"Two doctors in August," Claudine said.
Shuford's radio crackled. "Marine Two, Brannon."
"Go ahead."
"Restrooms are clear. Men's and women's. Nobody. Office is locked. Store's locked. I checked the deck and around the back by the dumpsters. I don't see him, Sarge."
The wind gusted. A dock box lid somewhere down the line banged open and shut. Shuford stood there in the rain with three pieces of paper in his hands and looked at Claudine for a long moment, and she watched the decision arrive in his face like weather.
"Ms. Pettaway," he said. "Turn around for me. Put your hands behind your back."
"Wiley," Lawson said. "Hang on. I don't think there's any need for—"
"Turn around, ma'am."
She turned around. She put her hands behind her back. She looked at the brass plate on her grandfather's piling while the cuffs went on, one and then the other, the steel cold and wet, the ratchet clicking, and she thought about him, her grandfather, Zebedee Pettaway, sixty years old in 1987, standing at a folding table in a Holiday Inn conference room on Government Boulevard in front of forty white men in golf shirts, holding his bill of sale on Sumrall Seafood letterhead in both hands, saying, And she thought, I am not going to cry in front of Lawson Tillery. I am not going to cry in front of anybody on this dock.
"I'm not arresting you," Shuford said behind her. "You're being detained until we locate Mr. Tillery. That's all."
"That's all," she said.