I have a windbreaker and a beanie guarding me from the light sprinkle, but Lassie is half-soaked, his tan and black fur slick and shiny.

We cross the street, Lassie darting toward a puddle and nearly submerging his entire body before I’m able to yank him back.

Meow.

“I’m no fun? Well, you’re no fun when I wake up with your stinky puddle body asleep on my chest.”

I know how much Lassie loves a good puddle, and I usually get a kick out of him slapping at the water with his little paws, but I’m in a hurry.

We cross three more blocks in a half-run.

A minute later, we reach a small platform with metal guardrails.

The Potomac River sweeps past. A quarter mile south, the river runs under a long stone bridge. Three cars zoom over the bridge in quick succession. I wonder if the car that transported my mother’s body passed over that bridge. Or did they park on it, pull her body from the trunk, and toss her overboard? Or just as easily, they could have killed her where I stood this very moment. Shot her in the back of the head, then pushed her over the guardrail. Or was she killed miles from here? Who knows how far the mighty Potomac carried her body? The autopsy report said she died twenty-four to forty-eight hours before she was found. She was found Monday morning. So that means she was murdered, executed, sometime over the weekend.

Lassie and I walk north along the sidewalk. I instinctively stop above a huge drainage pipe that flows into the Potomac. The six-foot-high pipe is only visible if you lean over the railing and look backward toward the shore. A stream of water, which were millions of separate raindrops minutes earlier, flows into the mighty river.

Six months ago, I spent twenty minutes hiding in the pipeline while a carload of gentlemen — the sort that would have done to me what someone did to my mother — searched for me. I wonder if my mother was as frightened before her death as I was then. Did she know she was being hunted? Was there a chase? I didn’t know much about my mother — it appeared as though I knew almost nothing — but I did remember those eyes of hers. You can’t fake the intensity or intelligence that lived there. My mother would not have been easy prey.

The cell phone in my pocket buzzes.

It’s Ingrid.

I put the phone to my ear and head back toward home.

It is 3:46 a.m.

::::

“Walker pulled the case.”

Charley Walker was a fat blob, who was third cousin to somebody important, or else he would still be writing traffic tickets. At least that was according to Ingrid’s last rant. He had an affinity for stretching the truth and was known around the precinct as “Walker, Texas Liar.”