"Why was she picked out?" Del asked. "What'd she do to piss him off, that he went after her like that? Why was she treated different?"

Lucas leaned back in his chair and said, "Ah, shit. Why didn't we think of that before? Something's gotta be going on there."

"So we start pulling her apart," Del said.

"And maybe we check with the archdiocese, and see if they had any priests who were art students."

"In Menomonie."

A waitress came by with a pot of coffee. She was a pudgy young woman with heavily teased honey-blond hair. "Are you the cops digging up the Harrelsons' woods?"

Del nodded. "Yup."

"We heard you found a whole bunch of skeletons." Her jaw dropped open, waiting for the inside information.

"We don't know what we have," Lucas said politely. "We're still digging."

"That's a lonely place out there," she said. "Sometimes kids used it like, you know, a lover's lane. Park down there at the bottom, then get a blanket and go up on the hill. But it was always spooky."

"Really," Del said. "You ever go up there?"

"Maybe," she said. "And maybe not. You want seconds on them potatas? We got plenty more."

AT SIX, LUCAS called Weather from the site and told her that he wouldn't be home until very late. "Trying to avoid your obligations, eh?" she asked.

"You sound like a fuckin' Canadian, eh?" he said. "Maybe I can get out of here a little earlier than that…"

THE HILL WAS lit by a half-dozen sets of powerful lights, plus lower-powered reading-style lights in an Army-surplus command tent. A diesel generator hammered away from the roadside, and the parking strip smelled like a bus stop.

Each grave had been covered by a broad tarp, and three of the six graves were being excavated by two-man teams; progress was slow, the excavation being done with small Marshalltown trowels. Along the road, three TV trucks were sitting in the rain, their crews warm inside, and unhappy: They would rather have been wet outside, with some close-up tape.

Lake came by just after dark, squatted next to Lucas, and said, "We've finished the next plot, going out another twenty-five meters in every direction, and I think you've got all the graves identified. There are two more spots that we're gonna stake out as possibles, but they're not as clear as the others."

"Good. Six is enough. If it is six."

Lake, with water dripping off the bill of his hat, said, "I'll tell you something, Lucas: You're gonna find bones in every one of those holes."

THE FIRST GRAVE, the one where the finger bone had been found, was the first to produce clothing-a polyester shirt that Marshall recognized as a brand sold at Wal-Mart. McGrady, squatting next to the grave, looked up at Lucas and said, "So it's not a settler site." They went back to the command tent, and Lucas called Rose Marie to give her the news. He was just off the phone when one of the members of the excavation team called, "Jack: we got a skull," and as Lucas and McGrady recrossed the hillside, "And we got hair."

They got to the grave and looked into the hole. The skull looked almost like a piece of a dirty-white coffee cup. The guy in the hole touched the edge of the bone with the tip of his trowel and said, "Looks like blond hair."

McGrady got down on his knees to look, then said, "All right. Go to brushes and art knives. Careful with the hair."

Lucas nodded. "How long to clean out the graves?"

"We'll be working around the clock. We got TV now, so there's gonna be some pressure. These first three, if they're shallow, we'll have by midnight, I think. The rest by tomorrow. You heading out?"

"I'll stick around for the first three," Lucas said. "But we need to get working on the IDs as quick as we can. I've got a name for you, and there's some dental stuff available on her."

"If her jaw's intact, I can give you a quick read tomorrow morning, then," McGrady said.

DEL WENT BACK into town and returned with a thermos full of coffee. Lucas was drinking a cup when he saw a large man in a camouflage rain suit join Marshall on the hillside. The two bent together, and the new man put his arm on Marshall's shoulder as they talked; another Dunn County deputy, Lucas thought.

Clothing and bones were coming up in two of the three holes. Lucas had done a tour, spoke briefly with Marshall, looked curiously at the large man with him, but Marshall offered no introductions. Lucas wandered off to the command tent, where Del was talking with a group of coffee-drinking deputies.

"You got your two great families of wine," Del was saying.

"Yeah, yeah, red and white, which lacks something in the way of new information," one of the deputies said.

"I was talking about screw-top and cork," Del said, "Considering pop-top and bottle-cap as variations of the screw-top."

"You're talking about wine again?" Lucas asked. "You're turning into a fuckin' Frenchman."

"Am not. I use deodorant," Del said.

"Like that's gonna last," Lucas said skeptically.

Del turned back to the deputy. "As I was saying before the rude interruption…"

"Screw-top and cork, pop-top and bottle-cap," the deputy prompted. Now he was interested.

"Right. So among your screw-tops, you got your three basic families: fruit taste, Kool-Aid taste, and other."

"I think I've had some other," the deputy said. "I was once going through Tifton, Georgia, in a hurry. I was driving this 'sixty-three rose-blush Cadillac-"

Del interrupted. "You wanna hear about wine, or you wanna bullshit?"

"All right, fuck you, I won't tell you what happened."

"Good. Anyway, there's-"

At that moment, an anguished croak slashed across the hillside, the sound of a man who was having his eyes plucked out. The talk stopped cold and they all stepped to the edge of the tent, and Lucas saw the large man and Marshall on their knees next to the third grave. The two cops in the hole were standing up, unmoving, looking at the two men on their knees.

"Jesus Christ," one of the deputies said. "What happened to them?"

Lucas had an idea. He was on his way across the hillside, with Del a step behind. As they stepped into the harsh glare of the light, Lucas looked into the hole and saw a piece of reddish cloth. Terry Marshall put one hand on the shoulder of the large man and pushed himself back onto his feet. "It's Laura's shirt. We think it's the shirt she was wearing."

"It is," the large man sobbed. He had both hands to the sides of his head, as if he were holding it in place. "We hoped, we hoped…"

"Jack Winton. Laura's dad," Marshall said unapologetically.

Lucas was struck with a surge of anger. "Why'n the hell did you…"

"I couldn't keep him off; didn't even try," Marshall said. "He's family."

"Ah, jeez," Lucas said. "This…"

"This sucks," Marshall said. He patted the big man on the shoulder again. "Jack. Come on. Let 'em do their work. Come on."

LUCAS AND DEL left the site ten minutes later. With three graves producing bodies, there was little doubt that the others would, too. On the way back, Del said, "You getting pissed yet?"

"Getting closer to it," Lucas said. "Especially after that thing with Winton."

"Marshall should never have brought him."

"He's family. They're all family, and he couldn't say no," Lucas said.

"Yeah… It's a good sign that you're getting pissed. Focuses the mind."

"I guess." They drove on a little way, listening to the heater, and then Lucas said, "I just hope it doesn't spill over on Weather."

"She knows what you do for a living," Del said. "I think it was just that one thing that fucked her up, when she was right in the middle of it. She's a good guy. I'm happy you're back together."

WEATHER WAS STILL awake, reading a Barbara Kingsolver novel. Lucas had hung his rain suit from a nail in the garage, kissed her on the forehead, and said, "I'm gonna get some soup."