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is Eve Cooper, Murphy," said Aline, her voice flat and soft in the strange silence of the room.
    "Eve. Right. Eve Cooper." His head bobbed. "I'm, uh, Detective Murphy— Steve Murphy." He took baby steps into the room, as though he were afraid of moving too fast because Eve might vanish. He smiled. He walked over to Eve and held out his hand. His eyes never left her face. Aline knew that for him Eve Cooper wasn't just a ringer for his dead wife. He actually believed Monica had risen from the dead.

Chapter 2
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    B y the time Murphy had sat on the chair to Eve's right, Aline knew the score. In the blink of an eye, in the split second it had taken him to pass through the doorway, to see Eve, she had lost him to the past. Lost him completely.
    She wanted to get up. To leave. To fly back to the sanctuary of her own place at the other end of the island. She would crawl into her bed piled with laundry and yank the sheet up over her head. She would wrap herself in the hammock. She would ignore the heat, the discomfort, the din of the crickets. She would embrace it all gladly just for these moments not to be happening.
    Roll back the clock. Let's start this scene over again.
    But the world worked like that only in her head, which was throbbing. Okay. Easy does it , she thought. Maybe she was imagining all this. Maybe if she really looked at Murphy, at Eve, she would see that the only thing going on was a routine interrogation.
    She looked. She looked real hard. And what she saw was the sheen in Murphy's eyes, that expression that used to melt across his face when he gazed at Monica in a moment of sweet repose. Sometimes it had happened when Monica was chattering away with Jack Dobbs or even with Aline herself, or when Monica was crossing a room with a couple of drinks in her hands. Aline had seen it openly one evening when Monica had stretched out on the couch in her living room and fallen asleep. It was a look of complete absorption, of a love so deep, so total that it bordered on obsession.
    Monica. Three years, two months, and five days ago she had been raped and disemboweled in the bedroom of the townhouse she and Murphy had rented at the western end of the island. There were no leads, just a weak theory that her death was connected somehow to a vice investigation he and Dobbs had been working on at that time. The case was still open.
    Murphy had taken a two-month leave of absence from the department after it had happened. It was during those two months that his interest in fast boats had become his passion. In some ways, it had become a substitution for Murphy's obsession for Monica. And in another way, a darker way, it was Murphy living out a death wish.
    Eve left the room for a few minutes to turn on the flood lights in the backyard. Murphy's eyes followed her as she vanished through the door, then he glanced at Aline. "You okay?"
    "I've been better. How was the boat race?" How can I ask such a disgustingly normal question here? Now? But Murphy didn't seem to find the question out of place, or if he did, he gave no indication.
    "Pretty good. I came in eighth. I stopped by the station before going home and Roxie caught me. Right after that, she got a hold of Dobbs."
    "He's here, too?"
    "Outside."
    "But he's vice."
    "With guys like Cooper, this kind of murder might be drug-related."
    A regular party, with a quarter of the summer staff present. The only person missing was Bernie. "She looks like Monica, doesn't she?" Aline said.
    Murphy didn't nod, didn't say anything. He just looked down at his notebook again. The distance between them suddenly seemed enormous—a gulf, an ocean, unbreachable. Her throat tightened. She rubbed her aching temple, seeking another normal question to ask, as if the power of words alone could bridge the distance. But before she could think of anything, Eve returned.
    "Let me show you those artifacts I was talking about."
    What artifacts? She had obviously missed something important, but Murphy