“I have to know whether or not it’s Tom.”

“Dat body missin’ a leg, too,” Mose said, craning his neck. “Look. A gator took it off.”

Caitlin squinted into the muddy water, but she couldn’t tell.

“How did the body get caught up in the branches like that?” Jordan asked.

“Gators do that,” Mose said. “They stuff their kill up under a bank or in some tree roots underwater, just like us puttin’ meat in the Frigidaire.”

A shiver ran the length of Caitlin’s body. She had been close to a feeding alligator before, and she wanted no part of it again.

“We gotta get out of here,” Mose said. “Dis business for the high sheriff.”

“How deep is the water here?” Caitlin asked, slowly untying the bandanna from her neck.

“Can’t be sure,” the fisherman replied. “Could be four feet, could be ten.”

“Guess.”

The old man surveyed the trees that bordered the patch of clear water, then studied the fallen tree that held the corpse in its branches. “Probably six, eight feet deep here.”

A sun-faded life jacket lay in the bottom of the boat near Jordan’s feet. Caitlin picked it up, slipped it on, and tightened the straps as best she could.

“What the hell you doin’?” Mose asked, starting to stand. “This boat ain’t gonna turn over.”

Before he could reach her, Caitlin bent her knees, then let herself fall backward over the gunwale, the way she’d been taught to enter the water when scuba diving in the Caribbean. She prayed that the splash would scare away any scavengers.

The black water enveloped her like an icy blanket. She’d expected it to be cold, but not this cold. After a stunned second or two, she bobbed to the surface, the life jacket bringing her upright. Jordan and Mose were screaming from the boat, telling her to get back in, but having gone this far, she wasn’t about to stop now. She didn’t think she could climb back into the boat without tipping it over anyway.

She couldn’t feel bottom beneath her, so she kicked toward the corpse. The reek worsened as she got closer, and her shoes grew heavy in the twenty seconds it took her to come within reach of the body. Catching hold of a waterlogged branch, Caitlin catalogued the physical traits that might identify Tom. The cold made it hard to concentrate, and the stink worsened the problem, but her fear was stronger than her revulsion.

Deformed fingers, she thought. Spooned fingernails. Coronary bypass scar . . . Tom had his chest cracked in 1987. Would the scar still be visible after all these years? Gray chest hair . . .

The way the corpse was situated, Caitlin realized that the quickest way to see anything was to simply swim under it rather than try to shift it. As she struggled to shed the life jacket, Jordan began shouting at her again, but Caitlin ignored her. She simply had to know.

The buckles of the life jacket were stuck. Caitlin pressed and jerked as hard as she could, but none of the damned clasps would come undone. Some part of her knew she must be doing something wrong, yet she couldn’t solve this simple problem. The life jacket was strangling her! At last Jordan’s shouts broke through her wild frustration.

“Catch this!” Jordan yelled. “There’s a knife in it!”

Caitlin’s head cleared as though she’d been slapped. Looking up, she saw a dull flash of metal and somehow snatched it out of the air. Jordan’s multi-tool. Flicking open the largest blade, Caitlin sawed through the three straps. Then she looked up and threw the knife back at Jordan. By the time the tool clanged against the bottom of the boat, she had kicked free of the life jacket. With that freedom came the memory that Tom had been shot in the shoulder on Tuesday night.

Which shoulder was the bandage on? The left.

Caitlin screeched in terror as something bumped against her leg, then scooted away. It hadn’t felt like a fish, unless it was a damned big one. A gar, maybe. Or a catfish.

“Caitlin!” Jordan shouted. “Get back in this boat and wait for the chopper!”

Caitlin shoved all her fear down into a deep hole, took a huge breath, then dived deep under the tree and kicked hard. When she felt mud, she rolled over and opened her eyes.

She could see amazingly well, but what she saw almost made her vomit. The corpse had no left shoulder. It had been eaten away. Likewise both hands. Fighting panic that scrambled in her chest like a crazed animal, she grabbed a limb that was jammed into the mud and tried desperately to remember her thoughts only moments ago.

Gray chest hair . . .

She couldn’t see any hair on the chest. As she stared, something long and dark passed between her and the body, then disappeared. Primal terror surged through every fiber of her being. She let go of the branch and drove her feet against the bottom, desperate to reach the surface. As she broke through to air and sunlight, the last thing she had seen finally registered in her cerebral cortex.

Black pubic hair.

At the crotch of what remained of the dead man’s legs, a thick thatch of black hair had been plainly visible. Caitlin had never seen Tom naked, but Penn’s father was seventy-three years old, and he had silver-white hair and a beard of the same color. No way was his pubic hair black.

Jordan had braced one hand against the gunwale of the johnboat and was holding out a small boat paddle.

“Grab it!” she cried. “Grab it, goddamn it!”

“It’s not Tom!” Caitlin shouted. “It’s not Tom!”

“Thank God. Now get your crazy ass back in here.”

She grabbed the paddle but found herself too weak to pull. Mose Tyler took the paddle from Jordan and hauled Caitlin to the edge of the boat with surprising strength. Then an eerie hissing sent adrenaline surging through her again. She jerked her head in every direction, looking for snakes or any other threat, but it was only the sound of fresh rain on the water. As her heartbeat steadied, Mose and Jordan reached down and dragged her up into the listing boat. When Caitlin came over the gunwale and collapsed onto the green metal bottom, she heard the heavy beat of approaching rotor blades.

“It’s not Tom,” she said again, relief flooding through her like a drug.

Jordan knelt above her and looked into her eyes like a doctor examining a patient. Apparently satisfied that she was not seriously hurt, Jordan said, “Not bad, little sister. Not bad at all.”

“Crazy is what dat was,” Mose said. “Craziest damn thing I ever saw.”

Caitlin felt a sudden panic, as in a nightmare when she’d lost something but didn’t know what it was. Then she knew.

The map.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out what remained: a soggy mess like wet toilet paper, faintly stained with blue ink.

“I lost the map,” she said. “Toby’s map.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jordan said, squeezing her hand. “It’s nothing.”

TEN SECONDS AGO, KAISER took out his phone and summoned two agents to drag me out of the interrogation room. As pounding feet sound in the hall, I see Sonny Thornfield pick up the pen I used to create the puzzle pieces and begin writing on the large page.

“Look!” I cry. “John, look!”

The door crashes open, and two agents rush into the room. Kaiser holds up his hand long enough to look where I’m pointing, then walks to the metal table. After looking down at the page, he motions me forward.

With his trembling hand, Sonny Thornfield has written seven uppercase letters in the blank square next to Viola Turner’s name. My breath goes shallow as I read the childishly written letters:

TOM CAGE

Sonny lays down the pen and then looks up at me, his eyes filled not with triumph or revenge, but with some unreadable emotion.

“You happy now?” he asks hoarsely. “Is that what you wanted?”

I cannot voice the thought that has arced through my mind like a rocket against a black sky: Two nights ago, Brody Royal told me my father killed Viola. Now Sonny Thornfield has told me the same thing.