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him, and I didn’t want Morgan around him.”
    He watched Blair get up, her eyes intense as she grabbed Cade’s arm. “Cade, maybe Gus did it. Maybe he’s the one. Maybe he did this to Mama and Pop.” Her voice quivered as her body straightened with purpose. “If he did, so help me, I’ll kill him myself. I’m gonna go find out.” She started toward the parking lot again.
    “Where are you going?” Cade asked.
    “To talk to Gus Hampton,” she said. The color was starting to return to her face.
    “No, you can’t go,” Cade said. “Blair, you need to stay here.”
    “Why?” she asked, swinging around. “Am I under arrest?”
    “Of course not,” he said. “But you’re interfering with an investigation. I already have officers looking for Gus. He shouldn’t be that hard to find. But when they find him, they’ll be interviewing him, not you.” He caught up to her, touched her shoulder, and leaned down to look into her face. “Blair, I promise you, we’re going to find who did this. But you’ll have to let us do it, without getting in our way.”
    “Well, I don’t let things rest, Cade,” she said.
    “I know you don’t,” he said.
    Jonathan put his arm around Morgan. “Cade, I want to see that gun.”
    “I’m sorry, Jonathan. It’s evidence in a homicide case.”
    “Well, then I’m going with McCormick to show him where mine is. I’ll take Morgan with me.”
    “You can’t go, Jonathan,” Cade said.
    Jonathan gaped at him. “What do you mean, I can’t go?”
    “I need you here,” he said. “We may need to ask you more questions.”
    “You know where to find me,” Jonathan told him. “You can call me at home and ask me.”
    “Jonathan, you’re not going anywhere.”
    “Why not?” Jonathan asked again. “Cade, what’re you saying?”
    Cade stood eye to eye with him, unmoving. “I’m saying that if you try to leave, I’ll have to arrest you.”
    He went back into the warehouse, and Jonathan stood there, his mouth open—feeling as if nothing in his world made sense any more.
    I t wasn’t long before McCormick was back at the warehouse with the news. The door to the toolshed was wide open, and Jonathan Cleary’s speargun wasn’t there.
    That wasn’t what Cade wanted to hear. He had hoped McCormick would tell him that the gun was right where Jonathan kept it. He’d already heard back from Billy Caldwell, who was at the station with the other three spearfishermen. He’d found each of their guns and brought them in with them. Another officer had checked with every sports store in town. Only one sold spearguns, mostly through catalog orders. He hadn’t sold any Blue Water Magnums.
    Jonathan’s was still the only one they knew of on the island.
    “Want me to read him his rights?” McCormick asked.
    Cade couldn’t conceive of locking up his friend. He tried to think through the possibilities. Someone had taken the gun out of the shed and used it to kill Thelma and Wayne. Then they had left it at the scene so the police would find it. Maybe they wanted it to look like Jonathan had done it.
    Or maybe there was someone else on the island who had one, or one of the transient seamen, or a psychotic tourist. . . .
    Maybe Jonathan had just misplaced his gun. . . .
    Or maybe the most obvious possibility was the truth—that Jonathan had gotten so angry at them that he had acted in a fit of rage, hardly knowing what he was doing. . . .
    But Cade had known Jonathan for years, had grown up with him, played baseball and football with him. They had gone to college together, and Cade had been best man in Jonathan’s wedding. He knew his friend to be a good person, one who didn’t have murder in his heart. Could some set of circumstances have conspired to push Jonathan into a lethal rage?
    If there was a possibility, even a remote one, that Jonathan might have done this, Cade had to lock him up. He had no choice.
    For the first time since his uncle, the mayor, had appointed him chief