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conclusions.”
    Steve’s mouth tightened. “Don’t screw with me anymore.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Seven o’clock, tonight, Fox & Goose, and you’re paying.”
    “Fair enough.” Mitch didn’t want to meet at the Fox & Goose—he and Claire were supposed to go there tonight to listen to friends of hers who had a band—but Mitch wasn’t picking Claire up until eight. An hour with Steve, then he could drive the five minutes to Claire’s place. Steve would be long gone.
    He planned to tell Steve all about his deception. Everything from his research into the O’Brien-Taverton murders to O’Brien saving Mitch’s life to Mitch befriending Claire under false pretenses. The truth about everything, except for how close he and Claire had become over the last couple months. Mitch couldn’t acknowledge to Steve—to anyone—that his feelings for Claire had moved far beyond professional interest.
    They drove in awkward silence. Mitch looked through his notes on Oliver Maddox. He first learned of O’Brien’s connection with the law student through the prison visitor logs. Mitch had looked for Maddox after the prison break, ostensibly because O’Brien might have tried to contact him. But he’d been pulled from the O’Brien case almost immediately. Politics or jurisdictional grandstanding, he didn’t know which. He should have stopped then, but when Mitch found out that Maddox had been missing since a week before the earthquake, his instincts told him something was rotten. He put a BOLO on Maddox with his license plate and description.
    Now they had Oliver Maddox’s car and a grossly decayed body at the wheel. After four months the victim would be impossible to positively identify at first glance. Hell, a floater after twenty-four hours was green and sloshy and hard to ID.
    Mitch’s instincts told him it was Maddox. Disappeared without a trace, and now his car was found underwater.
    Accident? Or murder?
    The narrow, two-lane road to Isleton that followed the meandering Sacramento River was one of the most dangerous in the county. Accidents were common, especially during rain or the deadly fog that often descended upon the San Joaquin Valley. There was no guardrail to protect a motorist from going into the river. Once in the water, most accident victims didn’t survive.
    The California Delta covered over 738,000 acres. Hundreds of miles of waterways cut through the Delta, the water coming from the Sierra Nevadas through not only the Sacramento River, but numerous smaller rivers and creeks. They all eventually converged before merging with the San Francisco Bay. Isleton was a small river town of fewer than a thousand residents in the southwest corner of Sacramento County. It was known for its annual summer Crawdad Festival and not much else. Mitch didn’t want to think about what those crawdads had done to the body in the Explorer.
    Maddox’s vehicle had been found in the river two miles north of the city limits. The Sacramento River flowed steadily, but today’s current didn’t look too bad.
    A crowd had gathered alongside the river: local cops and their FBI team. Steve pulled up next to the emergency vehicles and said, “Ready?”
    “Always,” Mitch replied.
    They got out and a deputy sheriff—Clarkston on the badge—approached with the sheriff’s diver. The local diver was older than Mitch and a foot shorter, graying, with a craggy face and unusually large hands. “Harry Young. Thanks for coming out.”
    They shook hands, exchanged credentials, and Young said, “I didn’t disturb the car. It’s a white 1998 Ford Explorer, registered to Oliver Maddox. A missing person report was filed by Tammy Amunson on January 23 of this year. One victim in the driver’s seat, been under for a time—eyes gone, fingers missing. A lot of critter damage, but the trunk and limbs are intact. No visible wounds, seat belt intact and engaged, windows down or broken on impact.”
    “Was there any evidence along the riverbank