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too much blood for a gunshot, unless he’d been shot in the back and the bullet had exited his stomach. If he’d been shot in the back, I figured he’d’ve fallen on his face. But he was lying on his back.
    A knife wound, I guessed. I bent and looked closer, and under the thick shiny blood I saw two rips in his shirt, one just to the left of his navel and another a bit higher, right under his rib cage.
    Whoever killed him had been standing directly in front of him, close enough to ram a knife into him. Twice.
    Who?
    Evie? I couldn’t believe it. Not Evie. Maybe she’d have
squirted her pepper spray in his face if he’d approached her. The lawyer in me tried to be objective, but the Evie I knew was incapable of murder.
    Then I thought: How well do I really know her? Before yesterday, I didn’t even know her mother was from Maine, or that her grandfather was a lobsterman. Before yesterday I’d never heard of Larry Scott. She’d never told me about any of her old relationships or why she’d left her job in Cortland and gone to work at Emerson Hospital in Concord.
    I really didn’t know much about Evie Banyon’s life.
    But I knew her .
    Evie couldn’t stick a knife into anybody—even a man who had stalked her and haunted her until she thought she was crazy; who had finally driven her away from her home and her job; who had somehow managed to track her down here to Brewster on Cape Cod after being out of her life and her thoughts for more than three years.
    Evie?
    Evie wore her maple syrup–colored hair in a ponytail and got butter all over her face when she ate lobster and mocked herself with a funny, seductive, half-lidded Marilyn Monroe smile. Evie loved Monet’s paintings and Debussy’s music and Jane Austen’s novels and Jim Carrey’s dumb movies. She loved ducks and birch trees and daisies and cows. She loved jogging before sunrise and throwing a frisbee on the beach. She loved making love.
    She loved me.
    I squatted there, looking at Larry Scott’s body.
    Not Evie.
    If not Evie, who?
    She might have an idea, but I didn’t.
    I knew better than to move Larry’s body or tromp around the area. But I stood up and looked around. If there was a murder weapon nearby, I didn’t see it.

    After a few minutes, Evie came back. She’d pulled on a pair of blue jeans and one of my flannel shirts over her T-shirt, and she was carrying two mugs of coffee.
    She’d washed her face and brushed her hair. It looked like she was done crying.
    I stood up and took a mug from her. “You made the call?”
    She nodded. “They’re on their way.” She reached into her shirt pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes, and handed it to me. “Light one for me, will you?”
    I lit two cigarettes and gave her one. Evie was one of those lucky people who could smoke half a pack of cigarettes in an evening and then go for two months without wanting one. She liked to share a cigarette with me after we made love. We’d pass it back and forth as we lay on our backs looking up at the ceiling, blowing plumes of smoke into the darkness. Sometimes, when she was upset about something, or upset with me, she’d ask for a cigarette. She’d puff at it furiously until it was half gone, then stab it out as if she were angry at the ashtray.
    â€œSo what’s going to happen?” she said.
    â€œThe local cops will come, verify that there’s been a homicide. Then the state cops will come. They’re the ones who handle homicide investigations. They’ll separate us and ask us questions. This whole area”—I swept my hand around—“will be a crime scene.”
    â€œWhat kind of questions?” she said.
    â€œEverything,” I said. “You’ll have to tell them all about Larry.”
    â€œIt’s a long story.”
    â€œThey’ll want to hear it all, and you’ll probably have to tell it