“Thanks again.” Mia looked back at the boat, where Beck was still talking to Rich Meyer. If she hurried, she could change and get back to the dock before he even realized she was gone.

She fell in step with Vanessa.

“If that is the woman from Cameron, why do you think he left her in St. Dennis?” Vanessa asked as they walked toward the boat showroom.

“I’m thinking he’s taking another shot at Beck,” Mia said. “Leaving the body on your dad’s boat was just another way of making it personal.”

“My…?” Vanessa smiled. “Oh, Hal’s not my dad, he’s Beck’s. We had the same mother, different fathers.”

“I am so sorry.” Mia flushed with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“Hey, you’re not the first person who wasn’t aware we’re half-siblings. It’s okay. We’ve never referred to each other in terms of fractions.”

“I apologize, all the same. Someone just mentioned that Hal was Beck’s father…”

“I would love to have had him for a dad. I never really knew my own father. He and my mother split up before I was born.”

Vanessa stopped in mid-stride.

“They do walk alike, don’t they?” Vanessa nodded toward the parking lot. Hal was taking more orange cones from the back of a pick-up truck that had just pulled up and setting them around the end of the lot.

“They do. I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out.” Mia told her. “I’m usually pretty observant.”

“How would you know? Beck doesn’t call Hal, ‘Dad’ and they have different last names.” Vanessa smiled. “The funny thing is, they are so much alike in so many ways, and yet they didn’t even know about each other until Beck was…”

Vanessa slowed her pace. “If you didn’t know about their relationship, you probably haven’t heard the story.”

Mia shook her head, no.

“You could be the only person in St. Dennis who hasn’t. Hal was living here when it happened. He’d grown up here, came back after college and stayed. Maggie-she’s our mother-met Hal in Indiana, when he was playing minor league baseball. She was eighteen and he was in his early twenties, I think. Anyway, she met him when he came into her parent’s restaurant. She was engaged to someone else, but apparently that didn’t stop her and Hal from falling in love. Then the unthinkable happened.”

“She got pregnant.”

“Yeah, well, that, too. But before she even knew about that, Hal was drafted into the army and ended up in Vietnam. He didn’t know about Beck, and because her parents were having a hissy, they forced Maggie to marry the guy she was engaged to.”

“Did he know…?”

“About Beck? Yes. Said he didn’t care, he loved Maggie, wanted to marry her anyway, he’d treat Beck as if he were his own, yada yada.”

“I take it he didn’t?”

“He tried. But frankly, I think Maggie must have been miserable. Her brother-my Uncle Jack-told me that her husband really loved her but couldn’t make her happy. I guess she just couldn’t love him. They didn’t stay married long, less than a year. She took Beck and moved to Chicago and stayed with a cousin for a while, I don’t really know the whole story. Maggie doesn’t talk about that time in her life very often. She remarried-my father-when Beck was about twelve or thirteen. About a year later, she found out she was pregnant with me, but by that time, she’d left that husband, too. Beck was supposedly a real wild child, so she tracked Hal down and drove Beck to St. Dennis. The way I heard it, she walked right up to Hal’s door one night and rang the bell, and when Hal answered it, she said something like, ‘I can’t do a damned thing with him, so you’re going to have to take it from here.’”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Handed over Beck’s birth certificate and just walked away.”

“Wow. That’s hard to believe.”

“Not if you knew Maggie.” Vanessa watched Beck approach them, and she lowered her voice. “Frankly, I always thought he was the lucky one…”

Mia looked at her, a puzzled look on her face.

“She kept me.” Vanessa walked up the steps and opened the door to the showroom, leaving a stunned Mia to follow.

“I guess I should have expected it, but I really didn’t think he’d make his move so quickly.” Beck stood over the body, Viv Reilly on one side, Mia on the other. Rich Meyer stood on the dock, watching. He was fairly sure the body was that of his neighbor’s child, and did not want to be on the boat while evidence was being collected.

“Well, you said bold, he wanted to show you bold,” the ME said.

“That was my initial reaction, too. But I’m not so sure…” Mia told them.

“Not sure about what?” Beck asked.

“Not sure this is it. The big move. I’m wondering if this isn’t more like wagging a finger in your face. I expected something…I don’t know, more dramatic.” Mia frowned.

“I think for Hal, finding a dead naked woman wrapped up like a sandwich on the deck of his boat was pretty dramatic,” Beck said.

“I’m sure it was. This just feels like, I don’t know, staging, maybe. I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am.” She slipped on the plastic gloves and said, “Where would you like to start?”

“Is it beneath an FBI agent to dust for prints?” he asked. “Do you have a problem playing CSI?”

Mia made a face and grabbed the kit from his hands. “Are you kidding? I can dust with the best of them.”

Beck vacuumed the deck but wasn’t willing to bet that anything of any use would turn up in the bag. Though he was hoping for some fibers or hair, he wasn’t optimistic. Just as he wasn’t hopeful Mia would find any prints that would lead them anywhere. He was certain the killer spent as little time on the Shady Lady as possible, wore gloves and left nothing of himself behind. Just as he’d left nothing of himself on the other bodies they’d found.

“Crafty son of a bitch,” Beck said under his breath.

“What?” Mia stood up and turned around.

“I said he was very careful.”

“You betcha’,” she agreed. “So far, I’ve found prints on the railing, but I’ll bet my life savings they’re Hal’s. Or maybe one of ours-yours, Viv’s, mine, Meyer’s, even. This is what you grab onto when you’re hopping onto the boat. I did it myself. But there’s no way this guy would be careless enough to leave a print. My guess is that he wiped down anything he may have touched.”

“People watch too damned much TV,” he said. “They think they know how to clean a crime scene as well as any cop. And in many cases, they do. This guy, for one. I don’t see a damned thing. Not even a footprint. I’m betting he came on board in his stocking feet.”

He stood and waved to the ME.

“Might as well do your thing, Viv.”

“Give me just a minute more,” Mia told him. “I think we need to check the cabin.”

“I’ll do that.” He removed the powder and brush from the kit, but hesitated at the tape.

“You finished with this?” he asked, holding it up.

“I will be in a minute. I’m afraid I’ve gotten all I’m going to get.” She stood up and rubbed the small of her back, then reached for the tape. She lifted the impression from the last bit of railing, then transferred the image to a fingerprint card. She handed the tape back to Beck.

He took it with him into the cabin, and when he emerged ten minutes later, he had a small stack of evidence cards under his arm.

“This should do it,” he told Mia, “though I suspect most of the prints we have belong to Hal.”

“We can print ourselves when we get back to the station for elimination, but I’m sure you’re right.” She began to repack the kit. “I certainly don’t expect any surprises.”

“Did you take any prints from the tarp?” Beck asked.

“No.” Mia straightened up. “I’ll do it now.”

“What do you use here for fabric? Ninhydrin, silver nitrate…what?” She poked into the kit and found the silver nitrate. “Ah, silver nitrate, it is.”

She looked up from the large black bag and asked, “Want to give me a hand? You spray, I’ll photograph?”