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decided to shut up.
    Hollis Boxleitner didn’t seem to have any more questions, which was wonderful and puzzling. For most people, that would just have scratched the surface of what they wanted to know. I hugged my jacket to my chest, imagining how good it would be when I could get in the bed at the motel. I would pile on the covers. I would have hot soup for supper. I closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I opened them, I felt better. We were close to the site.
    I instructed the deputy to pull over when I calculated, by the pull I felt, that we were at the bit of road closest to the body. Now that I knew where she was, the body was easier to locate on my mental map. We got out for the hike downhill, a much easier one than our earlier descent to the deathsite of the boy. As we moved carefully downslope, Boxleitner said, “So now you find dead people for your living.”
    â€œYep,” I said. “That’s what I do.” I also had very bad headaches, shaky hands, and a strange spiderweb pattern on my right leg, which was weaker than my left. Though I run regularly to keep the muscles strong, making my way up and down steep slopes today had made that leg feel wobbly. I leaned against a tree as I pointed to the pile of debris that concealed what was left of Teenie Hopkins.
    After he looked under the branches, Boxleitner threw up. He seemed embarrassed by that, but I thought nothing of it. You have to see that kind of thing real often to be unimpressed by the havoc time and nature can wreck on our bodies. I had a feeling small town policemen didn’t see old bodies very often. And he’d probably known the girl.
    â€œIt’s worst when they’re in-between,” I offered.
    He understood what I meant, and he nodded vehemently. I started back to the patrol car, leaving him alone to collect himself and do whatever official stuff he had to do.
    I was leaning against the car door when Hollis Boxleitner struggled up the slope, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. To mark the spot, he tied an orange strip of plastic to the tree nearest the road and the car. He gestured toward the car door, indicating I should get in, and he drove back to the town in grim silence. “Teenie Hopkins was my sister-in-law,” he said as we parked.
    There wasn’t anything for me to say.
    I let him precede me into the police station. We had only been gone forty-five minutes or so, and the crew was still assembled. The tightness in Tolliver’s jaw told me that they’dbeen grilling him about me—maybe about my success rate—and he’d had to do some explaining. He hated that.
    All the faces turned toward us, questioning: the mayor’s looked only curious, the lawyer’s cautious, the sheriff’s angry. Tolliver was relieved. Sybil Teague was tense and miserable.
    â€œBody’s there,” Hollis said briefly.
    â€œYou’re sure it’s Teenie?” Mrs. Teague sounded . . . somewhere between stunned and grief-stricken.
    â€œNo, ma’am,” Boxleitner said. “No, ma’am, I’m not sure at all. The dentist will be able to tell us. I’ll give Dr. Kerry a call. That’ll be good enough for an unofficial identification. We’ll have to send the remains to Little Rock.”
    I was sure the body was Teenie Hopkins, of course, but Sybil Teague wouldn’t thank me for saying so again. In fact, she was looking at me with some distaste. It was an attitude I’d run across many times before. She’d hired me, and she would pay me a very tidy sum of money, but she didn’t want to believe me. She’d actually be happy if I was wrong. And I certainly wasn’t her favorite person, though I’d brought her the information for which she’d asked . . . the information she’d gone to so much trouble to bring me to Sarne to deliver.
    Maybe, when I’d first started out in my business, I was able to