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At 2 in the afternoon the FBI's James Kallstrom, Suffolk County medical examiner Charles Wetli and Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, announce it will be a while before any definitive analysis can be made. More and more FBI agents are coming into town. People are asked to report anything they saw or heard on Wednesday night.
"I guess this has put East Moriches on the map," says the man who owns the liquor store.
"A heck of a way to get us on the map," says the man who owns the stationery store.
The late afternoon sky is as solemn as it was in the morning. The town is quieter than yesterday. Tonight people will begin to wean themselves from the disaster reports and tune in to the excessively happy opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Atlanta. Flipping between channels, they will occupy antipodal worlds. Come the weekend, they will take their boats out on the bay, and eventually they will speak less and less of Wednesday night.
But it will remain with them forever, to be dredged up on summer nights years from now, and it will remind them of who they are and where they live.