Nick looked at the witch. Maybe it’s not the dog.

By dawn the dog had found almost thirty graves, arranged in a neat geometric pattern with a straggler or two on each side—probably latecomers, Nick thought. The first rays of golden sunlight streamed down the valley from the east, illuminating the little red flags like licks of fire. The witch led the dog around the perimeter of the graveyard twice more, but the dog found nothing else.

“What’s going on here?” a voice called out.

Nick turned and looked. Marge was approaching from the parking lot with Bosco on a short leash. She was glaring angrily at the witch and her dog—and at the field of little red flags.

“I requested a second dog team,” Nick called back.

“May I ask why?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “I was hoping that between two dogs I might get one nose.”

“That isn’t funny, Dr. Polchak.”

“Nobody thinks I’m funny,” Nick said. “Is it me or is it just women in general?”

On the opposite side of the graveyard the witch heard the voices and turned. She immediately commanded her dog to take a sitting position beside her, then lowered her head until her eyes disappeared.

“I was hired to do this job,” Marge said. “Who is that?”

“That is a dog trainer,” Nick replied. “You can tell by the dog.”

“What in the world is she dressed for? I assumed you wanted a professional.”

“I’m not looking for a cadaver dog with fashion sense,” Nick said, “I’m looking for a cadaver dog that can actually find cadavers.”

“Which I was in the process of doing.” Her dog now spotted the witch’s dog; he began to emit a high-pitched whine and strain at the leash. “King—stay!”

“Your dog failed to find anything,” Nick said. “You told me there might not be any more graves here. I can’t just take your word for that—it takes a second dog team to confirm a negative finding. C’mon, Marge, this is standard procedure and you know it.”

“She is not ‘standard procedure.’ Where in the world did you find her?”

“What difference does it make? She knows what she’s doing—and apparently so does her dog.” He made a sweeping gesture at the grid of red flags behind him.

Suddenly the dog jerked harder, yanking the leash from Marge’s hand and racing across the field toward the witch. “King!” she shouted again, but the dog paid no attention to her. She squinted at Nick. “Anybody can stick a bunch of flags in the ground.”

“Twenty-nine flags—that’s twenty-eight more than yesterday.”

“And how many of them will turn out to be false positives?”

“We’ll find out when we excavate,” Nick replied. “At least we have something to excavate now—that’s more than we got from Bosco.”