"We started lining the main canal in the twenties and slowly worked our way through the laterals but it took-"

Lawless's cell phone chirped. "Sorry," he said, flipping it open, intending on muting it until he saw who it was: Jimmy Busmur. "I need to take this. It should only take a second."

Brackston frowned and waved Lawless away, as if he had some important work to do himself. He sat down in his old chair and opened one of the thin blue files, pretending to be busy.

"Lawless."

"Yeah, Detective?" Busmur boomed into Lawless's ear. He winced and turned the volume down.

"What is it Busmur?"

"Yeah, we're done with the two grilles you wanted us to check and I'm just calling in to report."

When he didn't continue, Lawless said, "Did you find anything I need to know about right now? I'm kinda' busy here."

"Sorry. There was another hole in the grille where Lateral Number Seven dumps into Lateral Number Three."

He had Lawless's complete attention now. He said to Brackston, "I'll step out for a minute so I don't bother you with this." Brackston waved him away again, pretending not to care, and transferred some blank paper from one folder to another.

Lawless stepped out of Brackston's office into the noisy hive. When he put the phone back to his ear, Busmur was talking.

"Hold it," he said. "Start over again. I couldn't hear you."

"Start over from the beginning?"

"No, not from the beginning. I couldn't hear what you said after you told me you found another hole."

Busmur yelled, "I said, we actually found two holes."

Lawless could hear the other diver, Vandertop, in the background, "You don't have to yell, Jimmy. You're probably blowing out his ear. Gimme the phone."

"He said he couldn't hear me," Busmur's voice said.

A brief muffied argument ensued, followed by, "Detective? This is Garritt Vandertop. Can you hear me okay?"

"I hear you just fine. Tell me about the holes."

"Right. We found a hole at the junction where Lateral Number Seven dumps into the other canal, I think it's number three or four."

"Yes," Lawless replied, feeling a headache coming on. "Busmur mentioned that one. Where did you find the other hole?"

"When we found that one, we went back to where Lateral Number Seven goes under Shoemake and we checked that grille. That's where we found the second hole."

"Do the holes look the same?"

"They're about the same size but it's hard to tell if anything else is the same. The water's murky and we can't see."

"What about where the canal ends, did you check there?"

"It dumps into the Stanislaus River, but there's no grille there."

Lawless thought for a moment. "No legs? You didn't find any legs?"

"No sir. You want us to check anything else?"

Lawless got an idea. "Yes. Look at your map. I want you to check three more grilles, any three, but they have to be from different canals, No two grilles from the same canal. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Call me when you're done. And don't let Busmur use the cell phone again."

"Will do, Detective." Lawless could hear him laughing as he clicked off.

Lawless's stomach hitched. It hadn't bothered him since the morning but it was back now, well rested and ready to go. He massaged his gut and reached into a jacket pocket for the antacids while he tried to make sense of the divers' news.

If there were holes in the grilles, Weston's legs, and Sanchez's arm, for that matter, could have washed through and been swept into the river, gone for good.

Busmur had said the hole was big enough for him to swim through without worrying about snagging his wetsuit. What if the holes were underwater escape routes? If the killers were wearing wetsuits they could disappear into the canals, pass through the holes, and travel great distances unseen.

Then there was Brouchard's call: how did the unidentified DNA fit into this new theory? It didn't, unless the state people in Stockton were correct and Brouchard had somehow spoiled the sample.

He was mulling over the damaged DNA when he remembered Brackston; the old man was probably ready to have him thrown out. How long had he been talking on the phone and thinking? Five minutes? Ten?

He knocked once on Brackston's door, walked in and said, "Sorry about the interruption," then returned to his orange seat.

Brackston ignored him for several seconds, trying his best to look busy with his feet up on his desk and his nose in a blue file.

"The main reason I'm here today is," Lawless started in, "we've had a couple of bizarre killings that I think are somehow associated with the canals."

The blue file dropped a few inches, revealing Brackston's raised eyebrows. "You mean someone drowned?"

"No. I mean they were killed next to a canal. One of them, one of your men, was found in the water yesterday morning-"

"Drowned?" Brackston interrupted.

"We're not sure. One of his arms was missing so it might also have been blood loss or shock, or both."

Brackston dropped the file folder on the desk. "And the other one, what did it have to do with the canals?"

"The other guy was a farmer out near Shoemake. His employees found him dead by the canal this morning. They thought he was out there to open an irrigation gate."

"He was in the water, too?"

"No." He decided not to tell Brackston how they had found Weston. "We don't have the autopsy results yet so I shouldn't speculate on the cause of death, but he was found next to a canal."

Brackston shrugged. "Coincidence." But he looked interested.

"Just how many canals does MID have?"

"We have two hundred eleven miles of canals and laterals. If you count drainage canals, we have two hundred ninety-one miles. We deliver over two hundred thousand acre feet of irrigation water per year to farmers and ranchers in our district."

Lawless had no idea there were so many canals. His face must have shown surprise because Brackston smiled.

"Come over here and let me show you," Brackston said, standing and pointing at the map on the wall. Lawless followed him to the map.

"The Don Pedro Dam was built here," he stabbed a bony finger at the map, "in seventy-one to dam up the Tuolumne River and create Lake Don Pedro. This was the second Don Pedro Dam, the first was completed in twenty-three. My father helped build the first," Brackston added, with great pride.

"This dam is what makes irrigation possible in the Valley." He hitched up his pants and looked at Lawless to make sure he was listening. Lawless nodded.

"The water leaves Don Pedro here," he stabbed the map again, "and gets split up between the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts here, at the La Grange Dam." He moved his finger down a bit and jabbed.

"I don't think I've heard of that dam before. When was it built?"

"You haven't heard of it because you're too young," Brackston snapped. "The La Grange Dam was built in eighteen ninety-three, as a diversion dam. It's only a hundred thirty feet high."

"Right," Lawless nodded, as if he understood how the dam's height had anything to do with anything.

"The water that goes west belongs to MID and goes into our Main Canal. The water that goes east is used by idiots who didn't have the sense to buy land in our district. Seven laterals come off the Main Canal." He began waving his hands over the map with great flair. "They divide and subdivide and join back together in places all over the district."

"Where do the canals end up?"

"The Laterals and Main Canal dump into one of the three rivers in the county, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, or Tuolumne, depending on which canal you're talking about."

Lawless studied the map for a minute. "What are these dotted lines?" he asked, pointing.

"Those are drains. When they started irrigating a hundred years ago, the ground water rose so high parts of the valley turned into marshland. So they put in drainage canals to take the excess water back to the canals."

"So they probably wouldn't be full like the canals that deliver the water."

"Hell no. Not that much water goes back."

Lawless studied the map some more and asked, "Aren't the canals dangerous, running through the city like they do? Wouldn't it have been smarter to run them around the city instead of through the middle of it?"

Brackston scowled. "You sure aren't very smart for a detective, are you? Is your daddy the sheriff, is that how you got your job?"

"I'm not following you," Lawless said, cautious about further irritating an obviously upset Brackston, but confused about what set him off this time.

"Think man!" Brackston hollered. "The canals were there first, long before the houses!" Then, muttering, "You'd fit right in around here."

Lawless considered punching the offensive old man in the nose and throwing him out the window, but thought better of it. Chances are he would not only survive the fall, he'd be angrier for the experience. Plus, he was right. Looking at the map again, he saw that the canals didn't run through what was, a hundred years ago, the residential areas of Modesto.

"Do you fence the canals that run through town to keep people out?"

Brackston lectured Lawless on the history of irrigation in the Valley for ten minutes.

Thinking Brackston could go on for another hour, wasting his time, Lawless decided he'd better ask about the grilles. "Tell me about the grilles used to block debris from going under the road."

Brackston broke out in a craggy-toothed jack-o-lantern ear-to-ear grin: a frightful sight, Lawless thought. "Those were put in at my suggestion, back in fifty-eight when I was working in maintenance. We were having a terrible time with people throwing their garbage in the canals." His face went back to scowling, a more natural look for him and one Lawless was more comfortable with than the grinning face.

"Damn stupid people think they can just throw their crap in the canals, like it was their personal garbage disposal. Their crap would get lodged under the roads and damn up the water. Made a hell of a mess. Then I suggested we stick something across the opening of the canal."

He nudged Lawless with a bony elbow and said, "They gave fifty dollars for that suggestion," then nodded and winked.

"The diver that called a while ago found holes in three of the grilles," Lawless told him. "Is that unusual?"

Brackston's face clouded. "Impossible. Every one of 'em's checked every spring before irrigation season starts. If anything's wrong, they're repaired or replaced before we fill the canals. Besides, there's never been a hole in any of the modern stainless steel grilles. Your divers made a mistake."

"I don't think so," Lawless said. "The diver said the hole was big enough for him to swim through."

"Where?"

"Right here," Lawless told him as he pointed at the map, "and here and here," pointing to the other locations he'd learned about on the phone.

Brackston stared at the map and shouted, "Impossible!" again.

"Nevertheless, I think someone needs to check them out. Could be trouble."

"I'll get someone out there tomorrow."

"I asked them to check three other grilles on three different canals on their way back to town. You want me to let someone know if they find any more holes?"

"You have them call me." Brackston jabbed his chest with his bony finger. "I'll see that something gets done. In fact, I'm gonna' go see McFrazier right now."

Brackston stomped to the door.

Lawless said, quickly, "Hey, do you mind if I stay and look at the map some more?"

"Be my guest. Just don't touch anything on my desk. And don't steal the magazines."

Alone, Lawless tried to remember how many miles of canals Brackston had said there were. Wasn't it close to three hundred? Looking at the map, he saw that the system of canals crisscrossed the district from a northeast-to-southwest direction, and while most of them ran through rural land, a good five or six of the Laterals traversed residential areas at some point.

As he studied the map, the anxiety he'd felt during his premonition that morning returned. At first he just felt uneasy, but his apprehension grew at an alarming rate.

The lines representing the canals on the map began to thicken, almost popping out from the map's surface. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but nothing changed. A few seconds later he could only see the thick, black lines of the canals; other topographical markings had disappeared.

A line at the edge of the map moved, and his stomach flipped. The other lines on the map began moving, one by one, taking shape, coming alive. He blinked and stepped away.

He realized what was happening, the feeling was clear and unmistakable: Run Shoe Boy! They're coming to get you!

He wanted to run, knew he should run, but couldn't turn away from the map. The whole system of canals had become a nest of snakes, pulsating and writhing in rhythm.

A head popped up from the map; small evil eyes stared at him and a forked tongue appeared. It hissed and crawled off the map, dropping to the floor with a soft plop. Twisting and writhing, it completely shed its prior lifeless form and became a live snake. It raised its head and looked at him. He stumbled backward a few steps back and the snake hissed and started swaying back and forth, as if trying to hypnotize him. Only a foot long, it was stalking Lawless like a predator.

Plop. Another canal-snake fell to the floor, writhing and squirming until it, too, came alive. It stared at him with its black eyes and began swaying. Another plop, followed by another. The first two snakes moved back and forth and up and down as one, and Lawless found something in their ancient dance that pulled at him.

His feet were blocks of cement and there were now four snakes, bobbing and weaving their way toward him, growing longer and thicker by the second. The lead snake's tongue now shot out four inches, and when it hissed, it bared inch-long fangs that dripped venom.

Sweat poured down his face and he knew he should turn and run, break down the door if necessary, but his feet wouldn't move. He was afraid to take his eyes off the snakes, even for a second; he knew if he did they would be on him.