3.

“YES, GEORGE?”

Mitch White seemed put out that I was coming to see him a second time.

I took the seat I wasn’t offered and told him that I had looked through the Telford files.

“Make any great discoveries?”

The district attorney almost smiled. At least that is what I think was going on beneath his twitching mustache.

“Only that none of the stuff was there that Bill Telford claims to have turned over.”

“What stuff? A picture of his daughter in the dress? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“He said he gave it to you.”

“Which is why I took it. But Detective Landry and those guys, they already had pictures.”

“So what did you do with it?”

“Hey—why are you talking to me like that?” Mitch White’s eyes flashed behind his glasses in a way that was meant to remind me of who he was.

“Just … the picture was part of a point Mr. Telford was trying to prove.”

“What point?” He put his hands under his pectorals and cupped them there. Then he stared.

I looked around Mitch White’s office rather than look at the spectacle he was making of himself. I wondered how a man like him could make me feel like such a loser.

The district attorney’s hands flew up in the air, extending over his head, compelling me to look back at him. “C’mon, George,” he said. “After nine years, that’s all he’s got? And you think that’s good enough for me to what? Convene a grand jury? I’d be the laughingstock of the community.”

I didn’t tell him he already was. I just said, “Well, I got the impression Mr. Telford had to build up a lot of good faith with the girl in the store, the one who finally told him about Peter Martin being there.”

“What, did the girl get jilted by the Gregorys? Is that what’s behind this? She couldn’t remember before, but now she does?”

“I don’t know, Mitch. I’m only asking because Mr. Telford says he’s supplied various items to the investigation, and from what I can tell, the files haven’t even been opened in years.”

“You know what the first thing he wanted us to do was? See who bought golf clubs. Medical examiner says the girl must have gotten hit by a golf club. Okay, nobody has any reason to argue with that. So Bill Telford thinks it’s a good idea for us to canvass the Cape, get a list of everyone who bought a single club in the thirty days after Heidi’s death.” Mitch White flung himself around in his chair in agitation. “What, we go to every golf course, Sears, Walmart?”

“We don’t have a Walmart.”

“Yeah, well, you know what I’m saying. I tell him we can’t do it, don’t have the manpower. So he comes up with these lists. Says if you’re gonna use a club to make the wound Heidi had, it can only be one of these clubs. I forget … three, four, five irons, I think he figures. Flat heads. Then he says okay, if the person knows about the Wianno course, it’s only going to be a nice club, a Ping or something. Then he says, and he’s not going to be buying it at a Sears or a Kmart. That’s the other place I was trying to think of. So all right, we indulge him. Detective Landry goes to the shops at all the golf courses, private and public, in about a ten-mile radius. And that’s a lot, believe me. We come up with a couple of doctors, some university chancellor, the travel editor of The New York Times—”

“Any Gregorys?”

Mitch White stopped talking and went back to staring. After about ten seconds, he seemed to have a revelation. His forehead tilted back, his chin, what there was of it, lifted up. “No,” he said. “No, George. There was no evidence of any Gregory buying any golf club that we were able to find.”

His expression had lost the agitation, the sense of annoyance, he had shown before.

“So when Bill Telford goes around saying he’s handed in all this stuff, the only thing he’s really talking about is a picture of his daughter in a blue dress with a red belt, red sandals?”

“That’s right, George.” It was clear now: Mitch White thought I was putting him through some kind of exercise.

“What about a list of the people on the Gregorys’ boat in the Figawi race that year—did he give you that?”

“Oh, yes. He gave us the list.” He pumped his head in a show of assurance.

“What did you do with it?”

“It’s around somewhere.”

“Did you contact any of them? The people on the list, I mean?”

And just that quickly Mitch wasn’t sure about the rules of the exercise anymore. If I was asking these questions on behalf of his friends and mine, why didn’t I already know whether he had contacted them? He rolled his chair back from his desk, extended his legs out in front of him, put his elbows on the arms of the chair, and folded his hands about chest high as he stared that question at me.

I tried to look back as innocently as I could.

After maybe thirty seconds Mitch began speaking in measured terms. “Look, I’m sorry for Bill Telford and his family, I really am. I’m sorry for all the victims and their families on the Cape and Islands. I hope I can bring the perpetrators of their misery to justice. I hope I can do that every time. But I can’t go off on every wild-goose chase every one of them wants me to go on. Bill, he didn’t have much for us in the beginning. Didn’t understand how his daughter could be dressed like she was. Didn’t understand how she could have ended up in Osterville when she was walking into Hyannis. Gave us names and phone numbers of everyone she knew, told us all the places she might have liked to have gone. Even dug out old credit card receipts to show where she’d gone in the past. Police did the best they could and they came up with nothing. They searched for her bag, the clothes she was wearing when she left home, the weapon that was used. Nothing. Unfortunately, crime on the Cape didn’t stop with this murder and we’ve had to deal with other things, too. So, simple fact of the matter is, it became time to move on.”

It was unclear whether Mitch was trying to convince me or was rehearsing for someone else. Either way, I was listening dutifully. Seeing that, he opened his hands and flared them, an indication of hopelessness.

“We didn’t close the case, but we’re tapped out. Something comes up that’s viable, fine, we’ll look into it. We don’t like having a citizen’s murder go unsolved. It doesn’t look good for us; it doesn’t look good for the Cape in general.”

Mitch sat up straight, pulled his chair back to the desk so he could make sure that all our attention was focused on each other, that it was just him and me, talking in our private tunnel. “Bill wants to do his own investigation; we’re not going to stop him, as long as he doesn’t break the law himself. Okay, Bill, let us know if you come up with anything. Years go by. He’s out there. He’s in here. He’s over at the police station. He’s got nothing. At some point he comes up with this Gregory theory. Well, I’ll be damned! Good God Gertie! The Gregorys—what a concept! I mean, you know every bit as well as I do, George—”

Here, he paused.

“—the Gregorys are fair game wherever they go. It’s the downside of being who they are. So now we’ve got this poor old guy, can’t come up with anything else, so he fastens on them? Gets some poor clerk in a grocery store, nine years ago thought the world was going to be at her feet, now here she is, fifty pounds of brownies later, realizes she’s not going anywhere, least of all to a Gregory wedding, and suddenly she remembers something? You know what I’m saying?”

I didn’t tell him.

“Okay, well, let’s assume that her sudden restoration of memory is one hundred percent accurate. What have we got? Heidi Telford, young, beautiful, and maybe just becoming aware of her own sensuality, talks to a kid from a famous family, then a couple of hours later sneaks out of the house. Mr. Telford puts it all together and decides she had to be going to a party at the famous family compound. Teases the boys with her boobies hanging out—he’s not saying that, but you know that’s what he means, all that bra talk and stuff. They want the boobies, she doesn’t give them up, they hit her over the head with a golf club and kill her. You like that story, George? Like it in terms of buying it? Think anybody would? The Gregory boys can get any titties they want. They don’t have to go hitting people over the head. They’re done with some girl for whatever reason, they just call a cab, send her packing. Hell, the worst of them would just open the side gate, tell her to walk home.”

He laughed. A little heh, heh. It was a typical Mitch White laugh, with no real humor behind it. He thought this was the kind of thing guys thought was funny. When I didn’t laugh, he stopped.

“So you see, George,” he said, wiping his mouth uneasily, “I wasn’t going to inflict an investigation on them. Certainly not on the basis of what Telford came up with.”

I wondered if looking at Mitch White was like looking in a mirror. If that was what made me hate him as much as I did.