Grave Sight Page 0,8

your irony.

This was the hard part. This was the worst part. Normally, finding a corpse simply indicated I'd been successful. The manner of its becoming a corpse did not particularly affect me. This was my job. All people had to die somehow or other. But this rotting thing in the leaves... she'd been running, running, breath whistling in and out, reduced from a person to a panicked organism, and then the bullet had entered her back and then another one had...

I fainted.

T OLLIVER was holding me in his lap. We were among the leaves - oak and gum and sassafras and maple - a ruffle of gold and brown and red. He had his back to a big old gum tree, and I was sure he was uncomfortable with all the gum-balls that must be pressing into his butt.

"Come on, baby, wake up," he was telling me, and from the sound of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd said it.

"I'm awake," I said, hating how weak my voice came out.

"Jesus, Harper. Don't do that."

"Sorry."

I leaned my face against his chest for one more minute, sighed, and reasserted myself by scrambling to my feet. I wavered back and forth for a second until I got stabilized.

"What killed her?" he asked.

"Shot in the back, twice."

He waited to see if I'd add more.

"She was running," I explained. So he would understand her terror and her desperation, in the last moments of her life.

Last minutes are hardly ever that bad.

Of course, my standard is probably different from most people's.

P AUL Edwards was waiting by his gleaming silver Outback when we emerged from the woods. His whole face was a question, but our first report should be to our client. Tolliver asked the lawyer to start back to town to assemble the committee, if that was what Ms. Teague wanted. We drove silently back to Sarne, stopping only once at a convenience store. Tolliver went in to get me a Coke, one with real sugar in it. I always crave sugar after finding a body.

"You need to drink about four of these, gain some weight," Tolliver muttered, as he often did.

I ignored him, as I always did, and drank the Coke. I felt better after ten minutes. Until I'd discovered the sugar remedy, I'd sometimes had to go to bed for a day following a successful recovery.

The same group would be gathered in the sheriff's office, and I sat in the car and stared at the glass doors for a second, reluctant to begin this segment of the job.

"You want me to wait in the lobby?"

"No, I want you to come in with me," I said, and Tolliver nodded. I paused, one hand on the car door. "They're not gonna like this," I said.

He nodded again.

This time, we were in a conference room. It was a tight fit, with Branscom, Edwards, Teague, and Vale, plus Tolliver and me.

"The map," I said to Tolliver. He spread it out. I laid everything I wanted to say out in a line ahead of me, so I could reach my goal, which was to get out of this office and this town with a check in my hands.

"Before we get into the main subject," I said, "let me point out that we also found the body of a black male, dead about ten years, at this site." I indicated the red mark we'd made first. "He died of exposure."

The sheriff seemed to be thinking back. "That might be Marcus Allbright," he said slowly. "I was a deputy back then. His wife thought he'd run off. My God. I'll go collect what's left."

I shrugged. Nothing to do with me. "Now, for Teenie Hopkins." They all tensed, and Paul Edwards even leaned closer. "She was shot twice in the back, and her remains are right here." I touched a spot with my fingertip.

There was an audible gasp from the people seated at the table.

"You saw her?" Hi, I'm TERRY, the MAYOR asked. His eyes were wide behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Mr. Mayor was on the verge of crying.

"Saw what's left," I said, and then reflected that a nod would have been sufficient.

"You mean," the Teague woman said incredulously, "you left her out there?" Harvey Branscom gave her a look of sheer amazement.

I stared back at her with much the same expression. "It's a crime scene," I said. "And I don't do body retrieval. I leave that to qualified people. You go get her, if you don't want the sheriff