“You bring the key to the box?”

“I got it,” Lee snapped. His pulse fluttered as he prepared to ask the question foremost in his mind. “Katie come back yet?”

“Ain’t seen her,” Cy said without looking at Lee, who felt as if a scabbed wound had been torn open again to bleed. “Pete showed up around three with a couple loaves of bread. Said Katie sent him off to the crossroads store this morning. Damn long walk for a kid his size. I can’t figure what she had in mind.”

“Pete ain’t around here now, is he?” Lee said, trying to refocus on immediate concerns. No ten-year-old should see them carry his dead cousins out of the basement.

“No. I fed him dinner and told him to stay in his room for a couple hours. Told him I’d whup him if I saw him and he knows I would. Anyhow he’s too tired to complain. Now let’s get them bodies out before something else happens.”

Lee followed Cy down to the basement. The clammy air didn’t smell like death yet, but he knew the decomposing had begun. Cy took Kevin Emory’s ankles, leaving Lee to grope beneath the sheet for the armpits. With no human warmth to dry them, his cousin’s clothes were still cold and wet. When Lee lifted, the dead man’s head fell between his thighs; he winced at the upside-down view of Kevin’s red-brown hair, ruddy face turned pallid, lifeless eyes. The unseeing pupils were as wide as a finger. They carried Kevin’s body out to Lee’s canoe, then returned to the basement for Tom’s.

“You OK with all that weight?” Lee asked as they laid the corpse on the floor of Cy’s canoe. With three bodies in the green canoe this afternoon, the hole in its side had sunk below the waterline. “Want me to take the box?”

“I’ll take it,” Cy said gruffly. Lee turned to his own canoe and laid the shovel alongside the covered body. Then he and Cy dragged the laden canoes back to the canal, paddled them across, and portaged to a muddy landing on the riverbank.

Looking out toward the island in the fading light, Lee could see that the current was running fast. In the summer, the river drifted and was no more than waist-deep here, with scattered rocks the size of rowboats littering the channel. It was spring now, so the water should be higher and faster, but tonight it looked above a normal spring level. He could only see a handful of lumpish shadows raising their backs above the surface. A week of warm weather had brought an abrupt end to winter in the western reaches of the Potomac watershed and suddenly melted heavy accumulations of snow and ice. Lee guessed that the water they had to cross might be five or six feet deep and rising.

“Looks like the river’s come up.”

“Maybe,” Cy said, gazing out toward the dark shape of the island. “Not enough to worry about. Long as we keep moving.”

Lee held the green canoe steady as Cy climbed in, then lifted the bow from the bank and pushed the hull forward into the water. He stepped into the black canoe lightly with one foot and pushed off the bank, then followed Cy out into the eddy.

“What part of the island are we shooting for?” Cy said as Lee paddled alongside.

Lee pointed directly across the river, then swung his arm a few degrees downstream. “Tail end. On the far side there’s an eddy where we can pull up to a beach. Got a fair current right here, so we’ll need to face upstream and ferry over. Follow me.”

He took a stroke on each side and his canoe glided past Cy’s. After crossing the eddy line, he set the canoe against the current at a fifteen-degree angle and stroked repeatedly on the port side to keep the stern pointed upstream, aiming well above the upper end of the island. The weight of the dead man in his boat made the canoe feel sluggish and unresponsive. As hard as he paddled, the canoe still drifted downstream as it rode sideways across the current toward the island. He looked to his left to chart his progress. He would miss the tail end of the island, but not by much. Directly below the island the current would be minimal, so it would be easy for him to paddle up to the tail.

He looked to his right. Cy was following at the same angle but losing ground to the current. The body and all those coins are slowing you down, Lee thought. The island was broad enough at its mid-point that the eddy below it extended a few hundred feet downstream. So even if Cy missed the island, he could paddle back up inside the eddy. Lee refocused on his own boat when he felt the barely-submerged skin of a rock brush the canoe’s hull just behind his seat. He paddled hard on his left to keep the canoe from drifting downstream onto it.

A few minutes more brought him into the eddy below the island, and he felt the current diminish. He took a deep breath and paddled more easily. The muscles in his chest and shoulders burned, then grudgingly unclenched. He turned the canoe to face straight upstream and took alternating strokes. Within thirty feet of the island the current disappeared. He spun the canoe to monitor Cy’s progress.

The ambient light reflected off the dark water and he could see that Cy had finally reached the eddy below the island and was paddling on alternate sides to head straight upstream. But his ferry had carried him to the eddy’s tapered base, where the split currents converged and began to regain strength. With the additional weight and downstream distance, he had to work much harder than Lee had to attain the island. After paddling in place for almost a minute, he passed a critical point and began to make headway. When Cy finally drew alongside, he was gasping. He shipped his paddle and slumped forward, hands on his knees and breathing heavily. “Damn current is a lot stronger than it looks.”

“Spring runoff. Feels like it’s still rising.”

“Then let’s get these poor bastards in the ground and get the hell out of here.” He gestured toward the island’s Virginia-facing shore. “That our landing?”

“That’s it. It’s a sandy beach when the river’s down.”

Cy grunted and jammed his paddle into the quiet water, taking short strokes. Lee followed and they eased up the island’s Virginia side, navigating between rocks to a spot where the rising river lapped at long grass and low brush. They got out and pulled the canoes ashore. Lee grabbed the shovel from his boat while Cy pulled the toolbox from under his seat.

“Where are we going?” Cy asked, still breathing hard.

Lee pointed inland and upstream. “About twenty paces in. There’s a clearing with big flat rocks and grass. On the far end is a huge sycamore with three trunks coming together. We can bury the bodies on one side of the tree and the money on the other.”

“Let’s take a look,” Cy said, “and make sure you got the right island.”

Lee nodded and retrieved the folded tarp from his canoe. He carried the shovel and tarp several paces up the beach before turning inland on an overgrown trail.

“Deer path,” he said over his shoulder. Cy followed with the toolbox. Thin budding branches splayed across the trail, so Lee hunched over as he proceeded. He was hesitant to turn his back on Cy, but logic told him that the time to worry was after the digging had been done. He kept a few steps in front, just in case. The trail curved left and right, then crossed a small gully and ended at the entrance to the clearing.

Across the opening, he saw the enormous sycamore raising its bone-white branches into the night sky. They walked across flat rocks speckled with moss and onto a half-moon fringe of meadow grass between the rocks and the tree.

“Found this spot with my friends when I was a kid,” Lee said. “After we pulled up on the island to get some shade and take a break from fishing.”

Cy laid the toolbox down and gestured for Lee to hand him the shovel. Standing arm’s length from the tree, he drove the blade a few inches into the dirt. “Feels like gravel,” he muttered. “Tough digging.” He left the shovel upright and walked back across the clearing. “Let’s get it over with.”