The fact that the remains appeared to be limited to their packaging sped our processing time. By six we’d removed the sacks, sealed them in body bags, and placed the bags in the ME van. After receiving assurances that granny glasses and her partner and I would be fine, Hawkins set off for the morgue.

An hour of screening turned up nothing from the surrounding or underlying soil.

By seven-thirty we’d packed the truck and were rol ing toward town.

By nine I was in my shower, exhausted, discouraged, and wishing I’d chosen another profession.

Just when I thought I was catching up, two fifty-gal on Heftys had entered my life.

Damn!

And a seventy-pound chow.

Damn!

I lathered my hair for the third time and thought about the day to come and my visitor. Could I get through the bags before meeting him at baggage claim?

I pictured a face, and my stomach did a mini-flip.

Oh, boy.

Wasthis little rendezvous such a good idea? I hadn’t seen the guy since we’d worked together inGuatemala . A vacation had seemed a good plan then.

We’d both been under tremendous pressure. The place. The circumstances. The sadness of dealing with so much death.

I rinsed my hair.

The vacation that never was. The case was done. We were on our way. Before we’d reached La Aurora International, his pager had sounded. Off he’d gone, regretful, but obedient to the cal of duty.

I pictured Katy’s face at the picnic today, later at the site of Boyd’s discovery. Was my daughter serious about the intensely captivating Palmer Cousins?

Was she considering dropping out of school to be near him? For other reasons?

What was it about Palmer Cousins that bothered me? Was “the boy,” as Katy would cal him, just too damn good-looking? Was I growing so narrow-minded that I was starting to judge character by appearance?

No matter about Cousins. Katy was an adult now. She would do what she would do. I had no control over her life.

I soaped myself with almond-peppermint bath gel and reverted to worrying about Boyd’s plastic sacks.

With a little luck, the contents would be animal bone. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if Joe Hawkins’s ax theory wasn’t a joke?

In a heartbeat the water went tepid, then cold. I leaped out of the shower, wrapped one towel around my torso, another around my hair, and headed for bed.

Things wil be fine, I told myself.

Wrong.

Things were going to get worse before they got worse.

5

SUNDAY MORNING. TIME: SEVEN THIRTY-SEVEN. TEMPERATURE:seventy-four Fahrenheit. Humidity: eighty-one percent.

We were heading for a record. Seventeen straight days busting ninety degrees.