Then, careful not to touch the interior or top of the police boat, I reached in for the bowline coiled on the front seat. I made it fast to my own boat and turned away, heading for the nearest place I could get help, the lock at the north end. As I drove I checked each way for landmarks. It seemed I was downstream about half a mile from the X spot on Winslow's map. It took me seven minutes to reach the lock. My mind was racing ahead of the boat, working out what I would do when I got there. And I was going over the few facts I had. For one thing, there was no weapon in the police boat. It might be lying underneath Winslow, but it's common for a suicide to hang on to his weapon in his death throes, so it should have been in the boat somewhere if he'd done himself in. And secondly, the outboard motor was shut off and was turned the way it would have been to steer up against a dockside or the hull of another boat. It meant Winslow could have been alongside another boat when he died, maybe his marked rendezvous.
