He almost told her he was going to be on a “stakeout” but didn’t want to sound like he thought he was in an episode of NYPD Blue. But he wanted to tell her something, and she was about the only one he could tell. And even then, he wasn’t about to get into specifics. Not that he actually had any.

“There’s this guy I’m keeping my eye on.”

“Oh?” Janice said, intrigued. It wasn’t very often, in a town like Lucknow, that Harry had to conduct a surveillance. “Can you say anything?”

“Not really. I haven’t got enough to get a wiretap or a search warrant. What I do have is so out there, I’d get laughed out of a judge’s chambers. But there’s something just wrong about this guy. So I’m gonna sit on his place tonight.”

“Be careful, will ya?”

“In this town?”

It was their private joke. A snippet of dialogue from early in the movie Jaws. Chief Brody laughs off his wife’s concerns as he heads to work. Amity was like Lucknow, a place where nothing big happened.

Of course, this was before the shark showed up.

Harry wondered what kind of shark was in his future.

“I’ll be home when I get home,” he said.

“I’ll save you some dinner.”

“I might grab something. Gotta go.”

Janice placed the cordless receiver back in its cradle and hung up the phone and looked at the large gift-wrapped package resting on the bed.

Inside the box, something stirred, as though it had been listening.

The alley behind Main Street was lined with Dumpsters and garbage cans and bundled cardboard. The odd rat scurried by. Cats wandered, hunting for them. There were service doors to all the businesses, and where there was enough room, merchants’ vehicles hugged the walls so others could pass.

Among them was Nabler’s white van.

Harry was keeping an eye on it, but not from behind the wheel of his cruiser. It would have attracted unwanted attention. Instead, he was a few businesses away from Nabler’s, perched atop a stack of old cinder blocks around the corner of a Dumpster. If Nabler emerged from the back of his shop, Harry would hear either the door opening and closing or the engine of his van turning over when he keyed the ignition.

Harry was counting on the fact that if Nabler left his shop, he wouldn’t come out the front door. Once the closed sign was on, the door locked, he’d leave by the back door because his vehicle was here. If he came out at all.

If he did drive off, Harry would run flat-out to his car, parked across the street, and trail Nabler before he was out of sight.

And where did Harry think he might go? What would be the point of following him?

Harry had no idea.