Jennie found herself nodding with surprise and approval. Now that was something she had not thought of, but it made sense, it made perfect sense! In fact, it was the first time that all of the pieces had fallen together in this case! She gave David a brief but dazzling smile; he shrugged, but looked rather pleased with himself. As well he should be.

“Anyway, the way we have it figured, something went wrong when his own bulldozer uncovered one of the caches,” David continued. “Maybe he never intended for one to get uncovered; maybe it was the fault of the mi-ah-luschka. Maybe they arranged things so that some of his prize loot was pulverized.” His brow furrowed for a moment. “I don’t exactly know how the bomb fits in there, unless Calligan booby-trapped the caches like he did the—like some of the treasure-hunters in South America do.”

Jennie hadn’t missed the quick rephrasing; he had almost mentioned the booby trap they had nearly sprung. Toni Calligan didn’t notice anything; she was concentrating too hard on the rest of what David had said. She seemed particularly interested when David mentioned the mall site as a place where her husband had been burying looted artifacts.

“I always thought there was something funny about that place,” she replied, wiping her swollen eyes. “That mall, I mean. Rod was so obsessed with it, when half the people in town told him it was going to be a disaster, because it was on a floodplain.” She looked up at Jennie, her expression hardening. “What you’ve been basically saying, over and over, is that you really do think he brought all this on us. That you’re completely certain that it’s his fault all this has been happening.”

“That’s it,” Jennie replied, then shrugged. “You have to take my word for it, if you’re going to believe in the mi-ah-luschka and Medicine. It’s very subjective stuff. I can’t prove most of it. I can’t even prove the looting. None of this would even be enough to bring charges, much less to convict him in a court. But the mi-ah-luschka know, they’ve tried and convicted him, and they’re carrying out the sentence. The only problem, so far as I am concerned, is that they are also carrying it out on you and your children.”

“I have one dead child, and two who had escapes so narrow it was miraculous,” Toni Calligan said, the heat of anger creeping into her voice. “I know what’s been happening. There is no natural explanation. I can believe it. I saw that Indian myself, twice. And I can believe Rod would rob graves; he’d rob his own parents’ graves if he thought there was something good in them. He fooled me for a long time, and for a lot longer, I fooled myself. But I’m not going to delude myself anymore.”