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pure H 2 O. Was there something her instruments couldn’t see?
    â€œPure water,” she chirped, bouncing in the driver’s seat. If she could figure how the freezing-purifying process worked—well, the potential applications made her giddy. As Harry often said, the greatest discoveries came by accident.
    A hundred yards in, she pulled off the muddy road into a patch of willow, shut off her engine, and climbed out. She didn’t see Ron Moselle watching through the brush as she stripped down to her underwear and stepped into her coverall. She tugged on the hip boots, still damp with what she now knew was clean, drinkable water. Down the road, the mainline levee rose like a linear green mountain, walling off the riverside wasteland called the
batture.
The Devil’s Swamp access road wound over the top of the levee like a brown water snake.
    She walked along the road to the patch of bare mud where the cleanup crew usually parked. But all their cars were gone. Only one green van waited by the fence gate. She checked her watch. Still over an hour before quitting time. So where was the crew? As she walked closer, a Quimicron security guard stepped out of the van to meet her. He wore a side-arm, and he was drinking 7UP.
    â€œI work on the crew,” she said, showing her badge. “Where is everybody?”
    â€œSwamp closed, sweetheart. You got the rest of this week off.”
    â€œBut I was here this morning. What happened?”
    â€œTake it easy, honey. They don’ tell me nothing. Now head on home and enjoy you’ vacation. Chief be callin’ you next week.”
    They found the ice, she thought. And they’re concealing it. She hurried back to her car, shoved her gearshift into reverse and roared away, swerving around a red Toyota pickup, and pounding the steering wheel with her fist. “Dammit! They’re going to steal my ice!”
Simmer
    Â 
    Wednesday, March 9
    10:40 PM
    Â 
    CJ shut down her laptop and rubbed her aching temples. All evening, she’d been holed up in her motel room, reading about Devil’s Swamp. One thing Harry had drilled into her: When in doubt, gather information—all kinds, through every channel, using every tool available. CJ’s online research had turned up plenty.
    Before 1950, Devil’s Swamp had been a fertile marshy woodland centering around a hamlet called Alsen. Settled by freed slaves, the families had peacefully farmed their land for a hundred years—until 1964. That was the year local officials built the first hazardous waste dump in the swamp. By 1970, against the protests of its mostly poor, mostly black residents, the lush wooded marsh held over a hundred toxic lagoons, incinerators, and landfills, and Alsen faded to a ghost town. At latest count, thousands of tons of unnamed waste simmered in the swamp’s two hundred trackless acres.
    In 1986, the EPA found PCBs ranging up to 13,200 micrograms per kilogram in its waterlogged soil. They also found arsenic, lead, mercury, volatile organics—and the first of the mutated frogs. So they issued fishing advisories and posted warning signs, and environmental organizations filed lawsuits. The defendant list read like a government advisory board of Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and Big Biotech. In 2004, Devil’s Swamp was proposed for the Superfund National Priority List.
    Bleary-eyed, CJ wandered out to her concrete balcony and leaned on the rail. The breeze had grown sharp and chilly. “I hate corporations,” she muttered. Then a premenstrual cramp made her clench her ab muscles. On the western horizon, a fat half-moon hovered. Gibbous, she thought, like her belly.
    Max waited below in the parking lot, gazing up at her like a swarthy Romeo. She watched him pace along the line of muddy pickups and SUVs, grateful that he had come at her call—again, and even more grateful that he’d forgiven her—again.
    Max smiled and waved. Then he stalked to