At ten minutes to five in the morning, the public ramp at Bayou Clement looked like a stage nobody had bothered to light properly. A single sodium lamp on a creosote pole made everything the color of weak tea: the wet concrete, the pilings, the pelican sleeping on the third post, the old Ford pickup backing a trailer down toward the water with the patience of a man threading a needle.
Officer Wade Pruitt watched it from the cruiser with the engine off and the window down. The air smelled of diesel and low tide and somebody's bait cooler left open overnight. His coffee had gone cold an hour ago. He drank it anyway.
The trailer carried a white skiff, eighteen feet or close to it, with a dark stripe running the length of the hull just under the gunwale. A Yamaha ninety hung off the transom, cowling tilted up like a dog's head waiting for a word. Wade set the cup in the holder and picked up the printout on the passenger seat, though he knew it by heart. He had been reading it since Saturday.
STOLEN VESSEL. 18' CAROLINA SKIFF, WHITE HULL, NAVY STRIPE. YAMAHA F90. GALVANIZED TRAILER. TAKEN FROM VANCE MARINA SLIP 14 BETWEEN 2200 SAT AND 0600 SUN. OWNER: VANCE, GARRETT.
Below that, in the chief's handwriting, a note from the call log at 4:21 that morning: Anon caller, prepaid #. Says "the old Chinese guy at the public ramp" has the Vance boat. Says check it this morning.
Wade had been back in Bayou Clement for eleven weeks. In that time there had been nine outboard motors cut off nine transoms between the marina and the county landing, two pickups broken into for their tackle, a cast net taken off a porch rail, and now an entire boat, which was the kind of thing Garrett Vance took personally because it had happened on his own docks, under his own lights, two slips down from the office where he kept a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with the governor. Vance sat on the city council. Vance had called the chief twice on Sunday and once at home. Vance had said, in Wade's hearing, that if the department couldn't keep a few motors bolted down, maybe the town ought to think about what it was paying for.
So when the anonymous call came in, the chief had looked at the clock, looked at Wade, and said, "Go have a look. Look, Wade. That's all."
He got out of the cruiser.
The man at the trailer hitch was older than Wade had expected from the way he moved, seventy at least, small and spare in a gray hooded sweatshirt and white shrimper's boots. He had the trailer winch strap in one hand and a coil of bow line over his shoulder. He did not startle when Wade's boots hit the concrete. He only glanced up, nodded once, the way a man nods at weather, and went back to the strap.
"Morning," Wade said. "Sir, I'm going to need you to step away from the boat."
The man unhooked the strap, let it reel slowly back onto the winch, and stepped away from the boat.
"This your vessel?"
"Yes."