But Otter Creek was quiet today. No one floundered in the pool, and the shuffleboard courts lay deserted; the cold weather had driven the retirees inside. Keyes finally spotted one old gentleman, bundled in fluorescent rain gear, walking a hyperactive terrier along the banks of a murky manmade canal. "Great fishing in your own backyard!" is what the Otter Creek brochure promised. Keyes didn't know much about fishing, but he had grave doubts about any creature that could procreate in such fetid water.

On the other side of the dike, in the Glades, the wind sent ripples through the dense saw-grass. Keyes broke out the binoculars and scanned the marsh. Somewhere out there, not far, stood the Wiley family cabin. Jenna had said you could find it with a good pair of field glasses, so Keyes had brought the Nikons.

Before long he spotted a row of snowy egrets, hunched along a tall fence; except it wasn't a fence, but a rooftop, an angular anomaly among the bush cattails and the scrub. Keyes trotted down the dike for a better look. The closer he got, the more the cabin showed above the swamp. The walls were made of plywood, the roof of corrugated tin. There was a crooked porch, a faded outhouse, and torn screens fluttering in the windows.

Keyes was most impressed by the fact that Wiley's cabin had been built on cypress stilts, smack in the middle of wetlands. There was no way to get there by foot.

He hiked along the dike until he drew even with the cabin; from the roof the egrets eyed him warily, flaring their nape feathers. Keyes guessed he was still a hundred yards away, with nothing but dark water and lily pads between him and the shack. He trained the Nikons and searched for signs of habitation.

The place looked empty and disused. A rusted padlock hung on the door, and the rails of the porch were plastered with petrified bird droppings. There was no boat anywhere, no smoke from the flue, no trace of a human being.

Except for the boots.

Brian Keyes knelt on the gravel of the dike and fiddled with the focus dial on the binoculars.

They were boots, all right. Brown cowboy boots, brand-new ones, judging from the shine off the toes. The boots lay on a plank beneath the warped door of the outhouse, and from their pristine condition (absent of bird speckles) it was apparent they hadn't been there very long.

Keyes knew what he had to do now: he had to find a sensible way to get out to Wiley's cabin. Swimming was out of the question. He had not quit the newspaper business to go frolic in the muck with water moccasins, not even for five hundred bucks a day. So Brian Keyes went looking for a boat.

"Sit down, Garcia."

Al Garcia settled in a chair. Harold Keefe, the big redheaded detective, cleared his throat, as if he'd been practicing for this. He picked up a copy of the Miami Sunand waved it in front of Garcia's face. "You wanna explain this!"

"Explain what, Hal?"

"This quotation here from Metro-Dade detective Alberto Garcia. The case is still under investigation: I can't comment.You wanna explain that!"

Garcia said, "No comment is what I'm supposed to say. That's department policy. It's right there on the fucking bulletin board."

Hal rolled up the newspaper and slammed it on the desk, as if killing a cockroach. "Not for thiscase it's not policy. This case is closed, remember?"

Garcia ground his teeth and tried not to say something he'd regret. "Hal, this guy Bloodworth calls me out of the blue last night, okay? Says he's talked to these two guys, these Shriners, who tell him about their missing pal, Mr. Bellamy. You 'member Bellamy, don't you?"

Hal just scowled and waved his hand.

"Anyway," Garcia said, "this hump Bloodworth says he heard there's some connection between Bellamy and Sparky Harper. Extortion letters is what he heard. Says he's writing a story on Bellamy's disappearance."

"Oh, and that he did." Hal fingered the newspaper. "Ran Mr. Bellamy's picture, offered a five-thousand-dollar reward for any information, et cetera. Nothing wrong with that, Garcia. But you didn't have to say what you said, especially the way you said it."

"All I said was no comment."

"And where'd you learn how to do that, the Meyer Lansky School of Public Relations? You made it sound like we're hiding something." Hal rose to his feet. "Why couldn't you just say the case is closed? Say we caught the killer and he tragically took his own life in jail. That's the last chapter of the Sparky Harper case. Period."

"Then what about Bellamy?" Garcia asked.

Hal's face was redder than Garcia had ever seen it, and basketball-sized sweat marks showed under the arms of his blue polyester shirt. Obviously Hal had been having a crummy day.

"Bellamy was a drunk. Fell in the ocean and drowned," Hal said. "Forget about fucking Bellamy."

"Then what about the Fuegoletter?"

Hal folded his hands, a contrived gesture of civility. Harold Keefe was not a man who looked natural with folded hands. He said, "I'm glad you mentioned the letters. We've determined that they're a hoax."

Garcia raised his eyebrows, but didn't say a word. He sensed that Hal was building up to something memorable.

"We showed the Fuegoletters to Dr. Remond Courtney, the famous psychiatrist. He says the letters are phony, and the boys in the lab agree. Didn't surprise me at all, since there's been no ransom demands, no bodies ... "

" 'Cept for Harper," Garcia mumbled.

"Forget fucking Harper! I'm talking about Bellamy and the other one."

"What other one?"

"Here. Turned up this morning." Hal passed a Xerox copy across the desk.

The letter was identical to the others. "Who's Mssr. Richaud?" Garcia asked, trying not to sound too interested.

"David Richaud is the male friend of one Renee LeVoux." Hal pronounced it lay-vox. "Miss LeVoux disappeared three days ago from the parking lot of the Seaquarium. Richaud filed a missing-persons report. Yesterday this letter was delivered to his hotel on Key Biscayne."

'What's the guy's story?" asked Garcia.

"He says the lady was kidnapped. Claims the perpetrator whacked him on the head and knocked him. out."

"You don't sound like you believe him."

Hal laughed caustically. "This one's got 'domestic' written all over it. They had a fight, she grabs a cab and heads south with the vacation money. Richaud gets furious and figures the best way to find her is to get the cops involved. Pretty obvious, I'd say."

"Hmmm," said Al Garcia.

"Which brings us to the letters." Hal opened a drawer and pulled out a file. Garcia knew that now was a good time to start worrying.

"Had a little talk with the chief this morning," Hal said. Al Garcia looked unimpressed; Hal was always having little talks with the chief.

He said, "The chief seems to think these letters are being generated from within the police department."

Garcia snorted. "He thinks El Fuegois a cop?"

"The chief," Hal said sternly, "is quite serious. He ordered me to start an internal investigation. He thinks someone around here is writing these phony letters in order to keep the Sparky Harper case alive."

"Why?"

Hal shrugged disingenuously. "Ambition, spite, maybe even professional jealousy. Who knows? In any case, the chiefs theory makes perfect sense. Whoever's sending these crazy letters obviously is getting the names out of Missing Persons."

Enough is enough, Garcia thought. "Hal," he said, "you're full of shit. And so's the chief."

Hal's face turned the color of grape juice.

"Somebody's snatching tourists," Garcia said, "and all you guys want to do is cover up. I got a better idea: why don't we just go out and catch the goddamn kidnappers? Come on, Hal, it'll be fun. Just like the old days, back when you were a cop and not a two-bit office politician."