“The boat you’re talking about is the one in the back of that truck you parked in the lot?” Marino asks.

“That’s right.”

“Aluminum with what? Five-horsepower engine?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to take a look at it before you drive off. You got any objections to my looking inside your boat and truck? I’m assuming the police already did.”

“No, sir, they didn’t. When they got there and I told them what I knew, they said I could go. So I headed back to the put-in where my truck was. By then all kinds of people was there. But you go on and help yourself. I got nothing to hide.”

“Thank you, but it’s not necessary.” Scarpetta gives Marino a look. He knows damn well they don’t have jurisdiction to search Mr. Grant’s truck or boat or anything else. That’s for the police to do, and they didn’t think it necessary.

“Where did you put your boat in the water six days ago?” Marino says to Bull.

“Old House Creek. There’s a boat landing and little store where if I’ve had me a good day, I sell some of what I catch. Especially if I get lucky with shrimps and oysters.”

“You see anybody suspicious in the area when you parked your truck this past Monday morning?”

“Can’t say I did, but don’t know why I would. By then the little boy was already where I found him and had been for days.”

“Who said days?” Scarpetta asks.

“The funeral home man in the parking lot.”

“The one who drove the body here?”

“No, ma’am. The other one. He was there with his big hearse. Don’t know what he was doing there. Except talking.”

“Lucious Meddick?” Scarpetta asks.

“Meddicks’ Funeral Home. Yes, ma’am. According to his thinking, that little boy was dead for two, three days by the time I found him.”

That damn Lucious Meddick. Presumptuous as hell, and wrong. April 29 and 30, the temperatures ranged between seventy-five and eighty degrees. Had the body been in the marsh for even one full day, it would have begun to decompose and suffer substantial damage from predatory animals and fish. Flies are quiet at night but would have laid eggs in daylight, and he would have been infested with maggots. As it was, by the time the body arrived at the morgue, rigor mortis was well developed but not complete, although that particular postmortem change would have been somewhat lessened and slowed due to malnourishment and subsequent poor muscle development. Livor mortis was indistinct, not yet fixed. There was no discoloration due to putrefaction. Crabs, shrimp, and the like were just getting started on the ears, nose, and lips. In her estimation, the boy had been dead less than twenty-four hours. Maybe much less than that.

“Go on,” Marino says. “Tell us exactly how you found the body.”

“I anchored my boat and got out in my boots and gloves, carrying my basket and a hammer…”

“A hammer?”

“For breaking up coons.”