Colette’s brother leaned over the rail. “You want to ride with us, and I’ll go in the crew boat?”

She turned toward Emile, who shrugged. Her brother, old uncle, and Paul’s brother watched her quietly. “I’ll go with speed and somebody’s daddy every time. We’ll see you in the Gulf.” She saw Emile’s reluctant smile at the edge of her vision as he stooped into the cabin. They left the tug behind in a whopping roar of a stainless-steel propeller as Etienne the giant’s father leaned on the throttle lever, wringing every revolution he could out of the diesel hurling away in the hold. They sang across the harbor, mocking with their speed the aspirate old dredge working the point below town. The railroad bridge flicked over them like a big silver wand, and the river broadened magically in the bend, promising the Gulf.

In the time it took to speed past the thinning ranks of willows and cypresses and enter the burgeoning swales of tall marsh grass, her mind buzzed on about Paul, focusing on one idea only: location. It came before everything else. The word swam her mind like a fish testing out a channel. She knew that Paul was not reckless and would be wary of the weather. With a pang she remembered why he would take a risk, but she would not let that get in the way of figuring where, in all this marsh or dull open water he and the crew could be. They had a skiff and new life jackets. The wooden boat, if it had gone down, might not be completely sunk, and they could cling to what floated near the surface.

Etienne, while unkillable in a fistfight, was little match for the Gulf and its midafternoon rain monsters, which could twist the body of a cypress boat like a wet reed. If the boat had gone down, she thought, it would have been on the flight back toward the mainland, and Emile would be right in searching close in. She imagined Paul and the others in the water, or in the skiff, or treading the Gulf without life jackets. The thought give her a tingle of pity and fear that made her shake her head like a spaniel. Then something else occurred to her.

“You said you talked to Alfred LeBlanc about his boat that was caught in a squall?”

“Yeah.”

“Were they catching shrimp?”

He looked away, and she asked him again. Glancing over to her and then back at the water, he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Colette edged closer to him and put a hand on a big round shoulder. “Please tell me the truth.”

Emile blinked hard. “It’s what worries me most. Alfred made it back loaded down.”