Broken Harbor by Tana French

know, she could have been well able to leave the house, stash the knife, come back inside and arrange herself neatly next to her husband. This could be a suicide pact, or she could have been shielding Patrick—she sounds like the type who might well put her last few minutes into protecting the family reputation. Or this could have been her gig, from start to finish.”
    The yellow Fiat was gone: Fiona was headed for the hospital to try and see Jenny—hopefully the uniform was driving, so she wouldn’t wrap the car around a tree during a crying jag. Instead, we had a cluster of new cars, up at the end of the road by the morgue van. They could have been journalists, or residents who the uniforms were keeping away from the scene, but I was betting these were my floaters. I headed for them. “And think about this,” I said. “An outsider isn’t going to go in there unarmed and hope he gets a chance to go through the kitchen drawers and find something good. He’s going to bring his own weapon.”
    “Maybe he did, and then he spotted those knives and figured he’d be better off with something that doesn’t trace back to him. Or maybe he wasn’t planning on killing anyone. Or maybe that knife isn’t the weapon at all: he nicked it to throw us off.”
    “Maybe. That’s one reason why we need to find it fast: to make sure it doesn’t lead us down the wrong track. Want to give me another one?”
    Richie said, “Before it’s got rid of.”
    “Right. Say this is an outside job: our man—or woman—probably threw the weapon in the water last night, if he has any sense, but if by any chance he’s too thick to have thought of that off his own bat, all this activity’s bound to tip him off that it might be an idea not to have a bloody knife hanging around. If he ditched it somewhere on the estate, we want to pick him up coming back for it; if he took it home with him, we want to catch him dumping it. All this is assuming he’s in the area, obviously.”
    Two seagulls exploded up from a heap of rubble, screaming at each other, and Richie’s head whipped around. He said, “He didn’t find the Spains by accident. This isn’t the kind of place where someone could be just passing by, just happen to spot a set of victims that pushed his buttons.”
    “No,” I said. “Not that kind of place at all. If he’s not dead or local, then he came in here looking.”
    The floaters were seven guys and a girl, all somewhere in their late twenties, hanging around their cars trying to look sharp and businesslike and ready for anything. When they saw us coming their way they straightened up, tugged jackets down, the biggest guy threw his cigarette away. I pointed to the butt and asked, “What’s your plan there?”
    He looked blank. I said, “You were going to leave it there, weren’t you? On the ground, for the Bureau to find and file and send away for DNA testing. Which one were you hoping for? That you’d wind up at the top of our suspect list, or at the top of our time-waster list?”
    He whipped up the butt and fumbled it back into his packet, and just that fast, all eight of them were on notice: as long as you’re on my investigation, you do not drop the ball. Marlboro Man was scarlet, but someone had to take one for the good of the team.
    I said, “Much better. I’m Detective Kennedy, and this is Detective Curran.” I didn’t ask for their names; no time for handshakes and chitchat, and I would only forget anyway. I don’t keep track of my floaters’ favorite sandwiches and their kids’ birthdays, I keep track of what they’re doing and whether they’re doing it well. “You’ll get a full briefing later on, but for now, this is all you need to know: we’re looking for a Cuisine Bleu–brand knife, curved six-inch blade, black plastic handle, part of a matching set, a lot like this but slightly larger.” I held up the plastic evidence bag. “All of you got camera phones? Take a picture, so you’ve got a