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I popped the box he indicated into my pocket.

I carried the shotgun out to my car, Beck trailing on my heels.

“You have to lock the shotgun in your trunk and the shells in the car,” the detective informed me. I did exactly what he said, even putting the shells in the glove compartment, and then I turned to face him. He would be glad to be out of my sight, and I didn’t think he would look for Jason with any enthusiasm.

“Did you check around back?” I asked.

“I had just gotten here when you pulled up.”

I jerked my head in the direction of the pond behind the house, and we circled around to the rear. My brother, aided by Hoyt Fortenberry, had put in a large deck outside the back door maybe two years ago. He’d arranged some nice outdoor furniture he’d gotten on end-of-season sale at Wal-Mart. Jason had even put an ashtray on the wrought-iron table for his friends who went outside to smoke. Someone had used it. Hoyt smoked, I recalled. There was nothing else interesting on the deck.

The ground sloped down from the deck to the pond. While Alcee Beck checked the back door, I looked down to the pier my father had built, and I thought I could see a smear on the wood. Something in me crumpled at the sight, and I must have made a noise. Alcee came to stand by me, and I said, “Look at the pier.”

He went on point, just like a setter. He said, “Stay where you are,” in an unmistakably official voice. He moved carefully, looking down at the ground around his feet before he took each step. I felt like an hour passed before Alcee finally reached the pier. He squatted down on the sun-bleached boards to take a close look. He focused a little to the right of the smear, evaluating something I couldn’t see, something I couldn’t even make out in his mind. But then he wondered what kind of work boots my brother wore; that came in clear.

“Caterpillars,” I called. The fear built up in me till I felt I was vibrating with the intensity of it. Jason was all I had.

And I realized I’d made a mistake I hadn’t done in years: I’d answered a question before it had been asked out loud. I clapped a hand over my mouth and saw the whites of Beck’s eyes. He wanted away from me. And he was thinking maybe Jason was in the pond, dead. He was speculating that Jason had fallen and knocked his head against the pier, and then slid into the water. But there was a puzzling print. . . .

“When can you search the pond?” I called.

He turned to look at me, terror on his face. I hadn’t had anyone look at me like that in years. I had him spooked, and I hadn’t wanted to have that effect on him.

“The blood is on the dock,” I pointed out, trying to improve matters. Providing a reasonable explanation was second nature. “I’m scared Jason went into the water.”

Beck seemed to settle down a little after that. He turned his eyes back to the water. My father had chosen the site for the house to include the pond. He’d told me when I was little that the pond was very deep and fed by a tiny stream. The area around two-thirds of the pond was mowed and maintained as yard; but the farthest edge of it was left thickly wooded, and Jason enjoyed sitting on the deck in the late evening with binoculars, watching critters come to drink.

There were fish in the pond. He kept it stocked. My stomach lurched.

Finally, the detective walked up the slope to the deck. “I have to call around, see who can dive,” Alcee Beck said. “It may take a while to find someone who can do it. And the chief has to okay it.”

Of course, such a thing would cost money, and that money might not be in the parish budget. I took a deep breath. “Are you talking hours, or days?”

“Maybe a day or two,” he said at last. “No way anyone can do it who isn’t trained. It’s too cold, and Jason himself told me it was deep.”

“All right,” I said, trying to suppress my impatience and anger. Anxiety gnawed at me like another kind of hunger.

“Carla Rodriguez was in town last night,” Alcee Beck told me, and after a long moment, the