gray. Only now, if I meet somebody, it’s the end of everything. But the miles ran back behind me, turn after turn, one empty and deserted reach after another while I sweated it out, and I saw no one at all. At four-forty-five I was down to the sandy point where the slough turned off, the one I had marked in my memory this morning. I wheeled and turned into it and in a moment I was out of sight of the lake, cut off and hidden among the trees on either side.
I had to throttle the big motor down here, for the channel was narrow and twisting, winding its erratic way across the bottom. And two or three times in every mile there would be big trees down in the water. These had to be carefully worked around, sometimes forcing me clear up against the opposite bank. After I had gone about three miles I stopped, pulled the rental boat alongside, and cut the anchor rope up near where it was made fast to the bow. Coiling it up so there would be no free end to float around in the water, I tied it all up in one bunch and dropped it into the slough. The anchor was a concrete block that would weigh about fifteen pounds, and I knew that when they found the abandoned boat with it missing, the inference would be inescapable. Shevlin had used the thing that was handiest, and what was left of Jack Marshall was lying on the bottom somewhere in all these thousands of acres of lake and slough with it tied fast to his body. I dropped the deputy’s badge and the gun and handcuffs into the water along with the anchor and sat for a moment watching the little rings recede where they had disappeared. There, I thought, goes the last trace of twenty-seven years of Marshall.
I got under way again, pulling the rental boat along with the short section of anchor rope still left fast to the bow. After about another mile I found the place I was looking for. A small stream came out into the slough on the right, its entrance choked with a rank growth of reeds. I stopped and pulled the rental boat alongside and got into it, setting the anchor of Shevlin’s boat in its stern so it wouldn’t get away. The blood I had smeared on the oar and the boat seat had dried solidly now, and I wet the bloody handkerchief I had had about my finger and set about washing it off. The way to do it, I knew, was to wash it just as clean as a man would who was anxious to leave no trace but at the same time was working under tremendous pressure. There would be no indication that it had been planted, but rather that it had been thoroughly searched for and washed off with just a slight smudge overlooked here and there. The gory fingerprints inside the bailing can I left just as they were, for they were completely invisible as the can was lying now. Then I took the small handcuff key out of my pocket and dropped it so it bounced under one of the slats in the wooden grating on the bottom of the boat, invisible unless someone lifted the grating. I wiped the motor all over with the handkerchief to remove fingerprints, rolled the wet cloth into a ball, and threw it far out among the reeds.
Taking one of the oars, I poled the boat back among the reeds, then pulled Shevlin’s boat in after it until they touched. Lifting the anchor back into his boat, I climbed over into it myself and poled it back out of the growth into the slough. I turned and looked back. It was a good job. The boat was hidden, but it could be found. It looked exactly like the kind of job a man would do at night and in a hurry, not knowing, because of the darkness, that just a little white was visible through the shield of greenery. It’s done, I thought. It’s all done except getting out of here. In a few more hours I’ll be with her. The past ends here, and from now on everything is ours.
The sun was almost down now and twilight was thickening here in the heavy timber of the bottom. I knew I had to hurry and get up to the head of