“Skipper is running a sex slave ring,” she said. “It’s an utterly evil abuse of power and—”

“Weren’t there five tapes?” I said.

“I left one of the cases in the box,” she said. “Has a smaller tape inside. Figured it was an audio tape or—”

“Can I see?”

She retrieved the tape and brought it over to me. It was not an audiotape, but an eight-millimeter videotape.

“It’s eight millimeter,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s video but from a different camera than the one in Maddox’s bedroom. It’s not standard VHS like these other tapes. It means that it was shot by somebody else.”

“Let’s watch it.”

I laughed. “It takes a different type of VCR.”

“Who would have one?”

“Susan still has ours.”

“Wanna ride up to Atlanta and see if she’ll loan it to us?”

Just then the phone rang, and I knew it was bad news again. I was almost to the point of not answering my phone anymore.

It was Dad.

Molly Thomas was dead.

37

Under the massive spreading branches of live oak tree near the bald cypresses lining the banks, Molly Thomas’s car was being pulled out of the muddy waters of the Apalachicola River.

The crooked, craggy cypresses, both in and out of the water, were silhouettes against the neon orange and pink of the setting sun.

The swirling, undulating waters patted the red clay of the banks in this picturesque spot, where I had learned to water-ski and later had been baptized.

It appears that Molly’s car had raced down the hill at high speed and crashed into the river below.

The yellow crime-scene tape, stretched between two cypress trees near the water, rippled in the small breeze coming off the water, making a small, lonely whipping sound.

Molly’s car could just be seen breaking the surface of the water. A cable attached to her back bumper was spinning around the winch of the tow truck, pulling the two vehicles ever closer to one another.

At certain points along the way, the steady hum of the winch was interrupted by the grinding of metal on metal as the river begrudgingly released the car.

“This the girl you were dickin’?” Jake asked when I walked up to where he, Dad, and two other officers stood.

Jake and the two officers laughed.

“Does it look like suicide?” I asked Dad, ignoring Jake.

He nodded. “No signs she tried to brake or that another vehicle was involved.”

“You were such a bad lay that she offed herself,” Jake said to even more laughter.

“Okay to walk down there?” I asked Dad.

He nodded. “Sure.”

I slowly walked down to the river’s edge, feeling awkward and self-conscious, stiff and sore.

The car was out of the water now.