Grave Sight

He nodded. "She's out here, too," he said, a little question in his voice.

"Most likely." I cocked my head to one side while I considered. "Unless the boy was killed trying to stop someone from taking her." We started walking again, and the ground became easier going; certainly not a flat surface, but not so steep.

There are worse ways to spend a fall day than walking through the woods while the leaves are brilliant, the sun dappling the ground from time to time when the clouds shifted. I felt out with all my senses. We tracked a ping that, upon attaining, proved too old by a decade to be the girl. When I was standing a foot from the site, I knew the body to be that of a black male who had died of exposure. He had become naturally buried under leaves, branches, and dirt that had washed downhill over the course of the past decade. What you could see was blackened ribs with tattered cloth and bits of muscle still clinging to the bones.

I took one of the red cloth strips I keep in my jacket pocket, and Tolliver took a whippy length of wire from a supply he kept stashed in a long pocket on his pants leg. I tied a strip to one end of the wire while Tolliver ran the other end into the ground. We'd walked maybe a quarter of a mile southwest from the fallen tree, and I jotted that down.

"Hunting accident," Tolliver suggested. I nodded. I can't always pin it down exactly, but the moment of death had that feel: panic, solitude. Long-suffering. I was certain he'd fallen out of his deer stand, breaking his back. He'd lain there until the elements claimed him. There were a few pieces of wood still nailed way up in the tree. Named Bright? Mark Bright? Something like that.

Well, he wasn't part of my paycheck. This man was my second freebie for the town of Sarne. Time to earn some money.

We started off again. I began working my way to the east, but I felt uneasy. After we'd proceeded maybe sixty feet from the hunter's bones, I got a welcome, sharp buzz from the north. Uphill, which was slightly odd. But then I realized that we had to go uphill to get to the road. The closer to the road I climbed, the closer I approached the remains of Teenie Hopkins—or some young white girl. The buzzing turned into a continuous drone, and I fell to my knees in the leaves. She was there. Not all of her, but enough. Some big branches had been thrown across her for concealment, but now they were dead and dry. Teenie Hopkins had spent a long, hot summer under those branches. But she still made more of a corpse than the hunter, despite insects, animals, and a few months of weather.

Tolliver knelt by me, one arm around me.

"Bad?" he asked. Though my eyes were closed, I could feel the movements of his body as his head turned, checking in all directions. Once we'd been surprised at the dumpsite by the killer returning with another body. Talk about your irony.

This was the hard part. This was the worst part. Normally, finding a corpse simply indicated I'd been successful. The ma

I fainted.

T OLLIVER was holding me in his lap. We were among the leaves—oak and gum and sassafras and maple—a ruffle of gold and brown and red. He had his back to a big old gum tree, and I was sure he was uncomfortable with all the gum-balls that must be pressing into his butt.

"Come on, baby, wake up," he was telling me, and from the sound of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd said it.

"I'm awake," I said, hating how weak my voice came out.

"Jesus, Harper. Don't do that."

"Sorry."

I leaned my face against his chest for one more minute, sighed, and reasserted myself by scrambling to my feet. I wavered back and forth for a second until I got stabilized.

"What killed her?" he asked.

"Shot in the back, twice."

He waited to see if I'd add more.

"She was ru

Last minutes are hardly ever that bad.

Of course, my standard is probably different from most people's.

P AUL Edwards was waiting by his gleaming silver Outback when we emerged from the woods. His whole face was a question, but our first report should be to our client. Tolliver asked the lawyer to start back to town to assemble the committee, if that was what Ms. Teague wanted. We drove silently back to Sarne, stopping only once at a convenience store. Tolliver went in to get me a Coke, one with real sugar in it. I always crave sugar after finding a body.

"You need to drink about four of these, gain some weight," Tolliver muttered, as he often did.

I ignored him, as I always did, and drank the Coke. I felt better after ten minutes. Until I'd discovered the sugar remedy, I'd sometimes had to go to bed for a day following a successful recovery.

The same group would be gathered in the sheriff's office, and I sat in the car and stared at the glass doors for a second, reluctant to begin this segment of the job.

"You want me to wait in the lobby?"

"No, I want you to come in with me," I said, and Tolliver nodded. I paused, one hand on the car door. "They're not go

He nodded again.

This time, we were in a conference room. It was a tight fit, with Branscom, Edwards, Teague, and Vale, plus Tolliver and me.

"The map," I said to Tolliver. He spread it out. I laid everything I wanted to say out in a line ahead of me, so I could reach my goal, which was to get out of this office and this town with a check in my hands.

"Before we get into the main subject," I said, "let me point out that we also found the body of a black male, dead about ten years, at this site." I indicated the red mark we'd made first. "He died of exposure."

The sheriff seemed to be thinking back. "That might be Marcus Allbright," he said slowly. "I was a deputy back then. His wife thought he'd run off. My God. I'll go collect what's left."

I shrugged. Nothing to do with me. "Now, for Teenie Hopkins." They all tensed, and Paul Edwards even leaned closer. "She was shot twice in the back, and her remains are right here." I touched a spot with my fingertip.

There was an audible gasp from the people seated at the table.

"You saw her?" Hi, I'm TERRY, the MAYOR asked. His eyes were wide behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Mr. Mayor was on the verge of crying.

"Saw what's left," I said, and then reflected that a nod would have been sufficient.

"You mean," the Teague woman said incredulously, "you left her out there?" Harvey Branscom gave her a look of sheer amazement.

I stared back at her with much the same expression. "It's a crime scene," I said. "And I don't do body retrieval. I leave that to qualified people. You go get her, if you don't want the sheriff to investigate." Then I took a deep breath. This was the client. "Two shots in the back, so we still don't know how it happened. If your son was shot first, then Teenie was killed by the same person. Of course, if it was your son who shot her, he then killed himself afterward. But I doubt he committed suicide."

That shut her up, at least temporarily. I had the complete and utter attention of everyone in the room. "Oh my God," whispered Sybil.

"So how do you know?" the sheriff asked.

"How do I find bodies in the first place? I just do. When I find 'em, I know what killed 'em. Believe me, don't believe me. It's up to you, now. You wanted me to find Teenie Hopkins, I found what's left of her. There might be a bone or two missing. Animals."