It was a funeral procession, plain and simple, their expressions grave, their hands and faces smeared with mud, their hair plastered to their heads as if painted with a crude brush.

Gaines excused them when the girl had been delivered, thanked them for their help, their time.

He shook hands with each of them in turn, stood there beside Deputy Hagen as the pickup pulled away and headed back into town.

Gaines turned then, nodded at Hagen, and they went inside to join Powell.

Powell was silent and motionless, looking down at the naked teenager on the slab. Her skin was alabaster white, almost faintly blue beneath the lights. The mud from the riverbank filled the spaces between her fingers and toes; it had welled in the sunken sockets of her eyes; it filled her ears and her nose. Her hair was a dense mass of ragged tails—all of this as if a monochrome photograph had been taken of some weathered statue. It was a surreal and disturbing image, an image that would join so many others that crowded Gaines’s mind. But it was here in Whytesburg, and such images—at least for him—should have belonged solely to a war on the other side of the world.

“Any ideas?” Powell asked.

Hagen shook his head. “Doesn’t look familiar to me.”

“She could be from anywhere,” Gaines said. “She doesn’t have to be one of ours.”

“Well, I’d say she’s somewhere between fifteen and eighteen,” Powell said. He took a tape measure from a trolley against the wall and measured her. “Five foot four. At a guess, maybe ninety-five pounds. I can give you specifics when I’ve cleaned her up.”

Gaines reached out his hand. His fingers hovered over the crude stitching that dissected her torso. Of this no one had yet spoken. He did not touch her, almost could not bring himself to, and he withdrew his hand slowly.

“Get back to the office,” he told Hagen. “Put a wire out, all surrounding counties, and get every missing persons report on female teenagers for the last month.” He looked across at Powell. “How long has she been dead, d’you think?”

“Decomp is minimal . . . At a guess, I’d say a week, two at most, but I need to do the autopsy. I can give you a better indication in a couple of hours. I need to take liver temp, find out how cold it was where she was buried and factor that in . . .”

“So beautiful,” Hagen said, hesitating at the door. “This is just horrific.”

“Go, Richard,” Gaines said. “I want to find out who she is as soon as possible.”

Hagen departed, glancing back toward the girl twice more before he disappeared from the end of the corridor.

“What can you say?” Powell asked, a rhetorical question. “Such things happen. Infrequently, thank God, but they do happen.”

“This incision,” Gaines said. “What the hell is that?”

“Who knows, John? Who knows? People do what people do, and sometimes there’s no explaining it.”

Gaines heard Hagen’s car pull away, and almost without pause, the sound of another car slowing to a halt on the gravel in front of the building. That would be Bob Thurston, Whytesburg’s doctor. Thurston was a good man, a good friend, and Gaines was relieved that he would be present. He did not want Victor Powell to have to endure such a difficult task alone.

“So do the autopsy,” Gaines said. “Let me know as soon as you have anything. I’ll get back to the office and start working through whatever missing persons reports have been filed. My fear is that she’s from a long way off and we won’t find out who she is.”

“I’ll get pictures done once I’ve cleaned her up,” Powell said. “You can get those out on the wire . . .”

“For sure,” Gaines said. “But I have to be honest, Victor . . . There’s always the chance that we’ll never know.”

“I know it’s hard to be positive at a time like this,” Powell said, “but jumping to conclusions about what might or might not have happened here is going to do us no good. This is rare. A killing in Whytesburg. A murder here? It doesn’t happen, John, not from one year to the next. I can’t have seen more than half a dozen murders in Whytesburg—in the county, for that matter—in all my career. However, it has happened now. She’s someone’s daughter, and that someone needs to know.”

Gaines turned as Thurston started down the corridor. “Bob’s here,” he said.

“What’s this about a dead girl in the riverbank?” Thurston asked before he entered the room.

Gaines extended his hand, and they shook.

Thurston was trying to smile, trying to be businesslike, but when he saw the girl laid out on the slab, he visibly paled.

“Oh my Lord . . . ,” he said.

“We figure she’s somewhere between fifteen and eighteen,” Powell said. “This incision along the length of her torso might be the cause of death. I’m ready to start the autopsy. I could use your help, if you’re willing.”

Thurston had not moved. His eyes wide, his face seemed like some ever-shifting confusion of frowns and unspoken questions.

“I’ve sent Hagen to check on any outstanding reports,” Gaines said. “I can’t think of any from here for months, but she could have come from anywhere. All we do know is that we have to identify her and find out how she died . . .”

Thurston set his bag down on the floor. He stepped forward and placed his hand on the edge of the table. For a moment it seemed as though he were trying to steady himself.

“No . . . ,” he whispered.

Gaines looked at Powell. Powell frowned and shook his head.

“Bob? You okay?” Powell asked.

Both Gaines and Powell watched as Bob Thurston reached out his right hand and touched the girl’s face. The gesture was gentle, strangely paternal even, and Gaines was both bemused and unsettled by Thurston’s reaction.

“Christ, Bob, anyone’d think you knew her,” he said.

Thurston turned and looked at Gaines. Was there a tear in his eye?

“I do,” Thurston said.

“What?”

“I know who this is,” he said, and his voice cracked.

Gaines stepped forward. “You what?” he repeated, scarcely believing what he was hearing.

“I’ve delivered every child in this town for thirty years,” Thurston said, “and even those who were born before I got here have come to me with influenza and broken bones and poison ivy. I know this girl, John. I knew her. I am looking at her now, and it doesn’t make sense . . .”

“That she’s dead . . . Of course that doesn’t make sense,” Powell said. “A dead child can never make sense.”

“I don’t mean that, Victor,” Thurston said. “Look at her. Look at her face. Who does she remind you of?”

Powell frowned. He stepped closer, looked down at the girl’s face. It was half a minute, perhaps more, and then some sort of slowdawning realization seemed to register in his eyes.

“She looks like Judith,” Powell said. “Oh my God . . . no . . .”

“What is going on here?” Gaines said, agitation evident in his voice. “What the hell is going on here?”

“This can’t be,” Powell said. “This can’t be . . . No, no, this isn’t right . . . This isn’t right at all . . .”

“She was found buried, you say?” Thurston asked.

“Yes,” Gaines replied. “We just dug her out of the riverbank. She was buried—”

“In the mud,” Powell said.

“I’ve heard of it before,” Thurston said. “It has happened before . . .”

“Jesus Christ, you guys, what the hell are you talking about? If someone doesn’t start explaining what the hell is going on here, I’m arresting the pair of you for withholding evidence.”

“You know Judith Denton,” Powell said.

“Sure I know Judith,” Gaines replied.

“This is her daughter, John. This is Nancy Denton, Judith’s daughter.”

Gaines shook his head. “Judith doesn’t have a daughter—”

“Doesn’t now,” Thurston interjected, “but she did.”

“I’m confused,” Gaines said. “Doesn’t now, but did have a daughter . . . a daughter when? What daughter? You’re not making any sense.”