“I need to know my grandkids are safe,” Sonny replies without looking up. “I ain’t saying nothing else, or doing no more damn puzzles.”
Crouching beside the table, I look into Thornfield’s one exposed eye. “Did you love your father, Sonny?”
The eye widens, then blinks slowly. “My father?”
“You see . . . if that corpse in the swamp turns out to be my father, my mother won’t be able to stand it. My little girl, either.”
“They can stand it,” he says. “People can stand almost anything, when they have to.”
Kaiser taps my shoulder, but I don’t move. “I’m not letting myself believe that corpse is my dad, Sonny. Any minute, I’m going to get a call saying it was some other poor bastard who crossed the Knox family. And when that happens, you’re going to go back into the cellblock and find out where Snake took my father.”
“Get up, Penn,” Kaiser says sharply.
As I stand, I say, “If you don’t, I’m going to flush this deal you two are making straight down the toilet.”
“No, he won’t,” Kaiser says, pulling at my arm. “He can’t, Sonny.”
“You don’t think so? All I have to do is let Forrest Knox know who’s been blabbing in here. I talked to him face-to-face less than an hour ago, and I’ve got a phone that’ll put me right back in touch with him.”
Thornfield’s eyes have locked onto mine, and the terror in them gives a measure of the fear Forrest inspires in his ranks.
“Get your ass out of here, Penn!” Kaiser explodes, his face bright red. “Now!”
“Not until I find out whether my father’s dead or alive.”
WHEN MOSE FINALLY BROUGHT his boat within reach of the corpse, Caitlin felt no relief. She had hoped for some distinguishing mark that would tell her the dead man wasn’t Tom, but she saw nothing like that. The skin of the back was pale, as Tom’s was, and since most of the corpse was jammed under some limbs, she couldn’t turn it over. She looked for the red marks of psoriasis she had sometimes seen on Tom’s back, but the water had probably soaked the skin to the point that they wouldn’t show, especially under the surface.
Mose cut the motor.
“Do you have a pole or something?” Caitlin asked.
“Pole no good for that. You need a hook. Grappling hook.”
“I think we’re going to have to wait for Carl,” Jordan said. “Maybe even for divers. Or at least waders.”
The longer Caitlin stared at the submerged corpse, the more terrified she became. She had to know whether that was Tom or not. Carl was probably going to call Penn on the way over here, and the first question he would ask would be who the dead man was.
“We have to identify him,” Caitlin said.
“How?” Jordan asked. “He doesn’t have a head.”
“I have to know whether or not it’s Tom.”
“Dat body missin’ a leg, too,” Mose said, craning his neck. “Look. A gator took it off.”
Caitlin squinted into the muddy water, but she couldn’t tell.
“How did the body get caught up in the branches like that?” Jordan asked.
“Gators do that,” Mose said. “They stuff their kill up under a bank or in some tree roots underwater, just like us puttin’ meat in the Frigidaire.”
A shiver ran the length of Caitlin’s body. She had been close to a feeding alligator before, and she wanted no part of it again.
“We gotta get out of here,” Mose said. “Dis business for the high sheriff.”
“How deep is the water here?” Caitlin asked, slowly untying the bandanna from her neck.
“Can’t be sure,” the fisherman replied. “Could be four feet, could be ten.”
“Guess.”
The old man surveyed the trees that bordered the patch of clear water, then studied the fallen tree that held the corpse in its branches. “Probably six, eight feet deep here.”
A sun-faded life jacket lay in the bottom of the boat near Jordan’s feet. Caitlin picked it up, slipped it on, and tightened the straps as best she could.
“What the hell you doin’?” Mose asked, starting to stand. “This boat ain’t gonna turn over.”
Before he could reach her, Caitlin bent her knees, then let herself fall backward over the gunwale, the way she’d been taught to enter the water when scuba diving in the Caribbean. She prayed that the splash would scare away any scavengers.
The black water enveloped her like an icy blanket. She’d expected it to be cold, but not this cold. After a stunned second or two, she bobbed to the surface, the life jacket bringing her upright. Jordan and Mose were screaming from the boat, telling her to get back in, but having gone this far, she wasn’t about to stop now. She didn’t think she could climb back into the boat without tipping it over anyway.
She couldn’t feel bottom beneath her, so she kicked toward the corpse. The reek worsened as she got closer, and her shoes grew heavy in the twenty seconds it took her to come within reach of the body. Catching hold of a waterlogged branch, Caitlin catalogued the physical traits that might identify Tom. The cold made it hard to concentrate, and the stink worsened the problem, but her fear was stronger than her revulsion.
Deformed fingers, she thought. Spooned fingernails. Coronary bypass scar . . . Tom had his chest cracked in 1987. Would the scar still be visible after all these years? Gray chest hair . . .
The way the corpse was situated, Caitlin realized that the quickest way to see anything was to simply swim under it rather than try to shift it. As she struggled to shed the life jacket, Jordan began shouting at her again, but Caitlin ignored her. She simply had to know.
The buckles of the life jacket were stuck. Caitlin pressed and jerked as hard as she could, but none of the damned clasps would come undone. Some part of her knew she must be doing something wrong, yet she couldn’t solve this simple problem. The life jacket was strangling her! At last Jordan’s shouts broke through her wild frustration.