Dad tosses his cigar into the water, where it hisses and sputters out. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Ray told Willie that he’d tried to solve the case in sixty-eight, but that he’d been warned off too. He wouldn’t say by whom, but it was enough to scare him off.”

“That would take some doing.”

“That’s what Willie said. He dropped it. Didn’t Presley do a lot of work for Marston in the seventies?”

“I believe he did.”

“Think about it. We’ve got Ray Presley, a blatant racist, investigating a politically sensitive race murder while Leo Marston is D.A. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Marston could have committed criminal acts under those circumstances.”

“But why? That’s what I can’t see.”

“I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t the statute of limitations have run out on anything short of murder?”

“That’s right. Anything short of murder.”

He looks like a sculpture in the bow of the boat, frozen in contemplation. We’re two hundred yards from shore now, far enough that even a severe drought would be unlikely to uncover the swamp bottom. Even if it did, there would only be the cement-filled pail lying in the baking mud among the dead fish and loggerhead turtles. A lost anchor. Nothing else.

I lift the long pole out of the water and lay it along the gunwale of the boat. Dad starts to get up, but I motion for him to stay seated. The last thing we need is to capsize in water teeming with water moccasins, and perhaps even alligators.

I drag the heavy bucket toward the stern and lift it onto my seat, then sit beside it, flex my arms, and roll it over between my legs. After a deep breath, I slip my hands under it and stand up, using my legs for power. In seconds my arms are quivering from the weight.

“Throw it!” Dad cries.

I heave the bucket to my left and into the black water, heeling the boat hard to starboard and almost losing my balance. The splash sounds like a cannonball and showers both of us with slimy water.

“God almighty!” Dad exults. “I thought we were going over!”

“That gun is history,” I say quietly. “Let’s go to the house.”

I pick up the pole, plunge it to the muddy bottom, and work the bow back around until it points to the dirt road where we parked Dad’s pickup. High above us, a hawk circles over unseen prey. As it sails through the falling dusk, Dad says: “Could it have been the feds who warned Ray off the Payton case?”

Despite the heat, I feel a shiver deep in my chest. Willie Pinder’s remarks are playing in my head. “What makes you ask that?”