I got out and peered down the ravine at the greeny-brown water. A few water birds were hunting in the middle; others were resting on the tiny gravel islands that dotted the river. “Knee-deep in mud,” Cady had told me Wakarusa meant in the local Indian language. Knee-deep, but still deep enough to drown her mother.

I took out the photos of the accident scene that I’d printed and tried to match them to today’s landscape. Of course the undergrowth had changed, and it was fall, not high summer, but I could guess the car’s path pretty accurately from the pictures.

Also from new tire tracks through the broken bushes and marsh grasses on the steep hillside. I climbed down the ravine face, following the tracks, my feet dragging, fearing what I’d find at the end of the trail.

It wasn’t the Prius but a Dodge Ram pickup. The cab and body were rusted: you could see only a few patches of the red it had been painted when it left the factory.

Like Jenny Perec’s Toyota, it was pointing nose-down in the water, but the pickup sat too high to go all the way in. Water rose about half a foot above the running board. I could see the figure in the driver’s seat, head against the steering wheel.

My legs felt like wooden stalks, too hard to bend enough to walk me over to the truck. I did not want this to be Emerald Ferring, perhaps with August in the seat next to her.

The autumn sunset provided only a thin afterglow of light, which barely reached the bottom of the ravine. My wooden legs needed to come to life before it grew completely dark. I stumbled back up the hillside to my car for my high-powered flashlight and used it to inspect the ground around the truck. My footprints, easy to see in the mud. Others that had almost disappeared in the soft ground.

I held my flash in my mouth and photographed the ground, hoping something might emerge, then pulled on my gloves and climbed onto the running board. The growing darkness made the windows reflect blackly back at me. Water oozed in over the tops of my boots. Rank, old.

I tugged on the door, which gave slightly—it wasn’t locked, but pressure from the river water made it hard to open. Bad behavior at a crime scene: I was rubbing off prints, I was letting water into the cab.

I shone my flash around the interior. The dead person was alone at the steering wheel. It was neither Ferring nor August Veriden; the wispy gray-white curls had belonged to a white woman, an old one. The cool air had probably slowed decomposition, but her face was still bloated, the skin darkening as it decayed.