At first Maggie had no idea what he was talking about. Then she realized she still had Grace’s pink toy gripped in her left hand. She walked over slowly and gently placed the elephant in Creed’s outstretched hand. He, in turn, held it up for Grace to see. She immediately relaxed, started wagging again, only not at the frantic pace as moments earlier. She was back to being a dog wanting to have her reward.

“Good girl, Grace,” Creed said again and tossed her the toy.

Grace caught it, making it squeak. Maggie couldn’t help thinking how contradictory that playful sound seemed after finding what could be yet another grave.

Creed let Grace romp around but he didn’t attempt to enter the stall. Finally he backed away from the open stall door and looked at Maggie and Tully.

“I’m not trained to be part of the dig,” he told them.

Tully still didn’t look convinced that there was anything to be dug up. Maggie walked over to take a look. The area inside was about ten feet wide by ten feet deep. From what she could see in the dim light, the floor looked no different from that in the rest of the barn. She couldn’t see any mounds or depressions in the dirt. The straw on top matched the straw in the rest of the barn and it didn’t look as though it had been disturbed. There was no trace, no hint of blood or residue, from a putrefied corpse. The wooden trough had been left filled up and covered with an old horse blanket. The five-gallon metal bucket beside it had a dusty lid still tightly in place.

She glanced behind her and saw that Creed had taken Grace out of the barn. She could see him tossing the pink elephant and Grace racing after it. Tully had stayed on the other side of the barn but he had his cell phone to his ear now. He was telling someone—most likely the sheriff—to bring a digging crew. Even as he explained the situation she could hear the skepticism in his voice despite his best effort to disguise it.

Maggie stepped farther into the stall and wondered if Grace could be mistaken. Now inside, she could smell a strong rancid odor that she suspected was horse manure. Then she remembered what Creed had said when Grace had found the dead mouse. Any other scent was a mere distraction. Grace had been trained to find human remains, not dead animals and certainly not animal manure. Just then Maggie realized what she was smelling.

Her eyes darted to the bucket. Five gallons, metal, and sealed. The smell couldn’t be coming from it and yet just the thought of what could be inside made her mouth go dry and her stomach do a flip.

She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her jacket pocket and slipped them on as she approached the wooden trough. With an index finger she poked the middle of the heap under the thick wool blanket.

Something solid. Definitely not horse feed.

She found a corner of the blanket and started to peel it back but stopped when it resisted and sounded like separating Velcro. That small effort had already leaked more of the rancid odor.

Maggie glanced over her shoulder again. Tully was still on the phone. Creed and Grace were out far enough that the squeaky sounds were in the distance.

She tugged at the corner of the wool blanket again, wincing at the sound and smell but continuing, slowly, inch by inch. The putrefied flesh had melted into the weave of the blanket and as she pulled it back, she was also pulling away a layer of skin. The thick wool had attempted to mummify the body, but peeling it off had started to release the gases.

Maggie had to step away. Her pulse had begun racing. She needed to get her bearings. She turned and took a few gulps of air from outside the stall. It helped to settle her nerves. Then she went back to work. Again, carefully and slowly, she teased the wool away until she identified a forearm. That was enough. She was certain it was a dead body. She would leave it for the forensic investigators.

Before she stepped away, she saw bright red and blue. Because she had peeled away a layer of skin the tattoo had become even brighter. She knew that was true of tattoos since the ink pooled down below the top layer of skin. They were valuable in IDing bodies. It made sense not to wait. She was this close already. At least she could take a look at it.

She tugged the wool away until she could see the entire image—an eagle head with piercing eyes over a prominent beak. Stenciled above on two lines was STURGIS 2000.

Maggie stopped. Stood back.

The son of a bitch was telling the truth.

Otis P. Dodd was right about there being a body in the barn. And it looked like he was right about it being a tattooed biker.

CHAPTER 33

By late afternoon the quiet farmstead was no longer quiet. Maggie’s and Tully’s roles were quickly reduced to traffic control and site management. The crime scene techs, Janet, Matt, and Ryan, had arrived again from Omaha with their mobile lab. Agent Alonzo had told them that an FBI agent from the Omaha field office would also be making his way up, but so far they hadn’t seen or heard from him.

Grace had alerted to five other sites: one behind an old laundry house, another behind the barn, and three in the woods. Creed had given her a rest after each find, along with her pink elephant and some water. They were walking the pasture now but hadn’t gotten any more hits in the last hour. Creed insisted this would be their last grid of the property.

Sheriff Uniss had brought an anthropology professor from a nearby university to help direct his deputies on how to dig the places that Grace had alerted. Creed had warned them that the three in the woods could be surrounded by what he called secondary scatter; in other words, pieces of the primary targets. He had marked the primary not only according to Grace’s alerts, but also to his visual observations, pointing out one spot in particular where the wild grasses were only half as tall as those surrounding it.

Maggie didn’t envy the digging crew. There were at least a dozen of Creed’s fluorescent flags telegraphing sites and some were in hard to reach areas, way off the beaten path.

The sheriff had sent one of his men to fetch sandwiches for everyone. Maggie and Tully were only getting to theirs. Tully went to get them some bottled waters and sodas while Maggie found them a quiet place at an old picnic table.

The sun wasn’t quite as warm today but it was another beautiful day, and Maggie was struck by the absurdity—such beauty alongside the macabre. Watching Grace had reminded Maggie of her dogs and she pulled out her cell phone. She pressed the contact number before thinking what time it was or what she might be interrupting. She heard it ring only twice, then was sent to voice mail. She listened to Benjamin Platt’s smooth, deep voice ask her to leave a message at the beep.

“Hey, it’s Maggie,” she said. “Just checking on my boys. Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a few days. I’ll try and catch you later. Bye.”

It seemed too casual, almost too abrupt. This was a man she had considered having a serious relationship with only a few months ago. They had become friends so quickly that the next step seemed not just natural, but inevitable. Then they both put the skids on. No, that wasn’t true—Maggie put the skids on. Ben wanted something more permanent. He wanted a family. And kids. She knew he still hurt deeply from losing his little girl despite it being almost five years ago. But Maggie wasn’t sure she’d be able to replace the void Allie’s death had left in Ben’s heart and in his life. And she wasn’t sure she wanted children.

“I snagged the last Diet Pepsis,” Tully said, coming back with sodas in his hands and bottled waters sticking out from each of his jacket pockets.