A launch of white-uniformed officers from the town of Amysville arrived an hour later with a local detective on board.

Together, they raised him.

Karen and Hauck stood by, watching Charles’s body pulled up on deck, stripped of the oily seaweed and debris that had clung to him and the wires that had bound him to the anchor line.

Hauck identified himself as a police detective from the States and spoke with the local official, who was named Wilson, while Karen stood by, holding her face in her hands. Hauck identified her as Hanson’s ex-wife and said they had gotten back in touch after a year and had come to visit. They both said they had no idea who would want to do such a horrible thing. Robbers, maybe. Look at the boat. That seemed easiest, without opening everything up. Whatever happened next, Hauck determined it was important that he control the investigation from the States, and if they came entirely clean with the local authorities, that wouldn’t happen. They gave their names and their addresses back in the States. A brief statement. They told the detective what line of work Hanson had been in—investments. Hauck knew, once they checked, that Charles’s new name wouldn’t yield much.

The detective thanked them cordially but seemed to regard their stories with a skeptical eye.

Two of his men lifted Charles over to a yellow body bag. Karen asked if she could have a moment. They agreed.

She knelt down next to him. She felt she had already said her good-byes to him so many times before, shed her tears. But now, as she looked into the strange calm of his face, the puffy, bluish skin, recalling both the anguish and the resigned smile he had displayed on the beach the day before, the tears began to flow, all over again. Unjudging this time. Hot streaming rivers down her cheeks.

Oh, Charlie… Karen picked a piece of debris out of his hair.

So many things hurtled back to her. The night they first met—at the arts benefit—Charlie all decked out in his tux, with a bright red tie. The horn-rim frames he always wore. What had he said that charmed her? “What did you do to deserve to sit with this boring crowd?” Their wedding at the Pierre. The day he opened Harbor, that first trade—Halliburton, she recalled—everything so full of hope and promise. How he would run along the sidelines at Alex’s lacrosse games, living and dying with each goal, shouting out his name—“Go, Alex, go!” clapping exuberantly.

The morning he’d called to her up in the bathroom and said he had to take the train into the city.

Karen brushed her fingers along his face. “How did you let this happen, Charlie? What do I tell the kids? Who’s gonna mourn you now, Charlie? What the hell do I do with you?”

As much as she tried, she could not forgive him. But he was still the man with whom she’d shared her life for almost twenty years. Who’d been a part of every important moment in her life. Still the father of her kids.

And she had seen, in the repentance of his eyes yesterday, a picture of what he so desperately missed.

Sam. Alex. Her.

What the hell am I gonna do with you, Charlie?

“Karen…” Hauck came up behind her and placed his hands softly on her shoulders. “It’s time to let them do their job.”

She nodded. She put her fingers on Charlie’s eyelids and closed them for the last time. That was better. That was the face she wanted to carry with her. She lifted herself up and leaned ever so slightly against Hauck.

One of the officers stepped over to Charles and zipped up the protective bag.

And that was all. He was gone.

“They’re going to let us go,” Hauck said in her ear. “I gave them my contact info. If stuff comes out, and it’s likely it will, they’ll want to talk with us again.”

Karen nodded. “He came back to the States, you know.” She looked at him. “For Samantha’s graduation. He sat there in a car across the street and watched. I want him home, Ty. I want him back with us. I want the kids to know what happened. He was their dad.”

“We can request that the body be sent back once the medical examiner has gone over it.”

Karen sniffed. “Okay.”

They climbed back onto the Sea Angel and watched Charles being lifted into the police launch.

“Those people found him, Ty….” Karen fought back a rising anger in her blood. “He would’ve come back with us. I know it. That’s why he called.”

“They didn’t find him, Karen.” The troubling image of the large black schooner he’d seen grew vivid in his mind. “We did. We led them directly to him.” He looked over Charles’s ransacked boat. “And the real question is, what the hell would they be looking for?”