Chosen Prey

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.”
     
    T HE 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.
     
    D EL 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,”