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Brown’s plea for help sounded to them like there had been a shooting. If they were going to get called later at home anyway, they figured they might as well go up there and get it over with.
    â€œCome on, Detective Sloan”—Altman chuckled, slapping the bespectacled, chunky man on the back as they walked out the door—“we’ll go up there with you, help you out as much as we can, and then we’ll call it a night. Then you can take over.”
    Since Eighty-first Avenue was a little less than five miles from the police station, it didn’t take the detectives long to drive to the crime scene. Each detective had driven his own assigned Ford Crown Victoria, just in case they might have to disperse and go to different areas. One after another, they pulled into the beach access at the crime scene and started walking across the boardwalk, which cut through the dunes and led toward the beach.
    For tourists who happened to be at the access or out on the beach, it was a curious sight to witness the police cars rush in and to watch these men dressed in coats and ties march out on the beach. For those who didn’t know better, it appeared as if the FBI had landed and were storming the beach.
    By now, a small crowd of witnesses and rubberneckers had heard the commotion and curiously gathered around the Eighty-first beach access to see what was happening. As the detectives walked down toward the beach, they met a couple of young men walking up toward the boardwalk. The guys were all young, tanned and looked like surfers. Detective Altman stopped and started talking with them. The other two detectives went on ahead to the crime scene area.
    â€œYou guys know what’s going on here?” Altman asked the teenagers.
    â€œYeah, we heard there was a shooting.” A slim, blond-headed guy with a silver earring dangling from his right ear spoke up first. “But we don’t know anything about it. We were farther down south on the beach and saw the action around the boardwalk, so we started walking up. But we didn’t see or hear anything. All we know is that somebody got shot on the beach.”
    Altman pulled out his pad and jotted down their names, addresses and phone numbers, then stepped off the boardwalk and onto the soft sand. In the headlights of the patrol truck, he saw his partners talking with Scott Brown. He was relieved to know the officer had not been injured.
    The soft, yellow sand clung like gold to the detective’s shoes. He took a few steps, then hopped onto the smooth sand, where the tide had washed and hardened the beach. He noticed an area indented with a number of footprints and marred by a long trail of blood. Knowing someone had been shot, he guessed it must have been the girl he saw perched in the driver’s side of the truck with the door open. But as he got closer, he could see she wasn’t injured. Sitting behind the steering wheel, she was positioned with her feet resting on the wide running boards of the truck, where she could just step out of the truck had she wanted to.
    From a distance, Altman studied the attractive, dark-haired girl dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. She was just casually there, half out the door with her hand clasped. She looked a little pale to him, but she didn’t look upset or hurt in any way.
    â€œHey, Sloan, come here for a second.” He waved his partner toward him. When Sloan walked over and stood next to him, Altman turned his back to the truck so the girl couldn’t hear him. “She wasn’t the one that was shot, was she?” he said, thumbing back toward the truck.
    Sloan shook his head from side to side. “Oh, no, she wasn’t shot. It was her husband.”
    â€œThen where’s the body?”
    â€œEMS has already responded and taken him to the hospital.”
    Altman turned around and stared at the girl sitting in the truck. She appeared to be very calm for someone whose husband