“You’ve had the recordings for seventeen years and suddenly decided to edit them into clips that were sent to me.” I follow the trail to where I’m sure it leads. “You’re using Carrie’s own covert recordings against her, and that presupposes she’s seen the Depraved Heart clips too.”

“It’s safe to suppose that.”

“Then that can mean only one thing. Carrie Grethen is into everything,” I say to Benton, and the Gilbert driveway is up ahead. “She’s seeing everything we do.”

“Now you’re hitting the mother lode,” he says.

“Data fiction.”

“That’s what this is about,” he says. “That’s Carrie’s big coup. Yes she’s seeing and manipulating pretty much everything and has been for a while.”

We bump and splash over the same old pavers, through the same deep standing water and puddles. I park behind three Bureau SUVs in the driveway, near the front of the house.

“Do you have contact with your people?” I cut the engine. “Because in light of everything else let’s not venture inside until we know your agents are alive and well and accounted for.”

I don’t need to repeat what happened in South Florida two months ago. I don’t need to find out the hard way that Carrie has killed our backups.

“I’m giving you a heads-up that a couple of the same agents who were on Lucy’s property are here because of the presumed connection between Lucy and Chanel,” Benton says, and he goes on to explain that the four agents inside have spread out.

Other than the peculiar thudding noise that sounds like a heavy door slamming they’ve found nothing unexpected. That’s what Benton says Erin Loria has reported to him, and we’re on the porch now. He tries the front door. It’s unlocked. The alarm system is disarmed. I hear a chirp as we open the door but it’s not the alarm system. It’s Benton’s phone.

He looks at the display. He places his hand on my arm and shows me an image sent to him, a photograph the borescope took of the inside of the trunk. There’s nothing there but the usual police gear neatly stowed. I can make out a first aid kit, a roll of toilet paper, a stack of paper towels, spray bottles of all-purpose cleaner, Windex, jumper cables. Benton opens the door and we step inside the foyer, and the odor of decomposition is fainter now, and we hear the thud again.

It’s muffled but loud. It’s what we’ve heard before, and then it happens another two times in rapid succession.

BOOM! BOOM!