"I thought we'd go into town and buy her some clothes."

"We can do that later. Here's some old bread. Go out the back door and walk through the trees."

"What is it, Dave?"

"Nothing. Just some minor bullshit. I'll tell you about it later. Come on, off you go."

"I'd like to know when you first thought you could start talking to me like this."

"Annie, I'm serious," I said.

Her eyes flicked past me to the sound of the car driving across the pecan leaves in front. She picked up the cellophane bag of stale bread, took Alafair by the hand, and went out the back screen door through the trees toward the pond at the end of our property. She looked back once, and I could see the alarm in her face.

The man got out of his gray U.S. government motor-pool car, with his seersucker coat over his shoulder. He was middle-aged, thick across the waist, and wore a bow tie. His black hair was combed across his partially bald head.

I met him on the gallery. He said his name was Monroe, from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New Orleans. While he talked, his eyes went past me into the gloom of the house.

"I'd ask you in, but I'm on my way down to the dock," I said.

"That's all right. I just need to ask you one or two things," he said. "Why didn't you all wait for the Coast Guard after you called in on the emergency channel?"

"What for?"

"Most people would want to hang around. For curiosity, if nothing else. How often do you see a plane go down?"

"My wife gave them the position. They could see the oil and gas on the water. They didn't need us."

"Huh," he said, and took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. He rolled it back and forth between his fingers without lighting it and looked away at the pecan trees. The tobacco grains crackled dryly inside the paper. "I got a problem, though. A diver found a suitcase in there with a bunch of child's clothes in it. A little girl's, in fact. But there wasn't a kid in that plane. What's that suggest to you?"