The water did as Brennon said it would, diverting into the right side of the river, cutting the flow over Wolf Creek Falls in half.

I moved my head and framed an upstream rock on the far shoreline that had been completely dry half an hour ago. Water rubbed against it now.

“For a little while anyway,” I said.

I lowered my camera and looked upstream at Ellen Kowalsky. She had let go of her husband’s arm. She faced the pool but her eyes were slightly averted, as though afraid to look directly at the water that held not her daughter but her daughter’s remains. I wondered if she had only now begun to realize what she was about to see.

“Do you think she’s ready for this?” Allen asked.

“No. Whatever comes out of that pool is going to be worse than anything she could imagine.”

I looked at the rock again but couldn’t tell if the water had risen any higher.

“She probably should have stayed at her motel,” I said.

“Yes,” Allen said. “I understand that she has to see the body, but I wish for her sake it could be in a funeral home and in private.”

Brennon waved us toward him.

“Come on,” Allen said, as he stood up, “they must be getting ready to send a diver in.”

I put the Nikon in my backpack before standing up.

“You don’t think you’ll need that?” Allen asked.

“No,” I said, looking at Ellen Kowalsky.

We walked upstream, passing Sheriff Cantrell and Hubert McClure, who were now holding back everyone but the press from the pool. Sheriff Cantrell nodded as I passed. He might not have remembered my first name but he knew who I was because years ago he and Daddy had fished and hunted some together. Sheriff Cantrell had come by our house the week Ben had gotten home from the burn center. He’d given Ben a deputy’s badge and told him to heal up quick so they could go catch some bad guys.

It would have been interesting to know which people, if any, Sheriff Cantrell considered the bad guys in this situation. He was too busy watching Luke and the crowd to talk now, but even if he’d had the time I knew he would have kept his thoughts to himself. Although the political pressure wasn’t as overt as on Walter Phillips, I suspected Sheriff Cantrell had received his share of e-mails and phone calls from Columbia politicians.

When Brennon gathered everyone he wanted by the pool, he turned to where Randy and Ronny sat on the bank.

“You guys ready?” he asked.

Randy looked at Brennon and shook his head. “We ain’t going in. River’s too high.”

“You’re not going in?” Brennon said, his voice incredulous.