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assaulted. But a gaping wound no matter how gnawed by river life would point toward foul play.
    The water was icy, having traveled from the Sierra Nevadas where the snow had been melting all spring, filling the creeks and tributaries, merging to make this river. The ninety-degree weather did little to warm the thirty-foot depths where the Explorer rested, its wheels buried deep in the sediment. The wet suit protected Mitch from the worst of the cold, and he took a moment to acclimate himself to the water pressure, diminished light, and temperature.
    He approached cautiously, taking the time to inspect and photograph the front of the vehicle—there were no obvious collision marks. They’d need a more detailed inspection, but it appeared that nothing had hit this SUV, front or back. There was some minimal damage on the passenger side, but nothing to indicate a collision so violent it could push a car into the river. One problem with water was that it carried evidence away from the scene. If there had been branches or leaves embedded in the undercarriage of the car, suggesting perhaps where the vic went in, the evidence could easily have been washed away under the constant pressure of the flowing river.
    The Explorer was fully submerged and held fast, the front end sinking deeper into the muck because of the weight of the engine. The water wasn’t too murky at first, the sun above cutting through, though as they walked along the bottom of the river and disturbed the sludge, their field of vision deteriorated. The underwater lights he and Young used cast an odd illumination around them, making the shadows darker.
    Only the windshield was intact, which suggested the driver hadn’t hit the water with any great speed. Mitch ran his finger along the window edge, felt the top of the retracted driver’s-side window. The smooth edge told him that it had been down when the vehicle went in. Mitch inspected the other windows. They’d all been down on impact; none had broken under the pressure. Who drove with all their windows down in the frigid cold of a Sacramento January? He indicated the evidence to Young, who did his own inspection and nodded.
    The victim was strapped into the driver’s seat. Most victims would unbuckle themselves and attempt to escape, unless the accident rendered them unconscious.
    It was virtually impossible to tell anything about the victim, though with the constant movement of the fresh, cold mountain water through the car, decomposition wasn’t as advanced as Mitch would have guessed. A recent body would have been dark green, but this body was extremely pale, almost translucent, as the gases in the body had leached out over time. The body was intact for the most part, though Mitch knew if they tried to move it, skin, hair, and potential evidence would be lost. The vic’s eyes were gone, as well as his ears, nose, lips, and a good chunk of his face. The vic’s fingers were also missing. The body could have fed the fish for some time. Clothing offered some protection because it could take years to disintegrate.
    The vic wore jeans, sneakers, and a lined jacket. Under the jacket appeared to be a turtleneck. No one in the Valley had been wearing turtlenecks since early March.
    The vic was the same general size and build as Oliver Maddox. Mitch’s preliminary conversations with the Davis Police Department shortly after the earthquake had given him little—the detective assigned to the missing person case said there had been no physical evidence of foul play. Mitch would have followed up with friends, teachers, neighbors—except that he’d been pulled from the case.
    Oliver Maddox had gone missing in late January—about the same time that Tom O’Brien had been moved from a safe area of San Quentin into the general prison population.
    Mitch didn’t buy into the coincidence. Maddox had probably been working on something related to O’Brien’s conviction, but the only person who knew what was the