The trees were alive with the sounds of birds excited by the early arrival of spring. The songs and shrieks and squawks blended into a cacophony that seemed to take on an especially discordant and unnerving quality. And on every available limb, log, and stump, water snakes had crawled out to sun themselves in an eerie ritual of spring. The forest along the banks seemed hung with reptiles, like dark, muscular ropes of live bunting.

Taking up the push-pole, Nick rose at the back of the pirogue and sent it gliding north and west. The route was twisted, his passing witnessed by no one. Nature claimed the land here for several miles and no man in recent history had challenged Her. Then the channel widened slightly and the forest came to an abrupt halt on the western bank, marking the edge of the first piece of domesticated property away from the murder scene. Marcus Renard's home.

The house stood a hundred yards or so away, elegant in its simplicity. Clean lines, plain columns. The modest home of a modest indigo planter in a past century. Tall French windows opened onto a brick veranda where Victor Renard sat at a patio table.

Victor was slightly bigger than Marcus, thicker bodied. While he had the social awareness of a small child, he had the physical strength of a thirty-seven-year-old man and had once been turned out of a group home for destroying a bed in a fit of temper. Emotions-his own or those of others- were difficult for him to comprehend or process. The autistic mind seemed unable to decode feelings. For the most part, he expressed none, though odd things would sometimes trigger agitation and occasionally anger. At the same time, Victor was mathematically gifted, able to easily work equations that could stump college students, and he could name the genus and species of thousands of animals and plants and describe each in textbook detail.

People around Bayou Breaux didn't understand Victor Renard's condition. They were frightened of him. They mistook him for being retarded or schizophrenic. He was neither.

Nick had considered it his duty to discover these things about Victor and his autism. An arsenal of information was far more useful to a detective than any other kind of weapon. The smallest, seemingly insignificant fact or detail could prove to be the one piece that made the rest of the puzzle work.

Victor Renard's mind was itself a complex mystery. If somewhere in the labyrinth he held a clue to his brother's guilt, Nick suspected they would never know. If they could ever bring Marcus to trial, Smith Pritchett would never attempt to use Victor as a witness. Aside from the familial connection, Victor's autism precluded him from appearing reliable or even coherent in court.

Nick leaned lightly against the push-pole, holding the pirogue against the slow current. He stood at the edge of his legal boundary. Kudrow had sought and been granted a temporary restraining order for his client, specifically outlining how near Nick could come to him. If he tested those limits too strongly or too often, he could be brought up on stalking charges. The irony both amused and disgusted him.

He watched as Victor became aware of him, sitting up straighter, then reaching for a pair of binoculars on the table. He came up out of his chair as if someone had set it on fire. He rushed twenty yards across the lawn, his gait strange, his arms straight down at his sides. He stopped and raised the binoculars again. Then he dropped the binoculars on the strap around his neck and began to rock himself from side to side in jerky, irregular movements, like a windup toy gone wrong.

"Not now!" Victor shouted, pointing at him. "Red, red! Very red! Enter out!"

When Nick made no move to leave, Victor rushed forward another ten steps, wrapped his arms tight around his chest, and rocked himself around in a circle. Strange, piercing shrieks tore from him.

At the house, one of the French doors opened and Doll Renard rushed onto the veranda. Her agitation almost equaled her son's. She started toward Victor, then turned back toward the house. Marcus emerged, and limped across the lawn to his brother.

"Very red!" Victor screamed as Marcus took hold of his arm. "Enter out!"

He screamed again as Marcus took the binoculars from him.

Nick expected shouting, then remembered Renard's fractured jaw and felt not remorse, but discomfort at the power of his own anger. Renard came toward the bank.

"You're violating the court order," he said, hands curled into fists at his sides.

"I think not," Nick said. "I'm on a public waterway."

"You're a criminal!"

Nick clucked his tongue. "A matter of perspective, that."

"We're calling the police, Fourcade!"

"This is the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office. You really think they'll come to your aid? You have no friends there, Marcus."

"You're wrong," Renard insisted. "And you're breaking the law. You're harassing me."

Yards behind him, Victor had fallen to his knees to rock himself. His banshee shrieks drove the birds from the trees.

Nick looked innocent. "Who, me? I'm just fishing." Lazily he straightened away from the push-pole, moving the pirogue from the bank. "Ain't no law against fishing, no."

He let the craft drift backward, following the curve of the land until his view of Renard's house and his brother was gone and only Renard himself remained in his line of vision. Focus, he thought. Focus, calm, patience. Exist within the current, and the goal will be reached.

Annie sat in an old ladder-back chair with a seat woven from the rawhide of some unfortunate long-dead cow. The view of the bayou was pretty from Fourcade's small gallery. She wondered if Fourcade ever idled his motor long enough to appreciate it. He didn't seem a man to care about such things, but then he had proven to be full of surprises, hadn't he?

It didn't surprise her that he lived in such a remote, inaccessible place. He was a remote, inaccessible man. It surprised her that his yard was neat, that he was obviously working on the house.

Her stomach growled. She'd been waiting an hour. Fourcade's truck was here, but Fourcade was not. God only knew where he'd gone. The sun was going down and her resolve was running out in direct proportion to her increasing need for a meal. To occupy her mind she tried to imagine a hiding spot in the Jeep where she might have tucked away an emergency Snickers and forgotten about it. She'd already been through the glove compartment and looked under the seats. She concluded that Mullen had stolen the candy, and was perfectly happy to waste another few moments hating him for it.

A pirogue came into view, skating through a patch of cypress deadheads. Nerves tightened in Annie's stomach, and she rose from the chair. Fourcade guided the boat in alongside the dock, took his time tying off the pirogue and walking up the bank. He wore a black T-shirt that fit him like a coat of paint and fatigue pants tucked into a pair of trooper boots. He didn't smile. He didn't blink.

"How did you find this place?" he asked.

"I'd be a poor candidate for detective if I couldn't manage to dig up an address." Annie stepped behind the chair, resting her hands on its back.

"That you would, chérie. But no. You got initiative. You came to take the bull by the horns, out?"

"I want to see what you have on the case."

He nodded. "Good."

"But you have to know up front this doesn't change what happened Wednesday night. If that's what you're really after, then say so now and I'll just go on home."

Nick studied her for a moment. She kept one hand close to the open flap of her faded denim jacket. She doubtless had the Sig Sauer handy. She didn't trust him. He didn't blame her.

He shrugged. "You saw what you saw."