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suggesting the water provided the
necessary seal to hold the wound closed?"
    "I'm not suggesting anything. I'm stating
the facts as I can clearly see them. We know from the conjunctival
petechiae, the fluid in the sinuses, and the water obviously
retained in the tissues in the right lung, that his death was due
to asphyxiation, specifically by drowning. He had to breathe the water for it to reach his sinuses and lungs. Look here."
Prentice indicated the left lung. "Note the difference in the color
and consistency of the lung tissue. The left lung did not retain
water like the right, which indicates it was non-functional prior
to the fatal aspiration."
    "Then he couldn't have been stabbed more
than a few seconds before immersion in the river."
    "Correct. Otherwise air would have entered
the pleural space and created an open pneumothorax."
    Leo had heard more than enough. He turned
and stormed out of the room.
    Someone had stabbed his son in the back and
disposed of his body in the river.
    Now it was time to do something about
it.

V

    Glenwood Cemetery
    Houston, Texas
    October 21 st
    10:25 a.m. CDT

    Marcus Colton passed like a ghost through
the somber gathering, a faceless mourner amid the tearful women and
stoic men. The day was gray, the branches on the weeping cypress
trees brown. Only the manicured lawn and shrubs provided a
background of color for the marble and slate headstones and crypts,
most of which were draped with moss. A procession of limousines
idled at the bottom of the gentle slope, beyond which he could see
the hint of Buffalo Bayou. Somewhere nearby was the final resting
place of Howard Hughes.
    The funeral director stood at the head of
the grave on an elevated platform, hands clasped behind his back,
bible on the lectern before him. He was in the middle of reciting
the standard speech about eternal souls and lives prematurely
extinguished. The polished oak casket hovered over the hidden hole
beneath it, enclosed by a cage of red velvet ropes.
    A woman sobbed to his right and drew several
consolatory pats on the shoulder. In the race for sympathy, she
trailed only the man sitting in the front row, a man that he knew
needed none.
    Colton skirted the periphery of the
gathering and vanished behind the branches of a cypress. Gearhardt
didn't acknowledge his arrival. He just stared straight ahead
through his Serengeti sunglasses, his face stripped of all emotion.
Only the clenched muscles in his jaws suggested that he was
suffering, and not as a symptom of sorrow.
    Colton studied the scene as he waited,
memorizing faces and attaching names to those he recognized. His
dark hair was cropped military short, his acute gray eyes hidden
behind black lenses. His suit matched every other. He looked like
anyone else, everyone else. Forgettable.
    When the funeral director finally finished
speaking, Gearhardt rose and cast what appeared to be a snarl of
dead weeds onto the casket, ran his fingers along the smooth grain,
and walked away from the gathering. He wound a circuitous route
through the maze of ornate headstones and joined Colton beneath the
sagging branches.
    Colton didn't offer his condolences. Empty
platitudes changed nothing. Instead, he waited patiently for his
sometimes employer to speak. He had done enough jobs for Gearhardt
in the past to know how the man worked. Gearhardt was in charge,
but he allowed Colton autonomy over the operation itself. It was a
rare combination, and Colton respected him all the more for it.
Over the course of the past two decades, they had combined for more
than a dozen successful reclamation projects, all of which had gone
off without a hitch. There were always complications, but Colton
was in the business of providing solutions, none of which came
cheap. The mere fact that Gearhardt had called him first spoke
volumes about the situation.
    "I trust you found my offer satisfactory,"
Gearhardt said.
    "As always." Colton allowed the silence to
linger between them, interrupted only by