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was a beautifully anonymous way to deal with the kind of people who hired him and Stuart had just snagged himself a new client.
    The job was practically in his backyard—he could drive there in a couple hours, easy—so tonight he’d be a guest of the Panacea Palace Motel, and his new client would be footing the bill. The household staff of the Panacea Palace would make his bed and cook his meals and swab out his toilet, while he focused all his attention on finding a tall, broad, pony-tailed man with a tall, broad price on his head. The man and his companion—a slender, dark adolescent boy—had been seen digging in the Last Isles and, although his new client was stingy with information, Stuart inferred that the Last Isles weren’t safe places to dig. With appropriate coercion, Mr. Ponytail would lead him to his young friend so that Stuart could conveniently kill them both and make enough money to forget about working. This job would pay him so much that he could look forward to simply sipping beer on his front porch every day for a year.

    “I think Sheriff McKenzie was trying to get rid of us,” Magda said, as she sat in her car in the parking lot at Wally’s. She looked too tired to crank it.
    “No. Not us,” Faye said, leaning in the window to say good-bye. “He was trying to get rid of you . He’s been trying to get rid of you all day.”
    “Well, I told him everything I knew about the kids and what happened to them. He was supposed to tell me everything he knew.”
    Faye rubbed at a stiff cord of muscle in her neck. “I don’t think that’s the way it works.”
    “The kids’ parents aren’t here yet. Somebody had to light a fire under the cops.”
    Faye grimaced, remembering how Magda had leaned over the crime scene tape all morning until they dragged her ashore, bellowing instructions to the investigators on proper handling of their forensics samples. “I bet those guys do a better job of tracking their chain-of-custody forms next time.”
    Magda shrugged and found the energy to crank the engine. “Where’s your car?”
    “My car’s no help. I left my skiff at Seagreen Island when we came in on the sheriff’s boat and I can’t get back to the Gopher without it. I’m stuck ashore till morning. Maybe Wally will let me sleep on his boat.”
    Magda grunted. “Wally works his boat hard. It’s dirty and it smells like fish guts. Want to grab a burger and bunk on my couch?”
    “In Tallahassee?”
    “No, genius. Even Dr. Raleigh, my department chairman, agrees a daily drive to and from Tallahassee would be a tough commute. The university keeps a few cottages and a trailer in metropolitan Panacea for researchers working at the marine lab there. The cottages were full, so I got the trailer.”
    “You say that as if it’s a good thing.”
    “The trailer has a satellite dish.”

    Stuart circled through the parking lot at Wally’s Marina, scoping out the territory. His new client had suggested that he begin his search for Mr. Ponytail and his young friend at Wally’s. It was highly likely that the distinguished clientele would have information on every shady character in a thirty-mile radius. Oddly, the man had told him to scrupulously avoid Wally himself, describing him as both crooked and dull-witted. This was a combination that Stuart found useful in errand boys, but dangerous when the stakes were high.
    It was nearly ten. Since fishermen like to have their bait in the water before dawn, perhaps to surprise sleepy fish, the marina parking lot was almost deserted. Left behind was a handful of cars belonging to people asleep on their boats or to the die-hard drinkers lingering at the bar and grill.
    Stuart parked and went inside, ostensibly to take a piss but actually to see if anybody at the grill looked like a big Indian or a scrawny boy. Nobody did, and nobody would admit to ever seeing them, either, so he crawled back into his car and headed for the Panacea Palace. On his way out, he passed