“We figured that. I believe it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” one attendant says to her.

“You got your work cut out for you,” says the other.

They fold up the legs with loud clacks and carry the stretcher bearing Ev Christian toward the dark-blue van.

“How’s this going to end up in court?” one of the attendants thinks to ask from the bottom of the steps. “I mean, if this lady’s a suicide, how do you charge someone with murder if it’s a suicide?”

“We’ll see you shortly,” Scarpetta says.

The men hesitate, then move on, and she watches Lucy appear from the back of the house. She has on protective clothing and dark glasses but has taken off her face mask and gloves. She trots toward the helicopter, the one where she left her Treo not long after Joe Amos began his fellowship.

“There’s really nothing to say she didn’t do it,” Scarpetta says toBentonas she opens packets of disposable protective clothing-a set for her, a set for him-and byshe, Scarpetta means Helen Quincy.

“Nothing to say she did, either. They’re right.”Bentonstares at the stretcher and its grim cargo as the attendants clack open the aluminum legs again so they can open the back of the van. “A suicide that’s a homicide, the perpetrator DID. The lawyers will have a field day.”

The stretcher lists on the sandy, weed-choked soil, and Scarpetta worries it might fall over. It’s happened before, a pouched body lands on the ground, very inappropriate, very disrespectful. She is getting more anxious by the moment.

“The autopsy will probably show she is a death by hanging,” she says, looking out at the bright, hot afternoon and the activity in it, watching Lucy get something out of the back of the helicopter, an ice chest.

The same helicopter where she left her Treo, an act of forgetfulness that in many ways started everything and led everybody here to this hellhole, this plague pit.

“That’s probably all it will show in terms of what killed her,” Scarpetta is saying. “But the rest of it is a different story.”

The rest of it is Ev’s pain and suffering, her naked, bloated body tethered by ropes looped over a rafter, one of them looped around her neck. She is covered by insect bites and rashes, her wrists and ankles with fulminating infections. When Scarpetta palpated her head, she felt bits of fractured bone move beneath her fingers, the woman’s face pulverized, her scalp lacerated, contusions all over her, reddish abraded areas inflicted at or around the time of death. Scarpetta suspects that Jan or Stevie or Hog, or whoever she was when she tortured Ev inside this house, kicked Ev’s body severely and repeatedly after discovering she had hanged herself. On Ev’s lower back, belly and buttocks are faint impressions in the shape of a shoe or boot.

Reba comes around from the side of the house and carefully climbs the rotting steps and picks her way across the porch. She is bright white in her disposable clothing and pushes up her face mask. She’s carrying a brown paper bag, neatly folded at the top.

“There’s some black plastic trash bags,” she says. “In a separate grave, a shallow one. And a couple Christmas ornaments inside. Broken but it looks like Snoopy in a Santa cap and maybe Little Red Riding Hood.”

“That’s how many bodies?”Bentonsays, and he has gone into his mode.

When death, even the most vile death, is in his face, he doesn’t flinch. He appears rational and calm. He almost appears not to care, as if the Snoopy and Little Red Riding Hood ornaments are just more information to file away.

He might be rational but he isn’t calm. Scarpetta saw the way he was in the car just a few hours ago and more recently inside this house when they began to realize far more clearly the nature of the original crime, the one that happened when Helen Quincy was twelve. In the kitchen is a rusting refrigerator, and in it are Yoo-hoo chocolate drinks, Nehi grape and orange sodas and a carton of chocolate milk with expiration dates that go back eight years, when Helen was twelve and forced to stay with her aunt and uncle. There are dozens of pornographic magazines from that same period of time, suggesting that the devoutly religious Sunday school teacher, Adger, quite likely brought his young niece out here not once. But often.

“Well, the two boys,” Reba is saying, her face mask moving on her chin when she talks. “Looks to me like their heads are bashed in. But that’s not my department,” she says to Scarpetta. “Then some commingled remains. Nude it looks to me, but there’s clothes in there, too. Not on them but in the pits, like maybe they dumped some of their victims in there and then just tossed in their clothing.”

“Obviously, he killed more than he said,”Bentonsays as Reba opens the paper bag. “Posed some, buried some.”

She holds open the bag so Scarpetta and Benton can see the snorkel and dirty pink Keds sneaker, a girl’s size, inside it.

“Matches the shoe up there on the mattress,” Reba says. “Found this one in a hole we assumed was going to have more bodies. Nothing in it but this.” She indicates the snorkel, the pink shoe. “Lucy found it. I got not a clue.”

“I’m afraid I probably do,” Scarpetta says, lifting out the snorkel and the little girl’s shoe with her gloved hands, imagining twelve-year-old Helen in that hole as dirt is being shoveled in, a snorkel her only means of air as her uncle tortured her.

“Shutting children in trunks, chaining them in basements, burying them with nothing but a hose leading to the surface,” Scarpetta says as Reba looks at her.

“No wonder she’s all these people,”Bentonsays, not so stoic now. “Fucking bastard.”

Reba turns away, stares off, swallowing. She gets hold of herself as she folds the top of the brown paper bag, slowly, neatly.

“Well,” she says, clearing her throat. “We got cold drinks. We haven’t touched anything. Didn’t open the trash bags in the pit with the Snoopy ornament, but by the feel and smell of them, there’s body parts in there. One of them has a tear and you can see what looks to me like matted red hair-that kind of dyed henna red color? An arm and a sleeve. I think this one’s dressed. The rest sure aren’t. Diet Cokes, Gatorade and water. I’m taking orders. Or if you want something else, we can send someone. Well, maybe not.”

She looks toward the back of the house, toward the pits. She keeps swallowing and blinking, her lower lip trembling.

“I don’t think any of us are exactly socially acceptable right now,” she adds, clearing her throat again. “Probably shouldn’t be walking into a 7-Eleven smelling like this. I just don’t see how… if he did that, we got to get him. They should do to him the same damn thing he did to her! Bury him alive only don’t give him a goddamn snorkel to breathe! Cut his fucking balls off!”

“Let’s get suited up,” Scarpetta says quietly, toBenton.

They unfold disposable white coveralls, start putting them on.

“No way we can prove it,” Reba says. “No damn way.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Scarpetta says, handingBentonshoe covers. “He left an awful lot in there, never thinking we’d come looking.”

They cover their hair with caps and go down the warped old steps, pulling on gloves, covering their faces with the face masks.