“Look at that.”

A black extended-cab pickup rolls into the parking lot, the truck bed enclosed by an aftermarket hardtop, turning into an empty space. Two figures get out, moving around to the tailgate. They’re too far from the camera to identify, but I’m certain the truck is Salazar’s, and there’s nothing about the figures to suggest they aren’t Keller and Salazar.

“What’re they doing?” he asks.

I lean closer to the screen. They reach into the bed, sliding out a long white form. I don’t say anything to the security chief, but it looks like a body bag to me. Between them, the two men heft the bag, carrying it off-screen in the direction of the marina. They return hours later, just before daybreak, and drive away, no sign of the body bag they’d been carrying before.

After burning the relevant footage onto a DVD, he hands it over wide-eyed, under no illusions about what he’s just witnessed.

“If you talk about this,” I tell him, “you’ll be jeopardizing an ongoing investigation.”

He promises not to, punctuating the words with a dazzled gulp.

The temptation to board Salazar’s boat is strong, but for that I really will need a warrant, otherwise anything I find will be inadmissible. Still, I gaze out over the marina awhile, the bobbing boats illuminated by strong stadium lights, thinking about how easily I could slip through for a little preview, just to make sure the search warrant is worth the effort. The only thing stopping me is my conscience. That and the thought of the security cameras overhead.

“Seven years,” the captain says, shaking his head at the muted television on the credenza, where a platform of politicians take turns reading memorial speeches before a gathered crowd and the ubiquitous media. The ticker crawling across the bottom of the screen recaps a National Weather Service warning that Galveston, just south of us, is where the hurricane will make landfall, whipping up a catastrophic storm surge.

He turns his chair to face me, momentarily uncertain why I’m here. Then he remembers.

“About Thomson’s body,” he says. “You haven’t released it yet.”

“No.”

“Any particular reason? The man’s wife wants to bury him. It’s hard enough on everyone, a brother officer going out like that. No need to prolong the suffering, March.”

“Maybe there is,” I say.

I take a deep breath, then lay it all out. I start with Chad Macneil, who disappeared, presumably with Keller’s money, and then Mitch Geiger’s rumor about the string of drug heists, perhaps an attempt to make up the loss. He listens impassively with an occasional lizard-like blink of the eyes. When I mention Thomson’s offer and how I took it to Wilcox for help, he raises an eyebrow, nothing more.

The ballistics business, Castro’s theory about the tactics at the Morales scene and later the switched barrels, gets no reaction, but at least he doesn’t interrupt. I explain the photo on Thomson’s phone and end with the footage of Keller and Salazar – I make the identification sound a little more solid than it is – carrying a body bag out to the boat.

“So they dumped this woman’s body out in the Gulf?” he asks. “And then they shot Thomson to keep him from rolling over?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“And you’re just bringing this to me now?”

I answer with an apologetic shrug.

“You wouldn’t have said a thing if I hadn’t asked about releasing the body.”

“I wanted to be sure first,” I say.

“Because you were afraid I’d take you off the case?” I nod.

“Well,” he says, leaning forward, “you were right. That’s exactly what I’m going to do – ”

“But, sir.”

He consults the calendar on his desk blotter. “As of… let’s say next Thursday, the eighteenth. On that date you will conclude your investigation, release the body, and move on. Unless of course something more concrete develops, in which case…” His voice trails off and he turns back to the television, dismissing me by unmuting the volume just as a stern-faced woman in red says why we must never, will never, forget, to a ripple of sober applause.

I stumble outside his office with another week on the clock, though it is much more than that, I start to realize. Hedges knows, he knows and approves, willing to give me enough time to develop something solid, assuming I work quickly. There’s an understanding between us now, a faint flicker of the dimly remembered bond. Something akin to trust.

There’s no time to consider the ramifications, though, because Charlotte is waiting.

I clock out early and head home, pausing at the curb with the engine running until she comes out, unsteady on her heels, fixing an earring in place. She wears a black linen skirt and a black cardigan, her hair pulled back in an elegant chignon, as if it’s a dinner date we’re headed to and not a graveside.

Stopping on the steps, she remembers suddenly, ducking inside again and reappearing with the plastic-wrapped flowers. I go around to the passenger door, opening it for her, snapping it shut once she’s safely inside. Circling back, I get behind the wheel. Next to me, the flowers on the floor mat rising up between her knees, my wife covers her face in her hands and sobs.

“It’s all right,” I say, flattening a hand on her back, feeling the gaps between the vertebrae.

She motions for me to drive.

So I drive.

At the headstone of our daughter, kneeling down with our hands clasped, we unwrap the flowers and lay them down, and then we water them with tears. On this day seven years ago, something was taken from us all. What we lost, in the overall scheme, may pale in comparison. But to Charlotte and me, it was everything. She was everything. And on the days, the infrequent days, when my heart clings to a belief in the afterlife, she is the reason, the fragile thought that the small, cold hand I let go of once will be warm once more, warm and with the power not only to be clung to but to cling. What faith I have, and it isn’t much, resides in the grip of that tiny hand.

CHAPTER 22

After Hurricane Rita, the sequel to Katrina, left the neighborhood without power and thus without air-conditioning, I stopped talking about getting a generator and actually bought one, storing it in the garage along with some sticky, dust-covered jerry cans of gasoline and gallons of drinking water. Now, instructions in hand, I try to work out how to operate the thing. Never much good with engines or anything mechanical, the challenge soon stumps me, but not enough to summon Tommy down to assist. His repertoire of life skills, augmented by the time he spent in Africa, no doubt includes the function of generators. But I’d better wait at least until Charlotte is gone.

Along with Ann, she plans to weather the storm in style at a Dallas hotel, returning once everything’s back to normal. Her overnight bag is packed, waiting by the front door for her sister’s arrival. She finds me in the garage, frowning at the inscrutable little machine.

“I feel like I’m abandoning you,” she says.

“Don’t. I’ll be happier knowing you’re all right. Besides, if I don’t figure this thing out, it’ll be like an oven inside. You don’t want to go through that again.”

She takes the instructions out of my grease-stained fingers and attempts for a few minutes to make sense of them. Just as she grasps the basic idea and starts explaining, Ann’s Toyota hums quietly up the driveway, a Prius hybrid just like the ones we pretended to be giving away in the cars-for-criminals scam.

“Gotta go,” Charlotte says, pecking me on the lips.

Since the grave visit, she’s been more relaxed. All the static building in her atmosphere suddenly discharged in a flow of quiet tears, and now it’s like the tension never existed. We haven’t had an argument in twenty-four hours. Last night, she stayed up with me instead of going to bed early. Even the sleeping pills have disappeared into the nightstand.