When I put my Maglite on it, I saw that the arm had been carved, not written on.

A six-inch hunting knife was on the ground at Williams’s feet, streaked the same reddish brown as his skin. The letters were still easy enough to read:

SORRY

Chapter 98

A LOT HAPPENED really fast after we found Williams. Within a few hours, we had new versions of all the old players on the scene—Virginia State Police out of Richmond and the FBI team from Charlottesville. There was no one I knew here, which was maybe a good thing and maybe not. I’d find out which pretty soon.

The Bureau’s Evidence Response Team included serious-looking folks from serology, trace analysis, firearms, photography, and fingerprinting. They set up a tent and spread long sheets of butcher paper over plywood-and-sawhorse tables.

The ground around the wood chipper was sectioned into eight-inch squares, and they started right in, meticulously sifting one square at a time, separating potential evidence from dirt and debris.

The chipper itself would be disassembled in a lab in Richmond, but blood-enhancement agents had already shown trace amounts of serum. A visual inspection also turned up some likely bone fragments in the mechanism’s blades.

Everything was duly photographed, documented, and either set out to dry or put into manila envelopes for transport.

The faster job turned out to be a search of the woods. A lieutenant colonel with the state police called in two K-9 units, and within the first hours, they’d sniffed out a freshly turned patch of earth half a mile east of the cabin.

Some careful digging brought up two plastic bags of “remains” from about five feet down. Everyone on the site was carrying around a hangdog face. No one is ever ready for this kind of murder scene.

The new remains looked exactly like Caroline’s had, and the consensus was that they hadn’t been in the ground for more than three days. Right away, I thought of Tony Nicholson and Mara Kelly, who were still officially MIA.

“It adds up, on paper anyway,” I said to Sampson. “Get them out of jail, and you can make them disappear once and for all. We were supposed to think they fled the country.”

“Hell of a way to cover your tracks,” Sampson said. “But I have to admit, effective.”

We were sitting on the edge of the porch around one a.m., watching an agent tag what was left of the newly deceased as evidence, before they went into body bags. John couldn’t take his eyes off it, but I’d seen enough. It depressed me to know that my own niece’s case was becoming the single grisliest piece of work I’d ever investigated.

But that fact kept me moving too. For the fourth time in as many hours, I dialed Dan Cormorant’s phone number.

This time the Secret Service agent actually picked up.

“Where the hell are you guys?” I asked him. “Are you even tracking this?”

“You’re obviously not watching TV right now,” he said. “It looks like they’ve got everyone but ESPN out there in those woods.”