Mark got down to basics.

After returning the lamp to Dan, he took an underwater slate from his belt and made a primitive sketch of the find, indicating its distance from the marker. He then used his favorite tool for gathering underwater evidence, an Olympus camera in a light-and-motion housing with a built-in strobe. The blast of light firing once every second animated the skeleton, making it appear to move and shift position as if it were posing for him while he drifted around taking shots at different angles.

He looked at the spot where the pelvis disappeared into the dirt. He’d better confirm that the lower half was all there, not wanting to miss the outside chance he was dealing with a cut-up body.

He drifted gently over the top of the hipbones and dipped a hand down either side to where the legs should be.

The sand beneath him exploded to life, and a six-foot ribbon of black undulated out of the murk. He screamed into his mouthpiece and jerked backward, crashing into Evans, who’d been floating a foot above him. The shape writhed between his arms and shot into the darkness.

An eel.

Normal in the lakes around here. Even known to wrap around the legs of swimmers at night. But harmless.

Tell my pounding heart that, he thought, peering into the thick silt the creature had stirred up.

He could make out his watch only by holding it up to his faceplate. Less than five minutes left before they’d have to head up. No time to wait for this latest disturbance to clear. But unable to see his nearest surroundings, he’d lost all sense of direction again, and felt a nauseating swirl of vertigo.

Stop! Think! Act! he once more reminded himself, slowing his breathing, then expelling a few bubbles from the side of his mouthpiece. Before they disappeared in the gloom he glimpsed enough of their passage toward the surface to orient himself, and, trying not to think of the eel circling somewhere out there, reached toward the bottom.

Once more passing his hands through the silt, he found the long shafts of both femurs and palpated along them. The tibiae and fibulae of the lower legs came next. He slid his hands farther down to confirm the presence of feet – and his finger caught on something that felt like thick chains.

What the hell?

They were looped around the ankles.

Oh, shit!

Running his fingers along them he came to what must be a padlock. A few links more led to a smooth hard surface that felt like a metal shaft about six inches in diameter. Following its shape deeper, both his arms up to the shoulder in muck, he made out the double-pointed flanges of an anchor.

He reached up to grab Dan, who hovered just above and, drawing him closer so they floated faceplate to faceplate, guided the sheriff’s hand into the ooze. Dan’s eyes grew wide behind his mask, and he immediately signaled for them to start up.

Mark agreed. This was now a crime scene, which they must not further disturb. The forensic team would have to sift through the muck not just for parts of the body, but also for evidence that might help them determine who had sent it to the bottom.

They rose slowly, no faster than the proscribed one-half foot per second. Mark felt they weren’t even moving. Any quicker, however, and the nitrogen bubbles would appear in their bloodstreams, blocking every tiny artery in their bodies. So they hung there, two specks suspended in a horizonless, charcoal world, the surface still invisible beyond an infinity of gray twilight.

Mark’s thoughts slid to the scene below, and thinking about their find unnerved him more than when he’d actually seen and touched it. The idea that they were swimming in water steeped with the remains of human rot didn’t bother him. His head knew that that part of the process had mostly ended long ago. It was the possibility the person went into the lake alive and conscious that made his skin crawl. The image of someone plummeting through this nether world, struggling round-mouthed to scream, nothing but bubbles streaming out, filled his head. From the way Dan kept staring down, pupils magnified big as dimes behind the Plexiglas, he, too, appeared to have trouble keeping his imagination in check.

Who could it be? Mark wondered. No one had been reported missing from the Hampton Junction area since he’d started general practice seven years ago. The ten years before that, while in New York at the university, med school, and during his residency, he’d gotten home often enough he would have heard about anyone who’d disappeared. It was possible, of course, that someone had brought the corpse here to dump it. Might be Jimmy Hoffa down there for all he knew. Everybody from the Northeast came here to party and play. Why wouldn’t they import their murders as well?

Tuesday, November 6, 7:00 A.M.

Buffalo , New York

“Daddy, look! It’s drooped.”

Earl Garnet turned from the stove where he’d been hastily making oatmeal and saw his four-year-old, Brendan, running toward him minus the bottoms of his pajamas. “Drooped?” he said, bending his six-foot frame at the waist to scoop the youngster into his arms and sweep him up near the ceiling. “What’s drooped?”

The little boy grinned with delight. “My penis! It was big, then I peed, and it got little.”

Earl tried not to laugh. “That’s normal for boys.”

“Does yours do that?”

“Sometimes.” He brought him in for a landing on the kitchen table. “How about a bowl of this delicious hot cereal I’m making?”

“Where’s Mommy? I like hers better.” He climbed down to the chair where he always sat.

Mommy was Dr. Janet Graceton, obstetrician, lover, friend, and wife. “Off delivering a baby.”

“Again? How come she has to deliver so many? She does it every day.”

“That’s right. It’s her job.”

“Do you deliver babies?”

“Only when I have to. Here.” He plopped the bowl of steaming cereal in front of Brendan, doctored it with brown sugar and milk, then glanced at his watch. Sign-off rounds with the night shift started at eight, but he liked to be in ER by seven-thirty to have a coffee, do a walk-through, and pick up any loose ends before the day shift got busy. What the hell, he thought. Chief’s prerogative. Let the staff tie up their own cases. He wasn’t about to pass up this father-son breakfast.

“Wanna’ know what I’m making at school?”

“What?”

“A statue of Muffy.”

Muffy was the family dog, a standard poodle. Getting on in years, she’d taken to sleeping late, especially when Janet took off in the middle of the night and left a nice warm spot in the bed. More than once Earl had sleepily awakened and draped his arm around what he thought would be his wife, only to get a wet slurp and a cold nose in the face.

“A statue of Muffy! How big?”

“Big!” Brendan’s little hand shot over his head to indicate great height.

“Wow, we’ll have to get twice as much dog food in the house.”

He giggled. “It’s a statue, Daddy.”

“But will you feed her and walk her and play with her?”

The giggles grew louder.

During the twenty-minute drive to St. Paul’s Hospital, the sun rising at his back, he found himself still grinning. As did most men who became fathers late in life, Earl relished moments like those he’d just spent with Brendan. Every day he savored a deep sense of happiness, carefully secreted within him where it wouldn’t tempt his lucky stars, the gods, or the fates. With Janet and Brendan he really did have it all.

“Hi, Dr. G.,” the triage nurse called out just as he entered his department. Her name tag said JANE SIMMONS R.N. Earl always called her J.S. In her early twenties, three rings piercing her right nostril, J.S. was a bright, cheerful, sometimes zany presence in the ER. Now she hovered over an ashen-faced, middle-aged man lying on a stretcher. Without looking up she slid a large-bore needle the size of a three-inch nail into his arm.