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seemed happy, loving, caring, sharing, and all that 1990s stuff, and I really never noticed anything
     amiss between them. But that’s not to say they were perfect people or a perfect couple.
    I searched my memory for something like a fatal flaw, the kind of thing that sometimes gets people murdered. Drugs? Not likely.
     Infidelity? Possible, but not probable. Money? They didn’t have much to steal. So it came down to the job again.
    I thought about that. It would appear on the face of things that the Gordons were selling superbugs and something went wrong,
     and they were terminated. Along the same lines, I recalled that Tom once confided to me that his biggest fear, aside from
     catching a disease, was that he and Judy would be kidnapped right off their boat one day, that an Iranian submarine or something
     would come up and snatch them away, and they’d never be seen or heard from again. This seemed a little far-fetched to me,
     but I remember thinking that the Gordons must have a lot of stuff in their heads that some people wanted. So maybe what happened
     was that the murder started out as a snatch job and went wrong. I thought about this. If the murders were related to the job,
     were the Gordons innocent victims, or were they traitors who sold death for gold? Were they killed by a foreign power or were
     they killed by someone closer to home?
    I mulled this over as best I could in the OTT with the noise, the halftime crap, the beer in my brain, and the acid in my
     tummy. I had another beer and another Maalox. Gastro-doc never said
why
I wasn’t supposed to mix.
    I tried to think of the unthinkable, of handsome, happy Tom and beautiful, bouncy Judy selling plague to some nut cases, of
     water reservoirs filled with disease, or maybe aerial crop sprayers over New York or Washington, of millions of sick, dying,
     and dead….
    I couldn’t imagine the Gordons doing that. On the other hand, everyone has a price. I used to wonder how they could afford
     to rent that house on the water and buy that expensive boat. Now maybe I knew how and also why they needed a high-speed boat
     and a house with a private dock. It all made sense, and yet my instincts were telling me not to believe the obvious.
    I overtipped Ms. NordicTrack and returned to the scene of the crime.

C HAPTER 4
    I t was after eleven as I drove along the lane that led to the Gordons’ house. The night was lit by a nice three-quarter moon,
     and a pleasant breeze brought the smell of the sea through the open windows of my new moss green Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited,
     a $40,000 indulgence that the nearly deceased John Corey thought he owed himself.
    I stopped fifty yards from the house, put the vehicle into “park,” and listened to a few more minutes of Giants-Dallas, then
     I shut off the engine. A voice said, “Your headlights are on.”
    “Shut up,” I replied, “just shut up.” I switched off the headlights.
    There are many options in life, but one option you should never choose is the “Voice Warning and Advisory Option.”
    I opened the door. “Your key is in the ignition. Your emergency brake is not engaged.” It was a female voice, and I swear
     to God it sounded like my ex-wife. “Thank you, dear.” I took my keys, climbed down, and slammed the door.
    The vehicles and crowds on the small street had thinned considerably, and I figured that the bodies had been removed, it being
     a fact of life that the arrival of the meat wagon usually satisfies most of the spectators and signals the end of Act One.
     Also, they all wanted to see themselves on the eleven o’clock news.
    There was a new addition to the police presence since my earlier visit: a Suffolk County police mobile van was parked in front
     of the house near the forensic van. This new van was the command post that could accommodate investigators, radios, fax machines,
     cell phones, video equipment, and the other high-tech doodads that make up the arsenal in the never-ending battle