and a shower of rust drifted to the ground. Had I locked it hours earlier? I couldn?t remember.
Poirier released the mechanism, unhooked the padlock, and swung the gate open. It creaked softly. Not the piercing screech of metal I recalled. He stepped back to clear the way for me, and everyone waited. LaManche still hadn?t spoken.
I hitched the backpack higher onto my shoulder, brushed past the priest, and started up the roadbed. In the clear, crisp light of morning the woods seemed friendly, not malevolent. The sun shone through broad leaves and conifer needles, and the air was thick with the smell of pine. A collegial smell that evoked visions of lake houses and summer camps, not corpses and night shadows. I moved slowly, examining every tree, every inch of ground for broken branches, displaced vegetation, disturbed soil, anything to attest to human presence. Especially mine.
My anxiety level rose with every step, and my heart slipped in extra beats. What if I hadn?t locked the gate? What if someone had been here after me? What had been done after I?d left?
The atmosphere was that of a place I?d never visited, but which seemed familiar because I?d read about it, or seen it in photographs. I tried to sense by time and distance where the path should be. But I had heavy misgivings. My recollection was jumbled and fuzzy, like a dream partly remembered. Major events were vivid, but details as to sequencing and duration were muddy. Let me see something to serve as a prompt, I prayed.
The prayer was answered in the form of gloves. I?d forgotten them. There, on the left side of the roadbed, just at eye level, three white fingertips poked from the fork of a tree. Yes! I scanned the adjacent trees. The second glove showed in a notch in a small maple about four feet off the ground. An image flashed of me, trembling, probing in the darkness to jam the gloves into place. I gave myself high marks for forethought, and low for recall. I thought I?d put them higher. Perhaps, like Alice, I?d had a size-altering experience in these woods.
I veered off between the gloved trees, on what I could barely make out as a path. Its impact on the thicket was so subtle that, without the markers, I might not have spotted it. In the daylight, the trail was little more than a change in texture, the vegetation along its length stunted and more sparse than that to either side. In a narrow line the ground cover did not intertwine. Weeds and small bushes stood alone, isolated from neighbors, exposing the coarse, burnt sienna of dead leaves and soil on which they stood. That was all.
I thought of the jigsaw puzzles I?d worked as a child. Gran and I pored over the pieces, searching for the right one, our eyes and brains calibrating minute variations in grain and shade. Success depended on the ability to perceive subtle differences in tone and texture. How the hell had I spotted this path in the dark?
I could hear the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs behind me. I didn?t point out the gloves, but let them be impressed with my land navigational skills. Brennan the Pathfinder. Within a few yards I spotted the can of insect repellent. No subtlety there. The bright orange cap shone like a beacon in the foliage.
And there was my camouflaged mound. Below a white oak the ground swelled into a small protuberance covered by leaves and bordered by bare earth. In the exposed soil I could see the marks left by my fingers as I?d scratched up leaves and dirt to conceal the plastic. The results of my hurried camouflage job may have revealed more than concealed, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.
I?ve done many body recoveries. Most hidden corpses are found because of a tip or a lucky break. Informants rat out their accomplices. Excited kids point out their finds.
?There.? I indicated the leafy hump.
?You sure?? Ryan asked.
I just looked at him. The others said nothing. I set down my backpack and withdrew another pair of garden gloves. Crossing to the mound, I placed my feet carefully to minimize the disturbance. Absurd, in light of my thrashing about the night before, but at an official scene proper technique is expected.
I squatted down and brushed back enough leaves to expose a small portion of the plastic bag. The bulk of it was still embedded in the earth, and the irregular contour suggested that the contents were secure within. It looked undisturbed. When I turned, Poirier was crossing himself.
Ryan spoke to Cambronne. ?Let?s get some shots for the travel brochure.?
I rejoined the others and waited silently as Cambronne followed his ritual. He unpacked his equipment, filled out a marker board, and photographed the mound and the bag from several distances and directions. Finally, he lowered his camera and stepped back.
Ryan turned to LaManche. ?Doc??
LaManche said his first word since I?d arrived. ?Temperance??
Taking a trowel from the backpack, I crossed back to the mound. I swept away the remaining leaves, carefully uncovering as much of the bag as possible. It looked as I remembered it. I could even see the small perforation I?d made with my thumbnail.
Using the trowel, I scraped soil upward and outward around the periphery, slowly exposing more and more of the bag. The dirt smelled ancient and musty, as if bound in its molecules it held a minute part of everything it had nurtured since the glaciers released it from their icy grip.
I heard voices drifting from the law enforcement carnival on the street, but where I worked, the only sounds came from the birds, insects, and the steady scraping of my trowel. Branches lifted and fell in the breeze, a gentler version of the dance they?d done the night before. The night theater had been Masai warriors leaping and lunging in mock battle. The morning show was the ?Anniversary Waltz.? Shadows moved across the bag, and across the faces of the solemn group witnessing its emergence. I watched the shapes move on the plastic, like puppets in a shadow play.
Within fifteen minutes the mound had become a pit, with more than half the bag visible. I suspected the contents had rearranged themselves as decomposition progressed and bones were freed of their anatomical responsibilities. If there were bones.
Thinking I?d removed enough soil to free the bundle, I put down my trowel, took hold of the twisted plastic, and slowly pulled. It wouldn?t budge. Last night all over again. Was someone underground, holding the other end of the bag, challenging me to a macabre game of tug-of-war?
Cambronne had photographed as I dug, and was now behind me, positioned to fix on Kodachrome the moment of the bag?s release. The phrase popped into my mind: Capture the moments of our lives. And deaths, I thought.
I brushed my gloves along the sides of my jeans, grabbed the sack as far down as I could, and gave a short, sharp yank. Movement. The pit wouldn?t yield its cache with ease, but I?d weakened its grip. I felt the bag shift and the contents relocate slightly. I took a breath and pulled again, harder. I wanted to dislodge the bag, but not rip it. It gave way and then resettled.
Bracing my feet, I gave one more tug, and my underground opponent gave up the contest. The sack started to slide free. I rewrapped my fingers around the twisted plastic, and, inching backward, step by step, teased the bag out of the pit.
When I?d pulled it free of the rim, I released my grip and stepped back. A common garbage bag, the kind found in kitchens and garages across North America. Intact. The contents made it lumpy. It wasn?t heavy. That was not a good sign, or was it? Would I rather find the remains of someone?s dog and be humiliated, or the remains of a human body and be vindicated?
Cambronne snapped into action. He placed his placard and took a series of shots. I removed one glove, and dug my Swiss army knife from my pocket.
When Cambronne finished, I knelt beside the bag. My hands shook slightly, but I finally got my thumbnail into the small crescent of the blade and opened it. The stainless steel glinted as sunlight struck it. I selected a spot at the bound end for my incision. I felt five sets of eyes on me.
I glanced at LaManche. His features changed shape as the shadows shifted. I wondered, briefly, how my own sullied face looked in the light. LaManche nodded, and I placed pressure on the blade.
Before the steel could pierce the plastic, my hand stopped, checked by a sound like an invisible tether. We all heard it at once, but Bertrand voiced our collective thought.
?What the fuck?? he said.
