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past the students, and went into the big gray house to call the authorities. Later I'd been told his name: Augie Brooks.
    "Uh, Emma--"
    Meg's warning woke me up to the present; I had been idling at a green light. I hurried through the intersection and picked up the thread of my thoughts a little more cautiously as I hit the highway.
    I suppose that in a way I am constantly prepared to find bodies, although I expect that they will have been dead for a much longer time and be nicely, cleanly fleshless. I've worked on human remains in the field on many occasions, and I believe that I've become pretty good at remembering that the bones were once people, with all their attendant worries and hopes, good qualities and bad. I try to remember that their probate inventories, letters, diaries, and bills were not created just to be fodder for my research, but were real parts of many lives. Folks consider me pretty sensitive when it comes to dealing with the dead, but I have to admit, it is the immediacy of flesh on bone that brings that humanity much more forcefully to mind. Knowing a name doesn't hurt either.
    Signaling to turn off to a secondary road, I mentally shook my head. After all, I'd just been walking, trying to sort out some site questions, and happened upon this quiet, almost private scene, purely by chance. A decision to walk down the dirt road instead of the pebbly beach and I would have never seen it. There was the second thing that bothered me: Why did Augie prey on my mind so? I didn't know him and, really, hadn't been terribly upset by the mere fact of my discovery.
    Finally I decided that I resented his proximity to Greycliff, a place that meant so much to me all through my life and was now the focus of my professional scrutiny as well. You get protective about any site you've worked on, no matter how scrubby-looking it is or uninformative it turns out to be. Never mind that this had occurred practically at the front doorstep of my friend Pauline Westlake, who happened to own the site.
    That rational explanation didn't sit quite right, however. There was a pricking in my thumbs that persisted in the face of all that good sense. Forget it, Emma, I scolded myself, there's work to do. As I pulled down the last, pine tree-lined road that led to the site, I reached the conclusion, not for the first time, that I think too much for my own good.
    "So, what's up?" I said, finally addressing Meg. "Any particular reason you wanted to join me?"
    "Nothing much," she answered. "Just wanted to get out a little early. I think I'm changing levels, and I wanted to get a look at the dirt in the direct sunlight, before we get the shadows."
    "Good enough. You're close to Dian's depth, so keep a sharp eye out."
    "I always keep a sharp eye out," came the prompt reply. Not shirty, but a little too self-assured, perhaps.
    I raised an eyebrow but kept my response mild. "It's just an expression, but we are getting close to the seventeenth-century levels, and one careless swipe of the trowel could do a lot of damage."
    "Right."
    "You can get right to it. I'll check in with Pauline and then get my stuff sorted out for Tony, er, Professor Markham."
    We pulled into the drive and got out. As trite as it sounds, the smell of salt air and fresh dirt really has a powerful effect on me, like a call to battle. If a shower strips you down emotionally at the end of the day, when you can only see the huge amount of work that still remains to be done and the problems you still haven't solved, then the arrival on a site equally brings the sense of new beginnings, the opportunity to figure it all out, another chance to solve all the mysteries.
    I'd just grabbed my notebook when I noticed a black car, some sort of Camaro or Corvette or something, drive slowly up to the house. It almost came to a stop, but then suddenly speeded up and tore off up the road. I frowned: This end of the road was well away from the beach that attracted so many tourists, and the locals