"Croaker in the bedroom," Bentley says. "They had to scrape her off the springs."

"The wife?" asks Jack.

"We don't have a positive yet," Bentley says. "But it's an adult female."

"Pamela Vale, age thirty-four," Jack says. Goddamn Billy gave him the specs over the phone.

"Name rings a bell," Bentley says.

"Save the Strands," Jack says.

"What the what?"

"Save the Strands," Jack says. "She's been in the papers. She and her husband are big fund-raisers for Save the Strands."

A community group fighting the Great Sunsets Ltd. corporation to prevent them from putting a condo complex on Dana Strands, the last undeveloped stretch of the south coast.

Dana Strands, Jack's beloved Dana Strands, a swatch of grass and trees that sits high on a bluff above Dana Strand Beach. Years ago, it was a trailer park, and then that failed, and then nature reclaimed it and grew over and around it, and is still holding on to it against all the forces of progress.

Just holding on, Jack thinks.

"Whatever," Bentley says.

Jack says, "There's a husband and two kids."

"We're looking for them."

"Shit."

"They ain't in the house," Bentley says. "I mean we're looking for notification purposes. How'd you get here so soon?"

"Billy picked it off the scanner, ran the address, had it waiting for me when I got in."

"You insurance bastards," Bentley says. "You just can't wait to get in there and start chiseling, can you?"

Jack hears a little dog barking from somewhere behind the house.

It bothers him.

"You name a cause?" Jack asks.

Bentley shakes his head and laughs this laugh he has, which sounds more like steam coming out of a radiator. He says, "Just get out your checkbook, Jack."

"You mind if I go in and have a look?" Jack asks.