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Tom said, though he felt it would be anything but. What was Jerome thinking, letting his ten-year-old son walk through the woods to a murder scene?
    Tom and his men climbed out of the car and gathered at the nose of the Packard. He checked to make sure Rex had hold of the evidence kit and seeing that he did, he waved at the blond boy, a quick shooing motion that sent Jerome’s son to trotting across the drive and between two poplars. They crunched their way through the woods, not speaking. Their pace would have seemed casual to anyone watching their progress. Truth was Tom wasn’t eager to see what remained of Harold Ashton, and he rationalized that a few minutes faster or slower wasn’t likely to change the boy’s circumstances.
    After fifteen minutes, the Blevins kid veered to the left, taking the party in the direction of the lake. Light flickered through the treetops, shimmering like the surface of a river at sunset. The air smelled fresh and good, heavily scented by pine and the rich odor of decomposing deadfall. A branch snapped loudly under his heel and Tom reared back, startled.
    Eventually they emerged at the water’s edge where the land jutted like a finger to the east, and Tom paused. He stared over the peaceful water back toward the small neighborhood south of downtown. Bits of yellow and white siding from the houses on Dodd Street peeked through the trees. A few people already lay out on the grassy shore, and a handful of folks had taken to swimming.
    “Almost there,” the Blevins boy said.
    Tom turned away from the comforting scene and saw that the Blevins kid was hooking back into the tree line. The ground angled upward and a density of fallen tree limbs made the going rough. This was the type of terrain he’d considered when telling Gilbert to stay at the station, and as he tromped up the hillside he knew he’d saved his deputy a lot of physical grief and a bit of embarrassment by keeping him off of this particular hunt.
    They neared the top of the hill and Rex said, “There’s Jerome.”
    The man stood at the peak of the hill and to their left. He wore a threadbare cotton shirt over gray trousers. A porkpie hat had been pushed far back on his head. He held a shotgun in his beefy hand, and he turned toward Tom and his men as they approached, looking annoyed.
    “He’s here,” Blevins said, pointing at the ground ahead of him. “Jesse, you stay put. Let the officers of the law come on up.”
    Tom couldn’t see anything but the direction of Blevins’s arm. He continued to trudge up the hill and after another three steps, the scene revealed itself clear enough. He suddenly regretted the large breakfast Estella had prepared for him.
    “Jesus,” Rex hissed at his shoulder.
    “Lord have mercy,” Don added. Then the deputy raced back down the hillside to relieve his sick stomach.
    “Too late for mercy,” Blevins said. “Best settle for rest in peace.”
    The body lay propped against the trunk of an old pine. The boy’s legs had been crossed and the hands folded neatly in the lap like a kid sitting on the floor, waiting patiently for his mother to give him a cookie. Flies swarmed the body, thick as a cloud. Tom approached as slowly as he could manage without looking like a coward, swiping his hand through the air to scatter the flies. The terrible expression frozen on Harold Ashton’s face came clear in the same moment the reek of his decaying body reached the sheriff’s nose. Tom’s momma had always told him that dying was a restful thing, like going to sleep, but Tom had seen enough bodies to know that wasn’t true. Harold Ashton certainly didn’t look like he was napping. The muscles about his mouth had tensed, pulling his upper lip away from his teeth. His eyelids were half open, and the eyes behind them had grayed in death. Tom kept his gaze on the murdered boy’s face, because for all of its dreadful composition, it was much easier to deal with than what had been done to his