end,” Sharkey chanted as they walked back to the car.

Olive said, “No—another revelation. Look at this lovely house. He lived here. He looked out of those windows. He stood on that lanai and watched the sunset and the waves. Maybe he was a surfer. Why else would he come here?”

Sharkey could not match the dead broken man to a surfboard—he barely imagined him upright. But he was rattled by the visit for another reason. He took a deep breath, then said, “That dog freaked me out.” He was relieved to see that the dog had followed the man into the house.

“This is the address that was on the payment form—the one he signed,” Olive said. “This has got to have been his house.”

Kicking at the weeds by the roadside, Sharkey said, “I hate unfinished business. We don’t know anything.”

“We know masses,” Olive said. “We found his hometown. His photograph. His friends. We know where he came from—that’s crucial.”

“We don’t know enough,” Sharkey said, and gasped, feeling helpless and lightheaded and lost. “It’s making me worse, the not knowing.”

Drowning out his moan there came two blasts of a siren’s bloated buzz, a police cruiser heading toward them, stopping directly behind Olive’s car, blue lights flashing, its buzz dying. A burly policeman in a tight shirt got out and stood facing them, his thumbs hooked onto his belt—the belt weighted with gadgets, phone, Taser, cuffs, mace, and a thick black pistol.

“This is private property, folks. We’ve had a complaint.”

“We were just leaving,” Olive said.

“That’s good, because I don’t want to get involved in any paperwork.”

He didn’t blink. He kept his mouth open, teeth showing, as though to warn them.

“Paperwork,” Sharkey said, spitting the word.

Hoping to lighten the mood, Olive said, “We’re day-trippers from the North Shore, making an inquiry. We think a man named Max Mulgrave used to live here.”

The policeman brightened; he let go of his belt and stepped closer, smiling. “You know Max?”

“In a way,” Olive said. “Do you?”

“Everybody in Wai‘anae knows Max,” the policeman said—impressed, eager to oblige. “Rich haole. Good guy. Haven’t heard anything about him for quite a while. I know he took some hits.”

A crackling sound in Sharkey’s head kept him from speaking.

“So this was really his house?” Olive said.

“One of them. The first one, best one. The others were more worse. One was junk. But Max—he stay humble.”

“The man who lives in this house now doesn’t know him.”