When we caught up to Rinaldi he was standing at the edge of a clearing, hands dangling in front, shoulders rounded like those of a male chimp about to put on a display. The look on his face was not reassuring.

"This place has changed, man. I don't remember so many trees. We used to come out here to light bonfires and get wasted."

"I don't care how you and your friends passed your summers, Frog. You're running out of time here. You're going to be doing twenty-five hard ones and we're al going to read about how they found you with a pipe up your ass on the shower room floor."

I'd never heard Claudel quite so colorful.

Rinaldi's jaw muscles bunched, but he said nothing. Though there had been frost that morning he wore only a black T-shirt and jeans. His arms looked thin and sinewy and goose bumps puckered the pale flesh.

He turned and walked to the middle of the clearing. On the right the land sloped gently to a smal creek. Rinaldi cut through a stand of long-needle pines to the bank, looked in both directions, then headed upstream. Quickwater, Claudel, and I fol owed. Within twenty yards Rinaldi stopped and waved his scrawny arms at an expanse of bare earth. It lay between the stream and a mound of boulders, and was scattered with branches, plastic containers and cans, and the usual detritus thrown up by seasonal flooding.

"There's your fucking graves.

I looked at his face. It was composed now, the look of uncertainty once again replaced by cocky insolence.

"If that's al you're offering, Frog, that pipe has your name on it." Claudel.

"Don't fuck me over, man. It's been more than ten years. If the broad knows her shit, she'l find them."

As I surveyed the area Rinaldi had indicated, the bul y pressed harder on my chest. More than ten years of seasonal flooding. There wouldn't be a single indicator. No depression. No insect activity. No modified vegetation. No stratigraphy. Nothing to hint at an underground cache.

Claudel looked a question at me. Behind him the stream burbled softly. Overhead a crow cawed and another answered.

"If they're here, I'l find them," I said with more confidence than I felt.

The cawing sounded like laughter.

Chapter 8

By noon we'd cleared vegetation and debris from an area approximately fifty yards by fifty yards, based on Frog's hazy recol ection of the grave locations. It turned out he'd never actual y seen the bodies, but was going on "reliable information." According to gang lore the victims had been invited for a lawn party; then marched into the woods and shot in the head. Terrific.

I'd marked off a search grid, then set orange plastic stakes along the boundaries at five-foot intervals. Since bodies are rarely stashed below six feet, I'd requested a ground-penetrating radar unit with a 500 MHz antenna, a frequency effective at those depths. It had arrived within the hour.