My body tensed before I could even process what caught my eye.

A human arm reached up out of the black water of the canal, as if stretching out for help that was far too late in coming. Something- a bobcat, perhaps, or a very ambitious fox-had tried to pull the arm out of the water, but not for any benevolent reason. The hand and wrist had been mangled, the flesh torn, some bone exposed. Black flies hovered and crawled over the limb like a living lacy glove.

There were no obvious tire tracks leading over the bank and into the water. That happened all the time-too much to drink, asleep at the wheel, no common sense. People plunged to their deaths in South Florida ’s canals every day of the week, it seemed. But there was no sign of a car here.

I took a hard grip on the reins with one hand, pulled my cell phone from my belt with the other, and punched in a number.

The phone on the other end of the line rang twice.

“Landry.” The voice was curt.

“You’re going to want to come out here,” I said.

“Why? So you can kick me in the teeth again?”

“I’ve found a body,” I said without emotion. “An arm, to be precise. Come, don’t come. Do what you want.”

I snapped the phone shut, ignored it when it rang, and turned my horse for home.

This was going to be one hell of a day.

A pair of deputies in a white-and-green Palm Beach County cruiser rolled through the gate behind Landry. I had ridden back to the farm to eliminate the complication of a horse at a crime scene, but I hadn’t had time to shower or change clothes.

Even if I’d had time, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble. I wanted to show James Landry I didn’t care what he thought of me. I wasn’t interested in impressing him. Or maybe I wanted to impress him with my indifference.

I stood beside my car with my arms crossed over my chest, one leg cocked to the side, the portrait of pissy impatience. Landry got out of his car and came toward me but didn’t look at me. He surveyed his surroundings through a pair of black wraparounds. He had a profile that belonged on the face of a Roman coin. The sleeves of his shirt were neatly rolled halfway up his forearms, but he had yet to jerk his tie loose at his throat. The day was young.

As he finally drew breath to speak, I said, “Follow me,” got in my car, and drove past him out the gate, leaving him standing there on the drive.

A short gallop on a fast horse, the location of my gruesome discovery was more difficult to find by car. It was easier to lead the way than try to give directions to a man who wouldn’t listen anyway. The road bent around, came to a T I took a left and another left, passing a driveway with a busted-out motorcycle turned into a mailbox holder. Debris from the last hurricane-three months past-was still piled high along the road, waiting for a truck to come haul it away.

Dust billowed up behind my car even as I stopped the vehicle and got out. Landry got out of the county sedan he had pulled for the day, swatting at the dust in his face. He still refused to look at me.

“Why didn’t you stay with the body?” he snapped. “You were a cop. You know better.”

“Oh, screw you, Landry,” I shot back. “I’m a private citizen. I didn’t even have to call you.”

“Then why did you?”

“There’s your victim, Ace,” I said, pointing across the canal. “Or part of. Go knock yourself out.”

He looked across the brackish water to the branch the human limb had snagged on. The flies raised up like a handkerchief in the breeze as a snowy egret poked its long beak at the hand.

“Fucking nature,” Landry muttered. He picked up a stone and flung it at the bird. The egret squawked in outrage and walked away on yellow stilt legs.

“Detective Landry?” one of the deputies called. The two of them stood at the hood of the cruiser, waiting. “You want us to call CSI?”

“No,” he barked.

He walked away fifty yards down the bank, where a culvert allowed a narrow land bridge to connect one side of the canal to the other. I shouldn’t have, but I followed him. He pretended to ignore me.

The hand belonged to a woman. Up close, through the veil of flies, I could see the manicure on the broken nail of the pinky finger. Deep-red polish. A night on the town had ended very badly.

Blond hair floated on the surface of the water. There was more of her down there. Landry looked up and down the bank, scanning the ground for shoe prints or tire tracks or any sign of how the body had come to be in this place. I did the same.

“There.” I pointed to a partial print pressed into the soft dirt just the very edge of the bank, maybe ten feet away from the victim.

Landry squatted down, scowled at it, then called to the deputies. “Bring me some markers!”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Finally he looked at me. For the first time I noticed that his face is drawn, as if he hadn’t slept well. The set of his mouth was sour. Is there a reason for you to be here?“

“It’s a free country,” I said. “More or less.”

“I don’t want you here.” It’s my vic.

“You’re not on the job,” he said. “You quit that too. Remember?”

His words hit me like a fist to the sternum. I actually took a step ck at the verbal blow, not able to prevent myself from gasping.

“You are such an asshole,” I snapped back, more upset than I wanted to show. More upset than I wanted to be. “Why should I want to be hooked up with you? You don’t get your way and the first thing you do is fight dirty. You really know how to sell yourself, Landry. I can’t believe women aren’t beating down your door, you fucking prick.”

My eyes were burning, anger trembling through me like the vibrations of a plucked wire. I turned to go back to the body, thinking that the woman below the surface of the filthy water had undoubtedly been put there by some man she shouldn’t have trusted-as if there were any other kind.

The arm seemed to wave at me in acknowledgment, and I thought I was hallucinating. Then it waved again-violently-and I knew instantly what was happening. Before I could react, there was a terrific splashing and thrashing, and water came up at me in a sheet.

Landry shouted behind me, “Jesus Christ!”

One of the deputies called, “Gator!”

Landry hit me in the back and shoved me to the side. As I tumbled onto my hands and knees, a gun went off above me, the report like the crack of a whip in my ears.

I scrambled away from the bank and tried to regain my feet, the worn soles of my riding boots slipping out from under me on the damp grass.

Landry emptied his Glock 9mm into the churning water. One of the deputies ran along the bank on the other side, shouldering a shotgun, shouting, “I got him! I got him!”

The blast was nearly deafening.

“Son of a bitch!” Landry shouted.

As I watched, the perpetrator floated to the surface on its back, a bloody, ragged, gaping hole torn in its pale yellow belly. An alligator about five feet long, with part of a human torso still caught between its jaws.

“Shit,” Landry said. “There goes my scene.”

He swore and stomped around, looking for something to hit or kick.

I went to the edge of the bank and looked down.

Alligators are known for rolling with their prey in the water, disorienting the thrashing victim, drowning them even as the gator bit through tissue and bone, rupturing veins and arteries. This one had jerked his intended meal free of the branches she had become entangled with. The gator may have even stashed the body there himself earlier-another common practice: stuffing the victim away for later, letting the body begin to decompose while wedged under a tree trunk.

Nature is cruel. Almost as cruel as human beings.

I stared down into the muddy water, looking for the rest of the body to surface. When it did, I went numb from head to toe.