The intuitive approach has its proponents. You may find the problem very quickly. On the other hand, you may never find it; the mistake may not be where you think it must be. The logical approach gets the job done, but it’s glacially slow.

I tend to go with the intuitive because the logical is boring. But to hunt for the bodies, where we couldn’t fuck up and where intuition was blunted by a lack of knowledge of the river, the logical route was a necessity. We searched downstream from the point where the bodies had gone into the water, giving detailed attention to Bobby’s highest-percentage areas.

“There’s too much river,” LuEllen said. “And if we keep looking at it in the sun, we’re going to get

snow-blind, whatever you’d call it.”

“If we find them, though, that’ll be the last thing we need.”

We never did find Harold.

The Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department found him, in the river above Rosedale. Or rather a catfisherman did. The body was floating off a wing dam. The catfisherman called the sheriff, and the deputies pulled the body out, just about the time the city council was meeting. We got the word from Bobby that night, when we came off the river.

I’d put in the hookups and gone back for a shower when the phone rang; Bobby had been auto-dialing every minute or so, waiting for our return. I answered it, got the carrier tone, and punched up the computer. A block of newspaper text slid onto the screen:

ROSEDALE, MISS. (AP)-The body of an unidentified man was found in the Mississippi River near Victoria Bend above the city of Rosedale late Saturday, according to a spokesman for the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department.

The body was partially decomposed and apparently had been in the river for several days, the spokesman said. The dead man was black and was wearing a yellow dress shirt and gray dress slacks. No identification was found with the body.

An autopsy is scheduled for this week in Greenville. The sheriff’s spokesman said there was no sign of foul play.

Appended to the story was a note from Bobby:

That’s all. Could it be Harold?

It seemed likely. The body had been found in one of Bobby’s high-probability areas. And if Harold’s body had gotten there, maybe Sherrie’s had, too. I called Bobby back.

Don’t talk to Marvel or John about the body. We’ll tell them later, OK?

There was a moment’s hesitation as he thought it over, then:

OK.

LuEllen and I were looking at the corps’s navigation maps of the lower Mississippi when Marvel called.

“There’s a meeting tonight,” she said. She was quietly triumphant. “The governor has announced his appointments, and Bell called a meeting at eight o’clock to swear them into office. Ballem, Hill, and Brooking Davis.”

“Was anybody upset by Davis?”