Chapter 3

Sizemore knelt at the box with the blade open, and for a few seconds he did nothing but look at the old man.

That was the part that didn't fit.

In two years on the water, Brody Sizemore had learned the shape of a guilty man. They talked too much. They answered questions nobody had asked. Their hands moved - pockets, hat brim, truck door, anything to do. Their eyes went to the road, checking for somebody coming.

Hollis Renfro sat on the trailer tongue with his hands flat on his knees and watched the officer's face. When he looked away, he looked at the name tape above Sizemore's pocket. Then back.

Kelsey saw it from the top of the ramp and didn't know what to do with it. She looked at the tape herself - SIZEMORE - then at the old man, then at the tape again.

"Last chance," Sizemore said.

"For what?"

"To tell me what's in this box."

"I told you. It isn't mine to open."

"Whose is it, then?"

Hollis didn't answer that one. Down at the water, the aluminum boat nudged the cleat and the hull rang softly.

"Grandpa," Eli said. His voice came out thin. "Can we just go home?"

"In a minute, bud."

"He cut my net."

"I know."

Sizemore stood up and turned his shoulder so the boy was behind him, which meant the boy was also behind the box. "Let's get something straight," he said. "This is a public landing. That's a public waterway. That boat's sitting in it with no registration displayed, and you're refusing to identify the contents of a container that came out of it. I can write that up six different ways."

"You can write it up any way you like," Hollis said. "It'll still say the same thing."

Kelsey had heard him do this before. Not the words - the rhythm. It was the same rhythm from last July, on the pontoon dock, when he'd stood over a woman's tackle box and explained, in a level voice, all the ways the situation could go badly for her. He always built the reason after he'd already decided.

"Sir," Kelsey said.

Both men turned.

She hadn't planned to say anything. It came out of her the way a cough does. "Sir, the registration - the sticker on the hull is expired, but the renewal's current. I saw the card in the truck when we walked past. Glove box was open."

Sizemore looked at her for a long moment. "Did I ask you?"

"No, sir."

"Then go stand by the truck."

She went. Her right hand stayed in her pocket the whole way.

Behind her, Sizemore crouched back down at the gray box, worked the blade under the hasp of the little brass padlock, and leaned on it with his shoulder.

The padlock made a sound like a tooth coming out.