Grace , North Carolina

THE BODY SNAGGED on a half-submerged tree that had been blasted by lightning back in the summer. It bobbed a little as the current continued to snatch at it, rolling sluggishly back and forth a few inches. Long brown hair flowed out around the partially submerged face, obscenely graceful in the water, a solitary sign of what might once have been beauty.

There was nothing beautiful about her now. It was fortunate, given the fast-moving river, that there had been something to catch the body before it wound up miles downstream where the water was more shallow and campers were wont to vacation on the picturesque banks.

Not that many did in January, Sawyer Cavenaugh acknowledged absently to himself as he studied the dead woman. Still, there were usually a hardy few, seeking nature when it was a bit less crowded, and most towed their kids along.

Thankfully, a child had not found this body.

Bloated and showing gashes and other postmortem injuries from the rough downstream journey of at least a couple of miles, she was a sight horrifying enough to give even a veteran cop and chief of police the promise of nightmares to come.

As if he didn't already have more than his share.

Sawyer rose from his crouch and walked a few feet to where one of his officers stood with the unhappy citizen who had made the grisly find.

"This is the second one for you, isn't it, Pel?"

"I swear to God, I'm never walking Jake along here again," Pel Brackin said with considerable feeling, one hand on the head of the calm chocolate Lab sitting at his side. "Much more of this and he could be one of them cadaver dogs. Jesus, Sawyerwhat the hell is going on up there?" He jerked his head in the general direction of upstream.

"Up there?"

"Up at the Compound. Don't treat me like an idiotI chased you out of my apple orchard when you were just a snot-nosed kid."

Sawyer sighed, not bothering to ask for an explanation of the parallel. "Is there anything you can tell me that might help me to find out what happened to this woman?"

"All I know is what I found, and we can all see that."

"You didn't see or hear anything else out of the ordinary?"

"Nah, nothing I don't usually sec around here. Though"

Sawyer waited a moment, then prompted, "Though what?"

With his free hand, Brackin rubbed the nape of his neck. "I don't know what it'd have to do with her. Or with that other poor woman last week."

"Let me be the judge of that. What is it, Pel?"

"It's the wildlife."

Sawyer felt his brows rising. "The wildlife?"

"The lack of it, really. Jake and me, we usually see a lot of critters on our morning rambles. These last weeks, since back before the holidays, really not so many."

Thinking out loud, Sawyer said, "A mild winter, so far. Not very cold, almost no snow."

Brackin nodded. "This sort of winter, there's usually plenty of wildlife visible. Deer, foxes, rabbits, squirrels. Plenty of raccoon and possum. Even some bears coming down out of the mountains. And lots of birds. But now that I think about it, my wife's bird feeders haven't been very popular. Not even doves or cardinals, and we generally have dozens of them about the place all winter." He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. "Like I said, probably nothing to do with these killings. Just something weird, is all."

"Okay. Anything else you can think of?"

"Nah. I'll call if I think of anything, but I told Robin here"

"Officer Keever, Pel. Come on," she protested.

"Well, then, Officer Keever, I'll be Mister Brackin to you."

She rolled her eyes but then caught Sawyer's and subsided. "Right. Sorry, Mr. Brackin."

Satisfied, he finished: "I told her everything I remembered from the time Jake started barking and I saw the body."

"Not an easy question, but I suppose you don't recognize her?" Sawyer asked.

"Shit, Sawyer, her own mother wouldn't recognize her."

"I had to ask."

"Yeah, yeah. If I've ever seen her before, I can't tell by looking at her now. Look, can I go? It's not like you don't know where I've lived for the last sixty years of my life, and I'm not going anywhere except home. My feet are freezing, I want my coffee, and Jake wants his breakfast."

Sawyer nodded. "Yeah, go ahead. Sorry to keep you."

With a grunt that might have been meant as thanks, Brackin headed downstream toward his place, avoiding so much as a glance at the corpse in the river.

"Wildlife," Sawyer murmured, more to himself than anything else.

"Chief?"

"Nothing." Mildly, he added, "Robin, when you're fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously, it helps to act like a professional."

"I know. Sorry, Chief."

"Just don't make me sorry I cleared you for field work, that's all I'm saying."

She nodded, now wearing a slightly anxious expression.

Her face was an open book, Sawyer reflected, betraying her thoughts and her emotions equally. Which certainly gave the lie to the whole inscrutable Asian stereotype, since Robin had been born in China. But, adopted by the Keevers at the age of three, she had been brought up in traditions a long way from Asian. That Southern rural background had left her, twenty years later, with an accent that was pure Carolina Mountain, an occasional turn of phrase that would have astonished and possibly horrified her ancestors, and a slight chip on her shoulder that came from being different from most everyone around her.

Sawyer could relate.

But all he said was, "I gather Pel didn't see anything helpful."

"He claims he never went within twelve feet of the body, and the lack of footprints on the bank there bears him out," the young deputy reported crisply. "Ely had a look around while I waited with Mr. Brackin, but he didn't see anything out of the ordinary."

Sawyer glanced past her, up the shallow bank to where their cars were parked just off the road, and noted that Robin's sometimes partner, Officer Ely Avery, was leaning a hip against their cruiser, obviously trying not to look bored.

There was a second cruiser parked up there, possibly intended to fend off curious onlookers who had not appeared, and the two officers in it, Dale Brown and Donald Brown (no relation, they always explained), appeared just as bored and/or equally detached from the situation.

No taste for or even interest in homicide investigation there. Sawyer made the mental note, then returned his gaze to Robin Keever's earnest young face. She was smart, more than capable, and she was ambitious; he'd known that for a while now.

But more important at the moment, she's fully engaged and intensely curious. Good.

Because he damn sure needed all the help he could get. Nothing in his years as a small-town cop had prepared him for anything even remotely like this.

"I checked with the station soon as I got here," Robin went on, "and we have no reports of missing persons fittingwell, no women reported missing from anywhere in the county."

"Yeah, I checked too." But the last female missing person had turned up in this same stretch of river barely a week before, looking an awful lot the way this one looked, so Sawyer was inclined to start searching for a connection between them.

More than inclined. In his experience, there really was no such thing as a coincidence.

Robin was thinking along the same lines. "Do you think she could be from the Compound, like Mr. Brackin suggested? From the church?"

"I think she's been in the river long enough that somebody should have noticed she was missing."

"And since no report was filed"

"Well, Reverend Samuel and his flock never look for help outside the Compound. Maybe they've got trouble of the nasty kind and believe they can handle it themselves."