Nick parked his car in the Patriot Center parking lot and headed directly for Kegan. He found her in the tech tent sealing up yet another corrugated evidence box.

She looked up as he approached. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you all day.”

“I had something I needed to look into.”

“Sounds mysterious.” She looked at him—at his stained and dripping shirt, at the brown blotches of dirt ground into his knees, at the little lines on his face where rivulets of sweat had washed away the dust. “You’ve been digging. Where?”

“What are you doing after work?”

“Why?”

“You should be knocking off here soon—have you got any plans?”

“Yes—I plan to drive back to Charlottesville and take a nice hot bath. Why?”

“I was wondering if I could interest you in a little extracurricular activity.”

“What kind of activity?”

“If you’re going to ask a lot of questions it will only slow us down. C’mon, what do you say? Just you and me—and all your digging tools.”

“Nick—what’s going on?”

“I stumbled across something I want you to take a look at.”

“You never ‘stumble across’ anything. You were looking for something.”

“All right, if you insist on being picky, I stumbled across something while I was looking.”

“What did you find?”

“Another double grave.”

“Here?”

“No—in another graveyard.”

“What graveyard? Where?”

“I’ll explain on the way. Are you going to help me or not?”

“Polchak!”

They both turned and looked; Danny was hurrying toward them across the field.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Kegan said.

“I don’t have time for this now,” Nick groaned. “Do me a favor—”

“Forget it. You’re on your own this time.”

“Fine—just get your tools together.”

Danny charged directly up to Nick and squared off with him toe-to-toe. “Would you mind telling me exactly what you know about this ‘Witch of Endor’?”

Nick did a double take. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Where did you hear about the Witch of Endor?”

“From a waitress at Denny’s this morning—apparently I’m about the last one to know, and based on my past experience with you, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Oh, no—Look, I have to go.”

“You stay right where you are.”

“Danny, I need to know exactly what you heard.”

“No, you need to tell me exactly what you’ve heard—and I mean everything. The story I’m hearing is that our original cadaver dog team didn’t find these graves.”

“That’s true.”

“And that the graves were actually found by some woman who lives way up in the mountains—a woman with supernatural powers who can talk to animals.”