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.

THE SUDDEN DIN WAS A CACOPHONY OF SOUNDS. THE FRANTIC barking of a dog mingled with human voices raised in excitement. Shouts rang back and forth, tense and clipped, but too indistinct to make out the words. The bedlam was within the monastery grounds, somewhere off to our left. My first thought was that the night prowler had returned, and that every cop in the province, and at least one German shepherd, were in pursuit.

I looked at Ryan and the others. Like me, they were frozen in place. Even Poirier had stopped fidgeting with his mustache and stood with hand fixed to upper lip.

Then the approaching sound of a body tunneling swiftly and indiscriminantly through foliage broke the spell. Heads turned simultaneously, as if operated by one switch. From somewhere in the trees, a voice called out.

?Ryan? You over there??

?Here.?

We oriented in the direction of the voice.

?Sacr #233; bleu.? More thrashing and crunching. ?Aiee.?

An SQ officer came into view, wrestling back branches and muttering audibly. His beefy face was red, and his breathing was noisy. Sweat beaded his brow and flattened the fringe of hair circling his mostly bald head. Spotting us, he planted a hand on each knee, and bent to catch his breath. I could see scratches where twigs had dragged across the top of his exposed scalp.

After a moment he raised up and jerked a thumb in the direction from which he?d come. In a wheezy voice, like air through a clogged filter, he panted, ?You better get over there, Ryan. The goddamn dog?s acting like a crackhead with a bad load.?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Poirier?s hand jerk to his forehead and slide to his chest. The sign of the cross called upon once more.

?What?? Ryan?s eyebrows rose in puzzlement.

?DeSalvo took him around the grounds, like you said, and the sonofabitch started circling this one spot and barking like he thinks Adolf Hitler and the whole goddamn German army?s buried there.? He paused. ?Listen to him!?

?And??

?And??? The little bastard?s about to blow a vocal chord. You don?t get over there pretty quick he?s going to circle right up his own asshole.?

I suppressed a smile. The image was pretty comical.

?Just hold him back a few more minutes. Give him a Milk-Bone or pop him a Valium if you have to. We?ve got something here we need to finish.? He looked at his watch. ?Get back here in ten minutes.?

The officer shrugged, released the branch he was holding, and turned to go.

?Eh, Piquot.?

The corpulent face swiveled back.

?There?s a path here.?

?Sacrifice,? Piquot hissed, picking his way through the tangle toward the trail Ryan had indicated. I was sure he?d lose it within fifteen yards.

?And Piquot . . .? Ryan continued.

The face looked back again.

?Don?t let Rin Tin Tin disturb anything.?

He turned back to me. ?You waiting to have a birthday, Brennan??

We heard Piquot thrashing his way out of earshot as I slit the bag from end to end.

The odor didn?t leap out and grab me as it had with Isabelle Gagnon. Freed of its confines, it spread outward slowly, asserting itself. My nose identified soil and plant decay, and an overlay of something else. It wasn?t the fetid smell of putrefaction, but a more primeval scent. It was a smell that spoke of passing, of origins and extinctions, of life recycled. I had smelled it before. It told me the sack held something dead, and not newly dead.