Toni Calligan shivered. “Because I’ve been seeing them, that’s why!” she told them, the words tumbling out, one after the other, as if she could not stop them. “Tall men, with mohawk haircuts and wearing leather pants. Ryan has, too! Lurking around the house—and sometimes just before something horrible is going to happen—”

Explanations spilled out of her, then, a litany of accidents that were nothing of the kind, of the dryer fire, the Indian man who had pushed Ryan into the path of the car, the exploding pressure cooker—the Indians who had appeared and disappeared, the mi-ah-luschka who had been haunting the house at night, watching from around corners, making their presence felt.

And, finally, the Indian who had risen up out of the corner of the living room as the storm struck, young Rod playing with the TV in defiance of her orders, and the lightning strike on the television antenna, just as Rod’s hand was on the dial.

Before she was finished, Toni was in tears again, recalling the horror of that moment and the fruitless attempt to revive her son. This time Jennie moved over to her side of the table to put her arm around the woman, hoping to offer some small measure of support and comfort. But this time the tears were for herself as much as for the lost child.

“I thought I was going crazy,” Toni sobbed. “I thought I was seeing things, that maybe I was really the one doing all this, and I was so crazy I didn’t remember any of it! I thought this morning when I woke up that maybe I had electrocuted Rod and I’d hallucinated the whole thing!”

“You weren’t going crazy,” David said, quietly. “You saw them. They’ve been after you, and after your kids, and they finally hit Rod Calligan right where it hurts most by taking his eldest boy. Toni, I’ve seen them, and a meaner bunch you’ve never laid eyes on. And it’s all Rod Calligan’s fault. If anyone killed that child, he did.”

“But why?” she asked, wiping her eyes. “Why would he be—robbing graves? He doesn’t even like Indians; the whole time we’ve lived here, we haven’t been to the Gilcrease once!”

David pursed his lips. “Our guess is that Rod Calligan has been looting gravesites and stealing artifacts, then caching them at this mall site, planning on digging them up later. Maybe he figured that if they were “found” on land he owned, he had treasure rights to them and could sell them legitimately. There are some people who are willing to pay a lot for Indian artifacts, but you can sell them for a lot more money if you can sell them legitimately.”