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rape was a better definition.
    “Take some home for supper, Cap’n.” The old sailor offered a plastic grocery sack full of large shrimp, so fresh they were still snapping and popping inside the bag.
    Hall hesitated. He knew how important it was to gain the trust of the people, especially the fishermen. Ethics were just as important.
    “Ain’t done nothing wrong, so it can’t be no graft,” the wise old waterman reasoned.
    Hall took the heavy bag of tasty shellfish and wished the crew luck on their next trip before he departed. He checked three more boats before eight a.m., citing one captain for a vessel with no fire extinguisher. All of the boats had Turtle Exclusion Devices on board, but when he was on the last boat a juvenile loggerhead turtle fell from the net when it was brought in. It thudded onto the deck with the shrimp and other bycatch-fish that would be thrown overboard, dead or alive. When one of the crewmen went to shovel the turtle up with what looked like a grain scoop, Hall stopped him.
    He was wrong, it was not a loggerhead turtle. Hall flipped the dead reptile onto its stomach for a closer look. The head of the turtle was small and the carapace was a pale green, as if it were trying to mimic the green ocean it had been plucked from. The shells of loggerhead turtles were reddish-brown, almost coppery unless they were covered with barnacles and other epibionts. He lifted it and it was heavy. The size of a trashcan lid and thirty-five pounds, he guessed. Sad, lifeless eyes looked up at him.
    “Ain’t my fault,” the shrimper said. Hall gave him a hard look.
    Hall said “You didn’t break any laws, but it would still be alive if you hadn’t snagged it.”
    “Yeah, and who’s gonna feed my kids?”
    Hall quit the skirmish he could never win. He transferred the dead turtle to his boat and cast off.

Chapter Nine
    He couldn’t help but notice the girl was pretty, but Detective Carl Varnum knew that would soon fade. The girls who started out at the White Pony were young and attractive with clear eyes and a plan for the future. Most of them could have passed for one of his daughter’s classmates in her senior year of high school. Within eight months to a year they would be at Sarge’s or Twins, across the Jasper County line, better living through chemistry having taken its toll on their assets. Some would be prostitutes well before they were of legal drinking age.
    Varnum had known a lot of strippers. The one sitting across from him in the booth at Waffle House was the latest one that owed him a favor. She was all blonde hair and silicone. Distracting. They were both smoking his cigarettes and she had ordered the All-Star Special with a side of hash browns since he was paying. She was drinking a Diet Coke with her breakfast, just like his daughter would have done. He waited for her to begin.
    “I don’t know if it means anything, but one of my customers said that he was getting ready to come into a big score.”
    She lost some of her beauty when she blew the cigarette smoke out of her nose. Varnum thought he noticed the beginning of tooth decay on one of her back teeth. Meth stripped the enamel off of teeth quicker than sugar ever could.
    “Dope?” he asked.
    “I don’t think so. He buys from one of the guys at the club, so he must not have his own source. This is something else. Sometimes he meets another guy there, looks like he has money.” She shoveled smothered and covered hash browns into her mouth with one hand and kept the lit cigarette in the other, taking puffs in between swallows.
    “Name.”
    “Nuh-uh,” she said with a mouthful of eggs. She swallowed and took another drag. “I got a license plate.”
    He wrote down the tag number she gave to him in his notebook and put it in his shirt pocket. He took a fifty from his wallet and put it on the table next to her plate.
    Varnum asked “Why do you think he’s not legit?”
    “He’s slimy,” she said. Varnum didn’t ask for