“I only had three flags,” Mike said.

“Meaning?”

Mike patted the dog. “Meaning, I’ll need more.”

Hunt stared at the wiry, leather-faced dog handler. His ears were drooping knots of cartilage, his nose long and hooked and ruddy. His lips hung with unnatural stillness, and Hunt knew that he was waiting for the question. “Are you saying that there are more bodies out there?”

Mike blew his nose into a bandanna. He nodded once, and the skin of his neck folded. “I think so.”

Hunt looked at Yoakum. “How long did Jarvis own this property?”

Yoakum’s face was bleak. “Twenty-four years.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What do you want me to do?” Yoakum asked.

Hunt looked up, saw leaves that moved and jagged cracks of blue. “Call it in. Get everybody out here.”

Yoakum stepped away and opened his phone. Mike honked his nose one last time, then shoved the bandanna back into a pocket. “What about me?” he asked.

“Work the dog,” Hunt said. “We’ll improvise some flags.”

“Yes, sir.” Mike made a motion with his hand and the dog moved without hesitation. Nose down, tail up, it set off in a straight, determined line.

Hunt felt a breeze on his neck.

The dump smell rose.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The sun was less than a hint behind the trees when Johnny nudged Jack with a foot. The fire was dead and gray, the blanket heavy with dew. “It’s time,” Johnny said.

Jack blinked up at Johnny, who was dressed and ready. He scratched at his neck. “I’m eaten alive.”

“Me, too.” Johnny held out a hand and pulled Jack to his feet. “Want some breakfast?”

“What do we have?”

“Canned sausage or peanut butter. We’re out of bread.”

“Any grape soda?”

“No.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m good.

Johnny knocked dirt off the blanket, then took a leak on the side of the tobacco barn. His hands were smudged with soot from the fire. He thought of sacred things that weren’t sacred after all, and of the gun tucked under his jacket. He’d sat up late, spinning the cylinder, tilting its barrel against the light. He’d rubbed a wet thumb on the site, aimed at the fire and tried to keep his arms steady under the weight of it. He thought of Levi Freemantle and told himself that he knew what he was doing, then decided that it didn’t really matter. In the end, only Jack had a choice.

“You don’t have to come.”

Jack shrugged on the jacket. “You’re my best friend.”

“I’m serious,” Johnny said.

“So am I.”

Johnny stuffed the blanket in the pack, then cinched up the straps. “Thanks, J-man.”

“Don’t go pussy on me.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying-”

“I know what you’re saying.

Johnny opened the truck door. “Ready?”

“Rock and roll.”

Johnny drove through the stubbled field and under the surrounding trees. Out of the woods, they passed through the same gate, then followed the two-lane north toward the county line. Johnny stuck to the roads that he knew, then cut east, through a trailer park, to an unfamiliar road that turned, in a slow bend, away from town and the clutter that surrounded it. They rode past small vineyards and stone walls, went deeper into open country still dotted with antebellum mansions perched above rolling fields. Once, he stopped. He compared the map in the book with a road map of Raven County. “Do you know where we are?” Jack asked.

But Johnny didn’t answer. He stared down the road, then doubled back to a stretch of old, cracked pavement that grew increasingly narrow. He checked road signs twice, then made a left onto a single-lane stretch of black that descended for a few miles until it turned hard right and ended at a gravel road. Johnny stopped. Except for crows on a wire, nothing around them moved. “You smell that?” Johnny asked.

“No.”

“The river. It bends east just outside of town, then cuts back. I think we’re about twelve miles north of town. Maybe a little east.” He pointed down the gravel road. “I think this is it.”

Jack looked around at the trees, the fields, the windswept silence. “You think this is what?”

“Let’s see.” Johnny turned right and the tires spit gravel. A half mile farther, he passed a shot-up yellow sign that read: END OF STATE MAINTENANCE. Immediately, the forest pushed in. The river smell intensified. The road turned north again. Johnny pointed right. “The river’s that way. We’re going parallel.” He drove for another mile and passed the first gate. It stood open, but the sign was unmistakable. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING.

Johnny ignored it.

The second gate was closed, but unlocked. It was age-stained aluminum, bowed in the middle as if backed into by a truck. It hung from a cedar post, and part of its lower edge pressed upon the road where it had buckled. “Get the gate.”

Jack got out of the truck and dragged it open. Grass bent beneath it at the road’s edge, and Johnny moved the truck through. Jack closed it after he’d passed.

They dropped into the flood plain, saw the river, black and oily slow, and Johnny pointed at a broad swath of flattened grass where the river had spilled over its banks in the last big storm. “It’s going to get swampy.”

The road bent away from the river, and swamp began to push in from both sides. The road rose a few feet, until it was a high strip above soft earth and dark water that flashed beyond gashes in the trees. Johnny rounded a bend and almost struck a snapping turtle that basked in the middle of the road. Its shell was two feet across, black with dried algae. He steered around it and it opened its hooked mouth as they passed.

The road dipped a final time, then rose onto a causeway that crossed a wide stretch of still water. They drove into the hollow place, then up onto the hump of earth. On either side, shallow water stretched away, its surface marred by fallen trees, half submerged, and tussocks of grass that broke the surface where the bottom rose. Across the causeway, dry land clawed from the swamp. It was an island of sorts, a mile of hardwoods and vine. Johnny stopped the truck. Ahead of them, gravel grew sparse, then nonexistent as the road turned into a tendon of rutted, black earth that crossed the bog and disappeared into forest. Giant limbs swept the ground and roots stretched the length of a man before plunging into the earth.

Johnny crossed the causeway, stopped in the last patch of sun and killed the engine. The air hung silent, then swamp sounds began to return. They started small and rose like notes from a flute. At the water’s edge, a heron stabbed its beak into the mud and came up empty. It stalked a few feet, then froze, one eye tilted at the water. The boys climbed out of the truck. Johnny saw the sign from ten feet out. Half-covered by honeysuckle and some other creeping vine, it seemed as old as everything else, weathered boards nailed to a tree. Johnny pulled off the vines. The words were carved into the wood beneath, deep cuts, black at the bottoms as if burned.

HUSH ARBOR, 1853.

“This is it.” Johnny stepped back.

“The place where they hanged those people.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“This is a death place, Johnny. We shouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t let your imagination get away from you.”

“It’s up and gone.”

Johnny ignored the comment for a long moment. Honeysuckle put a sugar scent in the air, and he put two fingers on the rough-cut letters. “Just a place,” Johnny lied. The heron speared a frog, tore it from the mud. “Just a place.”

Jack skimmed a rock and spread ripples in the tar-colored water. The heron took wing, frog still twitching in his beak. “Do you really think somebody lives out here?”

Johnny looked up, twisted his head. “No power lines. No phone lines. Maybe not.”