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  "Bill," I promised, "trust me on this one. She wouldn't jeopardize a lifetime of public service by having an affair with someone who looked like a badly aging Engelbert Humperdinck."

  "That bad?" he asked.

  "That bad," I emphasized.

  He sighed and drummed his fingers on the table, his eyes searching the green paint peeling off the grimy walls for clues. I waited. If you had to wait, Bill Butler was a nice diversion.

  "Look, Casey," he finally said. "I don't know how you fit into this, but I think you're clean."

  "You say the sweetest things," I told him.

  "I didn't say you were perfect," he pointed out. "But I asked around and, while I've noticed that no one around here has actually seen a P.I.'s license with your name on it, they all seem to think you're competent."

  "I have a license with my name on it," I said indignantly.

  "Oh, I have no doubt of that," he said, his tone hard to read.

  "My boss has been officially hired by Mary Lee Masters to look into the murder," I explained. This was only a half lie. Bobby D. had been hired, but I would be the one to do the looking. "I just help him out with the paperwork, bodyguarding stuff. Office administration. You know."

  He was willing to play along but couldn't help making it obvious that he was doing so. "I've seen your boss," he said. "If he can follow anyone around without being as conspicuous as a whale in a bathtub, I'd be surprised."

  "That's a pretty accurate image," I congratulated him. "What's your point?"

  "You know I can't let you near this thing," he said. I shrugged in agreement. "It's a murder investigation. The SBI has gotten involved, which is rare. No way you're getting involved officially. But if you find anything of interest in your unofficial investigation, I want to know about it. I'd return the favor."

  "A 'you show me yours and I'll show you mine' kind of thing?" I asked.

  "Sort of," he said. "I think I have a lot more to show, of course."

  "How modest of you," I pointed out. He just sat there and waited. I admired his cool. I relented finally, my dislike of Bradley Masters getting the best of me. "I picked up Bradley Masters at the airport this morning," I said. "He'd been in Nassau. At least his ticket said so. You might want to check. It should be pretty easy. If he was there, he was using his own name. He'd have to. He lives off his credit cards with the bills paid by Mary Lee's accountant. Besides, he's too stupid to cover his tracks." I didn't mention that Bradley knew where the body had been dumped. A girl's entitled to her little secrets, don't you think?

  He made a note on his pad. "Thanks. We'll check. Anything else?"

  I spread my hands wide. "It's your turn."

  He considered it, turning the request over in his head. I could tell he was skimming the available information, trying to strike a balance between what was really useful and what I would recognize as a throwaway diversion. I didn't care what he gave me, frankly. Anything was better than nothing.

  "Well," he finally said. "The reports came back on the body. An analysis of residual silt stuck to the body indicates that the victim was probably killed somewhere along the Neuse River."

  "The Neuse?" I asked. "That's a long damn river."

  Butler shrugged. "It's the best I can do. Be grateful for pollution," he added. "It makes chemical analysis pretty accurate."

  "What did they find?" I asked.

  "Combination of sand and silt. Traces of acetic and sulfuric acids, acetaminophen, petroleum, estrogen, and a couple of carp scales. The SBI is trying to pinpoint the spot right now."

  "Estrogen?" I asked. "That cinches it. It must be downstream from the sex change hospital."

  He looked interested until he realized I was kidding.

  "Well, thanks for the tip," I said, rising to go. I got no argument from him. "Maybe I'll spend the rest of the afternoon canoeing the banks of the Neuse in search of menopausal women."

  "Whatever floats your boat," he said with a shrug.

  "Aye, aye Captain," I told him and got another smile.

  I didn't stay to press my luck. The Neuse was a long damn river all right, but I had a pretty good idea where estrogen was likely to land in the silt.

  It was a bigger clue than he realized but I wasn't about to let on. I'd let Bill Butler check up on Bradley Masters and Nassau hotels. I had better things to do.

  I was up Shit Creek but, hey, I had my paddle—and I intended to use it.

  Chapter Four

  Slim Jim Jones was being something of a jerk about lending me his canoe. For one thing, he wouldn't let go of it.

  "Come on, Jim. I brought it back in one piece last time."

  "It was missing the paddle."

  "I wasn't the one who lost it," I explained. "That was what's-his-name."

  He shook his head in disgust. Slim Jim had managed maybe one girlfriend in the past fifteen years. I'm sure he considered people who couldn't remember the names of their ex-lovers on a par with bathroom sink scum. "I didn't like all that hanky panky going on in front of my mamma's porch like that," he grumbled, holding firmly to the canoe. "You pretty near gave her a heart attack, paddling by without hardly a stitch on. You had no business bringing a stranger on my farm. You know Momma don't take kindly to trespassers."

  Did I ever. I first met Slim Jim about ten years ago when his sweet old mamma got arrested for chasing a pack of teenagers off her farm with a loaded double-barrel shotgun. She'd blown a hole in the flatbed of their truck as they escaped down the driveway. No one ever thought it would get to court but, thanks to a young prosecutor who didn't know any better, it was headed that way. That was when Slim Jim gave me a call. He got my name from his brother, a guard down at Central Prison who I'd run into a few times while on the job. Slim blamed himself for not being home at the time of the shotgun incident and explained that his mother had a fear of burglars dating to the time her old torn turkey had been stolen back in 1962, just a few days before Thanksgiving. "She took that harder than when Dad died," Slim had explained. "She was just trying to protect her property when she chased off those kids."

  He asked me to look into the background of the teenagers who had trespassed and, when I did, I found a gold mine of sealed juvenile records for breaking and entering, petty theft, assault, and—best of all—tying up an old woman in Apex so they could steal her sole possession of any value, a new radio. I paid the prosecutor a visit with my information and the charges against Momma Jones were dropped. Slim never told her why for fear she'd go after the teenagers again, but he paid my bill without complaint, invited me by his farm whenever I got homesick for the smell of manure, and, since that time, has proved to be a cantankerous but steady friend. We share a love of cornfields and a hatred for concrete. I steer clear of his mother, though. They gave her back her shotgun and I saw the rear end of the truck those kids were driving. Momma Jones knows how to shoot a little too well for my taste.

  Slim Jim interrupted my thoughts. "If your fellow had been wearing any pants, Momma might not have got so upset," he pointed out.

  "How was I supposed to know the guy would choose that moment to make his intentions clear?" I asked Slim, in deference to our long friendship, not to mention the fact that he was the only person I knew who owned a canoe.

  He scowled, his face scrunching up until it looked like an elf's perched on the end of a long stalk. "You got strange taste in boyfriends, Casey. They ought to at least be able to swim. I'm not saving any more of them for you. And next time, you give the mouth-to-mouth." He spit out a glob of tobacco juice, as if remembering.

  "I don't have any taste in boyfriends at all," I pointed out. "Look, I'll muck the barn for you when I'm done if you let me use the canoe and get someone to park my car for me on the pull-off before Raleigh Beach." I knew I'd get him with that one.

  He let go of the canoe and held out a brown-stained hand for my keys. "Since you're alone, I'll let you take it. But bring the paddle back this time. And no tipping."

  "I had to tip it last time,"
I protested. "My honor was at stake."

  He snorted and spat out a big wad of gooey tobacco juice. It splatted on the ground about half an inch from my hightops. He does that on purpose. "Have it back by dark," he warned me. "And just sort of duck down when you pass by the house if you happen to see Momma on the porch."

  Oh, sure. I'd duck down and that nasty old buzzard would think the canoe was empty and next thing I know she'd be stroking through the Neuse with those work- hardened 74-year-old biceps of hers and I'd have to beat her off with the paddle to keep her from tipping me, ass-over-tea-kettle, into the river. Thanks, but I'd just wave and paddle faster if I saw her. Slim Jim thought his mother a delicate flower of southern womanhood but the rest of Wake County knew better. She was human ragweed: tough, unstoppable, and capable of causing people a whole lot of misery on a regular basis.

  Slim and his mother owned one of the few remaining private farms along the Neuse. I pushed off into the river and felt a pang of envy as I passed through his land. His fields stretched in flat plains up from the riverbanks in shades of tan and brown, the harvested stalks of corn drooping beneath the October sun. He'd not yet plowed under in preparation for next year. Too busy needling me, I guess. The current was slow but steady and I quickly left Slim's farm behind without a glimpse of his crusty mamma.

  Soon the slow rhythm of the river seemed to rise from the bottom of the canoe and settle my hyper bones. I loved being on the water, especially sluggish rivers like the Neuse. It wasn't anywhere near as sleepy as the swamp I'd fished as a kid, but it was pretty damn drowsy. In most spots, it was no more than forty yards wide, the brown muddy current poking along between hardwood-lined banks of red clay. It was a sight to see on this sunny October day. Every tree was blazing with color, and the Indian summer still hung on so strong that the shores were teeming with basking turtles and colorful flocks of butterflies who had long since lost track of the season. Mysterious eddies formed at the water's edge where snakes slid from view at my passing.

  The Neuse is a long and meandering river that reaches from just north of Lake Michie all the way to the Carolina coast. For years, it has resisted development and still remains, for long stretches, as deserted as in the days when only Indians plied its shores. But the white man was closing in on the Neuse and much of the surrounding land had been earmarked or sold for development purposes. It would not be long before the blue-gray siding of prefab vacation homes replaced the blazing hardwoods along her shores. There were people fighting the transition and organizations carefully monitoring the water quality, but they had little money compared to the developers and I feared they'd grow tired long before the fight was done.

  It was precisely because of those tree-huggers, as some people called them, that I was even able to beat the flat-top boys to the punch. I knew from the report on the silt found on his body that Mitchell had to have been killed downstream from both the local pharmaceutical and textile plants that were allowed to dump their treated sewage into the Neuse. The chemicals found in the silt told me that. But the report had said nothing of human waste and I knew from a front-page article in the N&O that a trailer park just below Raleigh Beach had illegally disgorged a massive sewage overspill into the Neuse two days before. Water below the dam there was currently loaded with coliforms, bacteria that thrive on human waste—but the silt and water traces found on Mitchell were not. That left a three-mile stretch of river where the murder could have occurred and I'd be able to cover it pretty quickly thanks to Slim's canoe.

  I was in a hurry because I knew the SBI wouldn't take long to figure it out and I wanted to get there first. They'd never let me near the spot once it had been staked off. On foot, it would have taken days. I was hoping that the rustlings I heard in the woods as I passed were SBI men hoofing it and not some mad river stalker who had done Mitchell in and was waiting for the next victim.

  There was no one along the river at that time of day. It was too hot for both the fish and the fishermen. I checked first one bank of the river, then double-backed against the slow current to check the other. I was looking for a spot easily accessible to the public by car, but probably on private land or in an obscure area. Whoever had killed Thornton along the Neuse must have gotten him there willingly. He was a big man. No one would bother to kill him somewhere else, then drag him to the Neuse before carting him across the county to Mary Lee's. He must have had a meeting with someone he knew, someone who didn't want to take the remotest chance of being seen with him for personal—or political—reasons. Or both.

  Some of the more popular parking spots along the Neuse were out as the murder spot, since night time was prime time for teenagers suffering from hormonal overload and no one in their right mind who wanted to be alone would expect privacy in those areas. No, it had to have been a less public spot, probably south of the U.S. 1 bridge.

  I found what I was looking for two miles and almost three hours further downstream. I was sunburned and my arms were starting to ache from fighting the current on my doubling-back segments. I'm no lightweight when it comes to upper-body strength, but I'm no Arnold Schwarzenegger either. By the time I spotted a series of old campfires, deserted in the afternoon sun, I knew I was getting close. It was a remote fishing area, the charred campfire remains left behind by catfish seekers who sometimes squatted along the banks all night long, determined to haul in both breakfast and the next day's dinner by morning.

  The people who fished this stretch of the Neuse weren't using fancy fly rods and they weren't doing it for the fun—they were sustenance fishermen who kept every fish, no matter how small, because they had nothing else to eat. They were often old farmers whose land had given out or been polluted beyond use by nearby industrial areas. Or, more and more these days, Mexican immigrants who had dropped off the migrant worker circuit and made Raleigh their permanent home. They'd sneak down onto private land around dusk where the pickings were good and had forged quite a few illicit paths along the river. I pulled the canoe over and beached it, so I could explore the stretch better on foot. Footprints and the usual mess humans left behind dotted the shore: flattened fast food cups, clear plastic doughnut wrappers, Styrofoam that would last until the end of time, and a million or more cigarette butts. God, but people were worse than pigs. At least pigs ate garbage instead of simply making it.

  There were several trails leading from the shore's edge up into the surrounding woods, most winding over gnarled tree roots exposed by erosion, before turning into narrow lanes that criss-crossed the forest floor and fed into a wider dirt road about a quarter mile back from the shore. I was looking for a fairly big side lane, however, one wide enough to accommodate a car that had pulled off the main dirt road. Mitchell must have driven his own car and I knew he'd be the type to have a land yacht. I found one likely road, but there was no evidence of hanky panky along it.

  About a hundred yards further downstream, I had more luck. The buzzing was the first sign that I was getting close. It was an odd sound, more like a sigh than thousands of insect wings beating together. I slowed and looked for the source, acutely aware that the sun was still hot and high. It would be frying any part of Thornton Mitchell that had been left behind.

  At first I thought it was a dead raccoon or maybe a bloated possum getting ready to blow sky high in the heat. Flies were covering a spot about the size of a small mud puddle near the base of a tree that clung tenaciously to the steep mud bank. I stopped a good twenty feet away and cursed the lack of my glasses. Flies buzzing meant carrion and, if it wasn't an animal, it was good old Thornton. Or at least the part of him left behind. There was no way I was going to go tramping across the crime scene, not when Shrimpboat Shorty had gotten such a good look at my size-nine Ferragamos.

  I crept back up into the woods instead, relying on the mat of pine needles to obscure any trace I'd been there. Tip-toeing carefully across the tops of several large tree roots, I made my way to the base of the tree where the buzzing could be heard. Holding on carefully, I squatted t
o get a better look at the kill. A cloud of flies rose up at my intrusion and brushed past me in an angry swarm. I closed my eyes and fought the desire to let go of the trunk and swat them away from my face. Taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes and peered at what they had so reluctantly abandoned. I was pretty certain it was a pool of blood. The ruddy banks were stained a deeper brown around a circle of rocks piled into an indentation. That was what had attracted the flies. Instead of sinking through the sand, the blood had congealed in the hollows of some of the rocks, forming pulsating lakes of goo. My stomach lurched but I shrugged it off. It could have been worse. At least there were no body parts.

  I crept back to the lane leading to the spot and examined the edges of it carefully, looking for evidence that one or more large cars had turned around. I found nothing until I reached the larger dirt road. There, the recent wet weather meant that the surface was particularly muddy. It was rutted with numerous heavy tracks criss-crossing its surface. The underbrush had been crushed or trampled along the edges. Too much traffic, too many tires. I'd have to leave it to the experts.

  Still, now I knew where it had happened. And the location was significant. I was at a spot on the river almost equidistant between Raleigh and Wake Forest, where Thornton had lived. To me, that meant his killers had come from Raleigh and that this spot had been chosen not only for privacy but also as a compromise: they had been jockeying for power as well. It was middle ground.

  I was now convinced that Mitchell had been killed by more than one person. After all, he weighed close to 250 pounds. There wasn't a human alive who could have lifted him from this soggy bank and put him into the trunk of a car without help. There must have been two or more of them.

  I got to thinking about exactly how they had managed to wrangle his body out of there and I followed the tree roots back to the blood puddle. The flies had returned so I kept my distance, searching the sand for signs of heavy dragging. I found some markings that could have been giant turtles, but I doubted it. We were hours from the coast. No, old Thornton had surely been dragged south around the tree's roots and toward a softer spot in the bank where he could more easily be pulled toward the road. What a pain in the ass for the killers. Which told me something else. The murder had been an afterthought or an accident, not premeditated. Privacy is important when it comes to killing, but so is convenient body disposal. The bank was practically quicksand. You'd have to be a masochist to want to drag a body through here.