Making no sudden movements, Harvey turned a full 360 degrees, watching and listening for signs of danger. Satisfied that it was safe to move, he plucked his prized FBI T-shirt off the branch where he’d left it to air out overnight, and slipped it on.

Harvey walked carefully through the tall grass and scrubby bushes toward the water-toward the spot where he presumed the body to be. He watched his feet. Poking a bare toe into somebody’s guts would be a disgusting way to start the day.

Something caught his eye, off at his eleven o’clock. He stopped in midstep and squinted. Had something moved? He didn’t think so. It was one of those intuitive things that hit him from time to time, and he knew to wait it out until his brain could unscramble it. All around him, nothing stirred but the breeze, gently waving the top of the tall seed-tipped grasses in an undulating ripple that made land look like water.

So what was it?

A phrase popped into his head: background anomaly.

When someone’s lying in wait-or lying dead-they think they’re concealed by the tall grass that surrounds them, and they’d be right if it weren’t for the background anomaly. When everything is waving in the breeze, the anomaly is the patch of vegetation that stands still. In this case, it was far more obvious than that. Harvey saw a very definite hole in the rolling surface of the grass-exactly the kind of hole that a body would leave after it had been dumped.

As he closed the distance, he thought briefly about the footprints and other damning evidence he was leaving behind, but if it came to that, at least he could show that the path of footprints led directly to his tent. Plus, if footprints were an issue, there should be at least one other pair that would implicate the real killer.