“Who said I was talking to the dog?”

Cedar swatted at me, but I danced away.

“Coward!” Cedar said. “Stand still so I can hit you!”

“Can’t hit what you can’t catch,” I said, right before I fell backward into a deep, narrow hole. “Oof!” The impact knocked the wind clean out of my chest and made my ribs scream bloody murder. “Shit on a stick! That freaking hurt!”

Cedar’s head appeared above me. “Are you okay down there?”

Her hair clung to her face, and she would have looked angelic if she had not been so worried. Chigger whimpered loudly. His paws knocked loose dirt on my face.

“My ribs are killing me," I said. “But I’ll live.”

“You sure?”

I waved the hand. “Truly, I’m fine.”

Cedar started laughing. “I’m so sorry. You lo-looked so funny falling into th-that h-hole. Bloop!”

“Thanks for your sympathy.” While she was laughing and Chigger was barking, I tried to find a way out of the pit. The walls all had the same markings, as if a mouth with ragged teeth had scraped them clean.

Stumpy hadn’t dug these holes.

Not by hand, anyway.

“When you’re done with your fit of giggles,” I called up, “could you get something to pull me out?”

“Okay,” she said. “Be right back.”

While she was gone, I took several photos with my cellphone. The depth of the cuts came up to the second knuckle of my index finger. Whatever Stumpy was looking for, he was using some heavy machinery. There were probably over a hundred holes on the property. That was a lot of work for one man.

Maybe Stumpy wasn’t involved in the digging at all.

Cedar dropped a coil of hose down the hole. “It’s Stumpy’s water hose. I left it screwed into the spigot so it would hold your weight.”

“You sure?”

“If you want out, you’ll have to trust my judgment.”

I braced my back against the dirt wall, and using the cuts in the clay, pulled myself out of the hole. My ribs weren’t happy with me when I rolled onto the grass.

“See?” Cedar said. “My calculations were correct.”

“What calculations?”

She held up her thumb. “The ones I made with this.”

“Glad you were right.” I dusted my pants off and kicked clay from my boots. “Let’s go.”

“You’re speaking my language.”

“After we get the finger.”

“But you said—“

“Look around. Stumpy may have left before he expected to, and a dismembered finger’s not something he’d pack.”

“I'm not going into his house. It smells like pig crap."

"You'll be fine out here." I opened the door. “Be right back.”

“Wait for me.” She tied Chigger’s leash to a post on the rickety porch and followed me inside.

The trailer smelled like Stumpy had been making soup with old shoes, and the air was thick with the scent of body odor and mold. Cedar pulled her shirt over her nose as I hit the lights.

“Ugh,” she said. “I’m not strong enough for this. My stomach can’t hack the stench.”

“Fish sticks,” I said as I opened the freezer door.

“So the freezer’s empty?”

“No.” I pulled out a package of cod fillets. “It’s a box of fish sticks.”

I shook the contents onto the counter, which also held several opened packets of ketchup, breadcrumbs, and an empty package of wieners. Three sticks fell out, followed by the finger.

Cedar gagged. “He put someone’s body part in with food? That’s just so wrong.”

“Yeah, it’s a terrible way to preserve evidence.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I slipped the frozen digit into an evidence bag. “At least he wrapped it in plastic.”

“Boone!”

 “What?”

“You don’t think this is really, I don’t know, ghoulish? I mean, I’m okay with scientific inquiry and all of that, but the finger you just stuck in your pocket was once attached to somebody’s hand. How can you not be totally disgusted?”

“Abner raised me in his lab,” I said. “I’m used to it.”

It wasn’t that death didn’t bother me. It did. But it was the ending of a life that ate through my gut, not the corpse that was left behind. It was something you couldn’t explain in the middle of a deserted, completely trashed trailer.

Clothes were strewn everywhere. The closest had been tossed, the side table drawers emptied onto the floor. Broke glass lay at the edge of Stumpy’s favorite sleeping post, the couch. It was hard to tell because of Stumpy’s underwhelming housekeeping skills, but the more I looked around, the more I was convinced that someone else had helped Stumpy redecorate.

“They were looking for something,” I said.

“Who?”

I started down the paneled hallway. “The people who tossed this trailer. Look at this toilet.”

“How did we go from talking about human dignity to examining toilets?” She followed me to the bathroom. “Oh, that’s how.”

The toilet had been shattered. From the wood splinters on the floor, I suspected the instrument of destruction was a baseball bat. The cabinets above the toilet had been tossed, too. A bottle of bowl cleaner lay on its side, leaking blue liquid onto a stack of paper towels.

“Let’s check out the bedroom.”

“Let’s leave instead,” Cedar said.

She didn’t wait for my answer. I heard the door slam, followed by the sounds of Chigger’s bark.

Space in the bedroom was tight. The double bed took up most of the room, leaving space for only a narrow bedside table, which had also been dumped. The mattress was askew on the frame. From the marks on the ceiling, it had been lifted then dropped. A single, yellowed sheet lay rumpled on the floor in front of the closet. Inside the closet, there were no coats, no shirts, not even a coat hanger.

Empty.

This was no robbery.

I had decided to take a closer look for clues in the kitchen area when Chigger yapped a warning bark. Peeking through the blinds, I looked out a grimy window and saw Cedar a few yards away holding onto Chigger’s lease. It was stretched taut, and the dog was growling.

When I stepped outside onto the porch, I saw why.

A two-ton diesel truck drove across the overgrown yard toward the big barn. It was hauling a trench digger behind it, equipped with a scoop shovel. That answered his questions about what had made the holes.

When two men got out of the front of the truck, it also answered the question of who.

Early and Stuart, my favorite independent contractors specializing in fire site clean up and debris removal. What kind of debris where they removing this time?

“What business have you got being here, anyhow?” Stuart shouted as he approached, carrying a digging spade. “Hey, you're that boy who was with the bone doctor, ain’t you?”

"That's me," I said.

 “You two are trespassing on private property,” Early stabbed the air with a meaty finger. “We ought to call the law. Have y’all arrested.”

 “Call the sheriff if you want,” Cedar said. “There aren’t any No Trespassing signs posted, and we have a legitimate reason to be here.”

Stuart spat tobacco on the ground. “What would that be?”

“We’re visiting a friend.”

“Stumpy Meeks,” I said. “Have you gentlemen seen him recently?”

“What do we look like, the missing person department?” Stuart said. “You’re wasting our time, so beat it.”

“Who would that be?” I asked.

“Who would what be?” Stuart said.

“The company paying you to clean up their mess. Who’s that?”

Stuart shook his head in wonder. “The man who owns it, dumb ass.”

“Does this man have a name?” I fought the temptation to add, dumb ass.

“Not one you’re getting from us.” Stuart said. “Beat it, before things get ugly.”

“Don’t threaten me,” I said. “It’s not a good idea.”

Stuart and Early chuckled. The thought of my taking them both out seemed absurd to them, but I was already figuring out how to separate the spade from Stuart’s hands.

“Let’s go, Boone.” Cedar looped an arm through mine. “We’ve got that thing in a half hour, and we don’t want to keep these guys from their work.”