and knees. Two paces. Two little, soft, round knee holes in the dirt, and she was there. She sat back on her heels and looked down, and with a trembling hand, she reached out like a child trying to make herself touch a snake for the first time.It's not slimy, it's dry, really, and the moment her fingertips brushed against the little leg, she started to cry.
In all the years she had known her, Grace had never seen Annie cry, and this, more than anything that had happened this day, scared her to death.
The leg was cold.This was a person, Annie kept telling herself.Thiswas a person. This isn't a horror movie, and this isn't a monster or a ghost, just the empty body of the little person it used to be. And it isn't scary at all. It's just very, very sad.
Sharon was kneeling right next to her, hands away from her mouthand covering her eyes now.See no evil, see no evil; hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. . . . Where are you, Mary? Where were you when all these people died? Did you watch from some heavenly perch with your plump little hands folded in front of your flowing blue gown, and did that Mona Lisa smile falter just a little when they shoveled dirt on top of the bodies, and how about when my own mother stuck a gun in her mouth? WHERE WERE YOU THEN?
She was vaguely aware of Grace murmuring to Annie in the background, a whispery, soothing drone of comfort that rang horribly false, seemed almost as evil as what had happened here.Quiet, Annie, hush. It's going to be all right. ., a nd that was such a dreadful lie. She took her hands away from her eyes and gazed dully past the corner of the barn toward the farmhouse, couldn't see very well anymore because her vision was blurred. When she blinked, water fell from her eyes onto the front of her little filthy FBI suit, and now it looked like one of the farmhouse windows was winking at her. She blinked again, her head tipped curiously. The window winked again, and then the window next to it winked, flashing a circle of light like the pupil of a large eye reflecting the sun.
Suddenly, her fuzzy thoughts sharpened and splintered away from one another. She jerked her eyes left, looked past the corner of the barn down the long drive, and breathed, 'Oh my God.'
Grace and Annie grunted when Sharon crashed into them, her hands clutching and pulling, her feet digging trenches into the soil around them. 'Quick, quick,' she hissed frantically. 'Headlights, cars coming down the driveway, hurry, hurry. . . .'
. . , and then they were all scrambling in the loose soil, hitting the solid ground outside the paddock fence and into the tall grass on the other side.
Sharon was flying, number-one hunchback in a party of three, racing away from the barn and the paddock, past the dirty, green tractor at the end, over the lip of a hill, and onto a downward slope. She could hear Grace and Annie close behind her, their breath like thunder. Ahead of them, the moonlit tops of tall grass marched down a hill to mingle at the bottom with the oblong heads of cattails.
'Down!' someone hissed, just as headlights pierced the gloom above their heads like fingers of light jabbing into the dark sky. They all crashed to their bellies in the grass, facing the crest of the shallow hill, their nostrils flaring at the ripe smell of a midwestern lake in midsummer.
The still night air carried the sound of jeep doors creaking open up near the barn, then slamming shut.
'Jesus Christ,' a man said aloud after a moment, his voice even closer than the sound of the jeep's doors. 'Look at this shit. Looks like someone tried to dig them all up.'
The women flattened themselves even farther into the long grass, pressing their faces close to the fragrant earth beneath.
'Get on the radio,' the voice said to someone else. 'Get the Colonel out here, fast.'
With her left cheek smashed into the bent stalks of grass, Grace stared at Sharon and Annie on her right, staring back at her.They'll come now. They'll all come.
Her arms were stretched out in front of her, her left hand cradling the right. She continued to stare into Sharon's eyes as her right thumb moved up the Sig's grip to the safety and flicked it off.
WITHIN TEN MINUTES of the harried radio call announcing the mess in the paddock, the disturbed mass grave was striped with the yellow beams of headlights. Haifa dozen jeeps nosed up to the paddock's fence, engines murmuring as their drivers stared solemnly at the things their headlights illuminated in the disturbed soil.
Like hunting dogs coursing for a scent, a dozen men spread out over the farmyard and surrounding land. They used flashlights indiscriminately, and the small noises of their movements carried clearly in the still night air.
From just inside the paddock fence, Colonel Hemmer glanced up at the five-man squad approaching the fence, ammo pouches and canteens clattering softly against their pistol belts. He squinted against the glare of the headlights, his grizzled face reflecting an unearthly glow beneath the black shadow of his field cap. 'Anything, soldier?'
'No, sir. Nothing in the house or barn.'
'What about the loft?'
'The loft, sir? The loft is empty.'
'That loft is full of hay. You ever play in a barn loft when you were a kid?'
'Uh .., yes, sir.'
'Get your men up there. Check it again. Move every bale.'
Hemmer looked back at where Acker was sweeping the ground with the beam of a flashlight. Parts of the paddock were still smooth, the punched holes of running feet dark and jarring on the surface, like black blemishes on an otherwise flawless face. In a few places, there were compacted depressions where someone had fallen, surrounded by the gouges and scattered soil of panic. In each of those places, something better left buried protruded from the dirt, as if the residents of Four Corners had been trying to dig themselves out.
'No doubt someone was here, sir,' Acker said soberly.
The Colonel's eyes narrowed.Jesus Christ. Goddamn women, stupid enough to leave their silly purses behind and right out in the open, walking all over this goddamned stupid town as if they owned the place. . . .
'Looks like they ran down to the end near the tractor, sir, but they could have come back this way. The dirt's a hell of a mess, makes them hard to track.'
And if they weren't running scared before, they sure as hell were now.Hemmer's mouth moved in disgust as he watched Acker's light arc across the paddock. 'How long could these tracks have been here?' he asked.
'The men have been making rounds since we found the Rover, but the last time would have been before moonrise. We weren't showing light then. We could have missed it.'
The Colonel's jaw tightened. That meant this could have happened more than an hour ago. Goddamned women. Where the hell were they?Where the hell were they?
'Sir?'
He started, then blinked rapidly. Had he said that out loud? Suddenly, he was aware of the still-idling jeeps, the drivers with nothing to do but look at the horror in their headlights. 'Get those men out in the field with the others, Acker.'
'Yes, sir.'
Acker hustled away while Hemmer strode back down the length of the paddock toward the tractor. Pausing next to the hulking machine, he laid a hand on the cold ridge of a tire tread and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for revelation. The tractor knew where the women went; the tractor saw them. But the goddamned fucking tractor wasn't talking.
He sucked air in through his teeth and moved to the edge of the slope. The flashlight picked up the parallel tracks of flattened grass off to the right, where the ill-fated truck had been rolled into the lake. Directly in front of him, the grass was smashed and slick in places where the cows had gone over.They'll pop up to the surface soon, he thought.
His eyes lifted and traveled around the uneven circle of the moonlit lake, saw several dots of light bobbing around the circumference as the men continued to search.
Three years,he thought.Three years of meticulous planning, training, preparation, all at risk now because some stupid woman's car had broken down. 'For want of a nail,' he murmured under his breath.
'Sir?'
Hemmer's heart leaped at the sound of Acker's voice at his left shoulder.Jesus. The kid had crept back up on him like a shadow. He was losing it-that second sight that saved you in the field. If this had been the Gulf, he would have been dead by now.
He pretended to be deep in thought, staring out into the black distance while his heart slowed down. After a
