Pete, my first love. My only love for over two decades.

Ryan, my first gamble since Pete's betrayal.

Katy, my wonderful, flighty, finally-about-to-be-a-college-graduate daughter.

But mostly, I pondered that sad grave on Dewees. Violent death is my job. I see it often, yet I never get used to it.

I have come to think of violence as a self-perpetuating mania of the power of the aggressive over those less strong. Friends ask how I can bear to do the work that I do. It is simple. I am committed to demolishing the maniacs before they demolish more innocents.

Violence wounds the body and it wounds the soul. Of the predator. Of the prey. Of the mourners. Of collective humanity. It diminishes us all.

In my view, death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity. To spend eternity under a Jane Doe plaque. To disappear nameless into an unmarked grave without those who care about you knowing that you have gone. That offends. While I cannot make the dead live again, I can reunite victims with their names, and give those left behind some measure of closure. In that way, I help the dead to speak, to say a final good-bye, and, sometimes, to say what took their lives.

I knew I would do what Emma was asking. Because of who I am. Because of what I feel. I would not walk away.

4

THE NEXT MORNING, I LAY IN BED STARING INTO THE BREACH OF the opening day. I had failed to lower the blinds, so I watched dawn tint the ocean, the dunes, and the deck outside Anne's sliding glass doors.

Closing my eyes, I thought about Ryan. His reaction had been predictable, meant to amuse. But I wondered what he'd say if he were here. If he'd seen the grave. And I regretted my annoyance with him. I missed him. We'd been apart for over a month.