I thought that was the end of it, and a couple of days later Detective Latham stopped by to tell me the girl had been identified as Tonya Causey, from up in Effingham County, and that the cause of death was suicide by drowning. Turns out that four days before the body was found two witnesses had called in to report a slightly built girl with red hair jumping from the Talmadge Bridge in downtown Savannah. So the case, as far as the police were concerned, was closed.

But I was a little puzzled myself. It seemed to me the body should have been washed directly out to sea rather than lodging in the tidal marsh; but then again, the currents and the wind have strange patterns. Then I had taken an urgent job out of the country, and the matter had slipped to the recesses of my mind. Until tonight.

I had just returned home and was walking across the darkened parking lot to the boardwalk leading down to the dock when Danny Ray drove up with a visitor in tow, a woman. They got out of the car, and both stood hesitantly.

I looked closely at the woman. She was slightly built and thin to the point of boniness. She was dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans, and white sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she held herself rigidly, one arm across her midsection, as she nervously smoked a cigarette. When she inhaled her cheeks collapsed over missing teeth. She stared at me with a fixed intensity as she exhaled a long blue stream of smoke, and said nothing. At first I thought she was Danny Ray’s mother, and then it dawned on me who she actually was.

“Mrs. Causey?” I asked as Danny Ray stepped forward.

She took another drag on her cigarette before removing it from her mouth and announcing, “Yeah, I am,” in a smoke-and-whiskey voice.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Causey,” I said to the sad woman before me. “I wish there was some way I could help.”

“Danny Ray, here, tells me that maybe you can, Mr. Tanner. My daughter didn’t commit suicide,” she said as tears came to her eyes. “She was kilt. I know it, but won’t nobody listen to me. Not the law. Not nobody. I need your help, Mr. Tanner.”

I took a deep breath and then stepped forward. As the woman dissolved into tears, I put an arm around her thin shoulders and guided her toward my boat. “Come with me, Mrs. Causey, and you can tell me all about it.”

I cast a glance over my shoulder to where Danny Ray stood waiting. “And you, too, Danny Ray. You’re a part of this thing, too.”