Then the cop cars stop arriving and the sirens stop wailing, and I can hear the ocean waves again. The whole vibe is as strange and unnatural as a small child’s wake.

For the next few minutes, I stay by the car, the one person there not in the crowd ringing the crime scene, and just by looking at the backs, the postures, I can tell that this is far heavier than what the cops are used to, and I can feel the anger. A few years ago a millionaire was murdered in his bed within a mile of here, but that was different. These bodies aren’t summer people.

The way the cops are acting, these are three of their own-maybe even cops.

When the volunteer firemen show up, I figure I’ve stayed put long enough. After all, I’m not exactly a stranger here. For good or bad, everybody knows Tom Dunleavy.

But halfway to the ambulance, Mickey Harrison, a sergeant who played hoops with me in high school, steps up and puts both hands firmly on my chest.

“Tommy, you don’t want to go any closer right now. Trust me.”

It’s too late. As he restrains me, the circle breaks, and I glimpse the shapes the cops are scurrying around.

It’s dark down here, and at first the shapes make no sense. They’re too high, or too short, with no connection to familiar human outlines.

I squint into the shadows, my mind still unable to process the images. Then a cop from Forensics drops into a crouch, and there’s a powerful flash from his camera.

It sets off a second flash at the very middle of the scene, and before it fades to black again, I see the white circle of Feifer’s bleached hair.

“Oh, Jesus God,” I say, and Mickey Harrison takes my arm at the elbow.

Then, almost immediately, another shock. The bodies aren’t lying side by side. They’re stacked, one on top of the other, in a heap. Feif is in the middle on his back. Robert Walco is lying on top of him facedown, and Rochie is on the bottom turned on his side.