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asked, “Did this cop see any vehicles heading away from this beach?”
    “Yes, he mentioned passing a light-colored, late-model Ford Explorer out on Dune Road, coming from this direction. But since he was responding to an emergency, not a crime in progress, he didn’t take note of the license plate or if there were any passengers in the vehicle. No follow-up was done.”
    I nodded. Ford Explorers, like Jeeps, were as common around here as seagulls, so it wasn’t worth the time or effort to check it out.
    Kate said to me, “Okay, that’s about it. Would you like to attempt a reconstruction of the events of that evening?”
    I replied, “Rather than me verbally reconstructing, this may be a good time for a re-enactment.”
    “John, clean up your act.”
    “I’m trying to get into this scene.”
    “Come on. It’s getting late. Reconstruct.” She smiled. “We’ll re-enact later.”
    I smiled in return. “Okay. We have a man and a woman. They may have been staying at a local hotel, the name of which I may learn later. The expensive wine indicates perhaps upper-middle-class and middle-age people. They decide to go to the beach, and they snag the blanket from the hotel bed. They do, however, have an ice chest, so maybe this was planned to some extent. They know or have heard of this secluded spot, or they just stumbled upon it. I think they got here late afternoon or early evening.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, I remember where I was when I heard about the crash. Bright and sunny that day, and you didn’t mention suntan oil or lotion on the blanket, on the bottle, or on the wineglasses.”
    “Correct. Continue.”
    “Okay. So, this man and woman, perhaps driving a Ford Explorer, got here at some point before eight-thirty-oneP.M., the time of the crash. They laid out the blanket, opened the ice chest, took out the wine, opened it with the corkscrew, poured it into two glasses, and finished the bottle. At some point, they may have gotten naked, and may have engaged in sexual activity.”
    She didn’t reply, and I continued, “Okay, based on the damp sand found on the blanket, we can speculate that they went down to the water, naked or clothed. At some point-at eight-thirty-oneP.M. to be exact-they saw and heard an explosion in the sky. I don’t know where they were standing at that time, but realizing that this spectacular occurrence would draw people to the beach, they got the hell out of here, and they were gone before the police arrived at eight-forty-six. The two vehicles may have passed on the single road leading to this beach.” I added, “My guess is that these two people were not married to each other.”
    “Why?”
    “Too romantic.”
    “Don’t be cynical. Maybe they weren’t running away. Maybe they ran for help.”
    “And kept on running. They didn’t want to be seen together.”
    She nodded. “That’s the general consensus.”
    “Among who?”
    “Among the FBI agents on the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, who investigated this five years ago.”
    “Let me ask
you
something. What makes these two people so important that the FBI went through all that trouble?”
    “They were probably witnesses to the crash.”
    “So what? There were six hundred eyewitnesses who saw the explosion. Over two hundred of them said they saw a streak of light rising toward the plane before the explosion. If the FBI didn’t believe two hundred people, why are these two unknown people so important?”
    “Oh, I forgot. One last detail.”
    “Ah.”
    She said, “Also on the blanket was a plastic lens cap belonging to a JVC video camera.”
    I let that sink in a moment as I looked around at the terrain and the sky. I asked her, “Did you ever hear from these people?”
    “No.”
    “And you never will. Let’s go.”

     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    We drove back through the Village of Westhampton. “Home?” I asked.
    “One more stop. But only if you want to.”
    “How many one-more-stops are there?”
    “Two.”
    I glanced