An Ice Cold Grave Read Online Free PDF

tiniest tingle, which meant some incredibly old human remains were somewhere in the area. It was a feeling I’d learned to ignore in my search for modern bodies. Though the range would be almost the same, not enough to make a difference, I walked the length of the property and kept getting the same reading. I shook my head silently and climbed back into the Cadillac. We drove, Twyla pointing out this or that town landmark as we passed it. I didn’t listen, concentrating instead on what I was picking up as we moved. The local cemetery provided a huge mass of static, but we had to stop there because that was where Tyler’s hat had been found.
    Of course there were tons of bodies here, and some of them were very fresh. It was way too cold to pull my shoes off, but I followed my instincts and went to the freshest graves. There was a heart attack, and there was a death by old age. Sometimes, you know, you just give out. Those were the most recent deaths. But Tyler Lassiter had been gone about two years, if I was remembering correctly, so I had to check out a lot more bodies. None of them turned out to be Tyler. They were all exactly who they were supposed to be according to their headstones. I was glad Doraville wasn’t bigger, and glad some people were buried in the newer cemetery, which was south of Doraville.
    We were now on the western edge of town, and Twyla once more pulled to the side of the road.
    â€œThe man that lives there was arrested for attacking a boy,” she said, pointing to a dilapidated white frame house barely visible behind a tangle of vines and young trees. “He’s been questioned over and over.”
    I wasn’t getting anything from the car. I got out and took a couple of steps forward, closing my eyes. I picked up a buzz from my left, much farther back in the woods, but it was the faint buzz I associated with old cemeteries. I heard Tolliver’s window roll down. “Ask her if there’s an old church back there with its own cemetery,” I said.
    â€œYes,” Twyla called to me. “Mount Ararat is back there.”
    I got back in the car and said, “Nope.”
    Twyla inhaled deeply, as if about to play her last card. She put the car in drive and we pulled out, heading even farther out of the small town of Doraville. We drove northwest, the readout on Twyla’s car told me, and the ground began to climb. I looked up at the mountains and I thought that if Jeff’s body were up there, I would never find it. I did not want to go hiking in those mountains, especially in this weather. I had a brief selfish thought: Why couldn’t Twyla have called me in two months ago? A month, even? I shivered, and thought of the biting cold, the snow that lay in patches on the ground, the predictions of bad weather in a few days. We began to go up, though the pitch of the ground was not so steep here.
    And then Twyla stopped again. I noticed how stiffly she sat in the driver’s seat, how white she’d gotten.
    â€œThis is where the phone was,” Twyla said. She jerked her thumb to the right. “I put that rock there, to mark where it was exactly, after the sheriff showed me.”
    There was a big rock with a blue cross on it, dug into the earth at the side of the road.
    â€œYou put it in pretty deep,” Tolliver said.
    â€œThe mowers had to pass over it,” she said. “That was three months ago.”
    Practical.
    I got out of the Cadillac and looked around, pulling on my gloves as I did so. It was freaking cold up here, no doubt about it. The Madison road rose steeply ahead of us, cut out of the rising mountain to the left. On our side, there was a fairly level narrow strip, perhaps a half acre to an acre of land, before the rolling slope began its rise. In that half acre lay the site of an old home. The house had been abandoned years before. The plot wasn’t in a neat rectangle because it followed the contours of the hill. It was