NIGHT ON THE BAYOU reminds Jay Talley of a Cajun band of bullfrogs playing bass, and peepers screaming on electric guitars, and cicadas and crickets rasping washboards and sawing fiddles.

He shines a flashlight near the dark, arthritic shape of an old cypress tree, and alligator eyes flash and vanish beneath black water. The light simmers with the ominous soft sound of mosquitoes as the BayStealth drifts, the outboard motor cut. Jay sits in the captain's chair and idly surveys the woman in the fish box not far below his feet. When he was boat shopping several years ago, this particular BayStealth excited him. The fish box beneath the floor is long and deep enough to hold more than a hundred and twenty pounds of ice and fish, or a woman built the way he likes.

Her wide, panicked eyes shine in the dark. In daylight, they are blue, a deep, beautiful blue. She painfully screws them shut as Jay caresses her with the beam of the flashlight, starting with her mature, pretty face, all the way down to her red painted toenails. She is blonde, probably in her early- to mid-forties, but looks younger than that, petite but curvaceous. The fiberglass fish box is lined with orange boat cushions, dirty and stained black from old blood. Jay was thoughtful, even sweet when he bound her wrists and ankles loosely so the yellow nylon rope wouldn't cut off her circulation. He told her that the rope wouldn't abrade her soft flesh as long as she didn't struggle.

"No point in struggling, anyway," he said in a baritone voice that goes perfectly with his blond-god good looks. "And I'm not going to gag you. No point in screaming, either, right?"