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“That’s not entirely true, Will. It’s the way you think.”

“I think there’s been a lot of bullshit about the way I think.”

“You made some jumps you never explained.”

“The evidence was there,” Graham said.

“Sure. Sure there was. Plenty of it—afterward. Before the collar there was so damn little we couldn’t get probable cause to go in.”

“You have the people you need, Jack. I don’t think I’d be an improvement. I came down here to get away from that.”

“I know it. You got hurt last time. Now you look all right.”

“I’m all right. It’s not getting cut. You’ve been cut.”

“I’ve been cut, but not like that.”

“It’s not getting cut.

I just decided to stop. I don’t think I can explain it.”

“If you couldn’t look at it anymore, God knows I’d understand that.”

“No. You know—having to look. It’s always bad, but you get so you can function anyway, as long as they’re dead. The hospital, interviews, that’s worse. You have to shake it off and keep on thinking. I don’t believe I could do it now. I could make myself look, but I’d shut down the thinking.”

“These are all dead, Will,” Crawford said as kindly as he could.

Jack Crawford heard the rhythm and syntax of his own speech in Graham’s voice. He had heard Graham do that before, with other people. Often in intense conversation Graham took on the other person’s speech patterns. At first, Crawford had thought he was doing it deliberately, that it was a gimmick to get the back-and-forth rhythm going.

Later Crawford realized that Graham did it involuntarily, that sometimes he tried to stop and couldn’t.

Crawford dipped into his jacket pocket with two fingers. He flipped two photographs across the table, face up.

“All dead,” he said.

Graham stared at him a moment before picking up the pictures.

They were only snapshots: A woman, followed by three children and a duck, carried picnic items up the bank of a pond. A family stood behind a cake.

After half a minute he put the photographs down again. He pushed them into a stack with his finger and looked far down the beach where the boy hunkered, examining something in the sand. The woman stood watching, hand on her hip, spent waves creaming around her ankles. She leaned inland to swing her wet hair off her shoulders.

Graham, ignoring his guest, watched Molly and the boy for as long as he had looked at the pictures.

Crawford was pleased. He kept the satisfaction out of his face with the same care he had used to choose the site of this conversation. He thought he had Graham. Let it cook.

Three remarkably ugly dogs wandered up and flopped to the ground around the table.

“My God,” Crawford said.

“These are probably dogs,” Graham explained. “People dump small ones here all the time. I can give away the cute ones. The rest stay around and get to be big ones.”

“They’re fat enough.”

“Molly’s a sucker for strays.”

“You’ve got a nice life here, Will. Molly and the boy. How old is he?”

“Eleven.”