"And you did," Jo said.

He nodded, with a faint smile. "The commission was bogus anyway. Congressman James Jay Williams's version of the McCarthy hearings. Made him famous for a while. And gave me a foothold in politics. Marais and I became lovers again, briefly and very secretly. Then she told me she was pregnant. But she didn't want anything from me. She told me she was leaving for Nashville to film her television show and that she was going to marry Arkansas Willie so the baby would have a name. She asked me if I minded. What was I going to say? To marry her was out of the question. We were going in such different directions. And to make public our liaison in that way and at that time would have ruined me. I said I didn't mind. Didn't mind," he said with loathing. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done." He rolled the cigar between his fingers, studying the long ash, shaking his head faintly. "She was true to her word. She never asked me for anything. But she sent me pictures of little Shiloh once in a while. Here. This was the first. In over twenty years, it's never left my person."

He took out another photograph protected in clear vinyl. Shiloh at eighteen months in a white dress in a photographer's studio. Jo had seen one exactly like it before in the trembling hands of Vincent Benedetti. She turned it over. The words on the back were in the same handwriting as those that had appeared on the photo in Benedetti's possession.

Nathan-she barrels around like a fullback, knocking over everything. She has your nose and intelligence. My skin. My mother's eyes. Marais.

"Shortly before her murder," Jackson went on, "Marais moved to Palm Springs. She was tired of television and eager to do something different. I think she and Willie Raye were ready to call it quits. They'd played out the charade of their marriage long enough for both of them. Marais wanted to embark on a new enterprise. A recording company. She was smart. She'd investigated the angles and knew there were lots of incentives in California for minority businesses, many of them programs I'd championed. She came to see me. Told me she was prepared to do whatever was necessary to make sure she qualified. She didn't need to do anything and she knew it. She was just testing. She brought Shiloh. It was the first time I'd ever seen my daughter, ever touched her hand. You can't imagine what that felt like."

"Tell me," she said.

"It was as if from the moment Marais let me know that Shiloh was born and I couldn't share that, I'd been living with a shattered heart. But suddenly all the pieces had been brought back together. I'd have done anything Marais asked just to be able to be with Shiloh again. Then Marais was murdered."

"Why didn't you come forward about your relationship to Shiloh?"

"I was afraid. It was a very confusing time."

"And you were on a political express that might have been derailed," Jo said.

"I know it sounds callous. I had Dwight Sloane assigned to the case. Dwight and I go way back to the old days in Watts. Practically like brothers. And I pulled a lot of strings to get Booker assigned by the Bureau. Because of Benedetti's suspected ties to organized crime, they were willing to come in under the RICO statute. I had to know what was going on."

"What was going on?" She looked directly at Harris.

"A lengthy, ultimately fruitless investigation," Harris said.

"It was Benedetti," Jackson insisted. "We just couldn't prove it."

"His motive?" Jo asked.

"They'd been lovers once. He wanted to start again. She told me she'd borrowed a hefty sum from him to start Ozark Records and he'd indicated he'd be willing to accept sex in lieu of interest. She wanted it strictly business. They argued-in public, in front of witnesses-the day before she was killed. Her murder was a hit, Ms. O'Connor. And it was Benedetti who arranged it. We just weren't able to prove anything. If Benedetti's here now, it's to silence Shiloh, to keep whatever she remembers about that night from being told."

Jo said, "The men who are here with you, they were all involved in the original investigation. Why are they here now?"

"They know the case. They owe me favors, and I wanted this done quietly. As soon as the tabloids get hold of this information, every lunatic this side of the Atlantic will be here trying to spot Shiloh. We hoped to do it so that Benedetti wouldn't know either. I guess we blew that.

"If Benedetti's men are out there, your husband, the boy, the others, they're all in danger." He held out his hands, empty. "That's everything. I swear. Now you."

"I spoke with Benedetti this morning," Jo said. "He told me a story every bit as interesting as the one you've just told. Only in his version, he's Shiloh's father and you're the man who killed Marais Grand."

"What?"

Jo recapped Benedetti's version of Shiloh's origin and Marais Grand's demise. Nathan Jackson listened with his jaws working back and forth like a silent engine powered by rage.

"The lying bastard. His daughter?"

"His story sounds no less plausible to me than yours."

Jackson thrust the photograph of Shiloh at her. "Just look at her. She looks like me."

"Vincent Benedetti is convinced she looks like him. We believe what we want to believe."

"If Benedetti's here, Nathan, we need to talk to him," Harris said. "Maybe we'll have a better idea of what's going on out there."

"What do you mean, what's going on out there?" Jo looked from one to the other. "Don't you know?"

The two brothers exchanged a glance. Harris said, "There's a problem."

"What problem?" Jo demanded.

"I think we should go downstairs." Harris moved toward the door. "Metcalf can explain this. And Nathan, it's time we brought the sheriff in, don't you think?"

Jackson's eyes fed on the photograph of Shiloh. He looked like a man worried it would be his last meal.

Downstairs, Schanno and Metcalf were at the map. Schanno saw Nathan Jackson, but probably didn't recognize him. He looked unhappy and he looked at Jo.

"Got a problem, Jo," he said.

"So I understand."

"You told him?" Harris asked Metcalf.

"The essentials," Metcalf replied.

"Will someone please tell me?" Jo said.

Metcalf beckoned Jo to the wall map.

"The last communication we had with Dwight Sloane was yesterday. Five-oh-eight P.M. Here." He put his finger on a lake called Embarrass. "He should have checked in four hours later. He didn't. At first light this morning, I went out in a helicopter to their last known coordinates. They weren't there. I circled the area, but unfortunately with this weather, I couldn't see much."

"So the situation is, you've been out of touch with them since almost the beginning," Schanno said unhappily.

"Essentially, that's correct," Metcalf admitted. "Probably it's an equipment failure. The fact that we found no trace of them at the last coordinates indicates that they're still moving."

"But you have no idea where," Schanno said.

"No," Metcalf admitted.

Schanno rubbed his jaw and slowly shook his head. "Embarrass Lake. Not good."

"Why?" Harris asked.

"The lake's roughly circular," Schanno explained. "There are easily half a dozen trails that lead off from various points around the shoreline."

Harris said, "Then we do an aerial search along each trail until we spot them."

"In that?" Schanno indicated the weather visible through the glass doors. "You couldn't find the Eiffel Tower in that."

"Suggestions?" Harris continued, unfazed.

"We get the Tamarack Search and Rescue Team to put men on every trail," Schanno said.

"How soon?" Nathan Jackson asked.

Schanno looked at him and must have decided that whoever he was, he was in it as thick as the rest. "They could be on the ground at Embarrass Lake in a couple of hours. We should get them started right away. With this cloud cover, dark'll come early. They won't have much daylight left."

"It's better than sitting around waiting," Metcalf put in.

"Have it done." Jackson turned to Jo. "I want to talk to Benedetti."

"I can arrange that," she replied.

31.

THE WATER LOOKED LIKE GRAY EARTH and the paddle in her hand felt like a spade. With every stroke, Shiloh saw herself digging her own grave.

The man in the stern of the canoe hadn't spoken except to press her for directions. She'd lied to him, tried to misdirect him to buy time. "That way," she'd pointed, leading them through a narrows between two islands. "Now that way."

His sense of direction was flawless even though the mist and the drizzle sometimes blotted out everything except the flat water fifty yards around them. "That will take us in a circle," he said quietly at her back. "Don't try that again. Which way is it?"

"There," and she'd lifted her hand grudgingly in the direction of her death.

She'd struggled with despair all her life. She knew that people envied her, looked at the trappings and thought she had it all. They were wrong. Her life was a big beautiful box with lots of ribbons and bows on the outside but completely empty within. The only love she'd ever known was from her mother and that had been wrenched from her a long time ago. Her father had given her everything she wanted except love. She'd been raised by nannies, nuns, tutors, and housekeepers. She'd never had any real friends, anyone she trusted deeply. All she'd ever had was the music.

What would be the loss? Who would even care if she never came out of the woods? She laid her paddle across the gunwales, laid her head down, and wept. The canoe didn't slow in the least.

"You disappoint me," he said. "We all die sometime. Wendell Two Knives understood that. He went as nobly as any man I've ever known. You would honor him by dying well."

"There's no honor in dying if there's no reason to die," she wept.

"Dying's never had a reason. As far as I can tell, the same is true for living."

It wasn't true about dying, she thought. Wendell had died for a reason. He'd died for her. And dying herself seemed like no way to honor him.

She whispered his name. Wendell. It didn't exactly fill her with courage, but it did pull her out of her self-pity.

She considered the knife in the pocket of her jeans. It wasn't much, but small as it was, she found herself wrapping her hope around it. She had the map in her vest, and a compass, and matches there, too, in a waterproof container. All she needed was a chance.

She wiped her tears and took up her paddle.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

"Call me Charon."

"Charon? Charon. Where have I heard that name before?"

Her back was to him. She listened to his voice carefully. His words were like stones, hard in the way he said them. But not without feeling. Rather, they were like a wall behind which the feeling was hidden.

"You said Wendell died a noble death. How?"

"In the end, I cut his throat. A small, painless cut. It doesn't take much when you know what you're doing."

"Is that how you'll kill me?"

"That depends on you."

"I have money," she tried.

"I have money, too."

"Look, if you don't do this, I could make it worth your while. In other ways."

"Sex? If I wanted that from you, I'd take it."

"I don't understand this. I don't understand any of it." She hit the water with her paddle and sent a splash of silver into the gray on their left.

"Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. William James said that. About as close to understanding any of this as I've ever come."

"I'll bet you tortured small animals when you were a child."

He was slow in responding, although the canoe slowed not at all. "I was the small animal," he said.

"I have to pee." She lifted her paddle from the water. "We need to stop."

"No stops," he said.

"If I'm going to die, I want to die with the dignity of clean underwear."

A moment later, she felt the canoe draw to the left toward a small island. As the bow touched shore, he said, "Try to run and I'll hang you by your hair from a tree limb."

She stepped out. "I'm just going over there." She pointed a dozen yards away to a gooseberry bush near a scrub pine. "For privacy."

"Right there's good enough." He nodded toward the wet ground on which she stood.

"At least turn your back."

She was thinking that when he did, she could grab the knife and use it. She was thinking she could cut his throat as he'd cut Wendell's.

"So you can hit me with a rock?"

He stared at her until she undid her jeans. She pulled them down and squatted facing him.