This is one reason Josephs likes working in New Hampshire. In most parts of the country, cops can’t search a car without the owner’s consent or a warrant. But if a driver gets arrested in the Granite State, the car gets inventoried before being towed. Very efficient system. Especially if the inventory turns up drugs or stolen property or unregistered firearms.

Josephs and Tasker walk over to the Sentra. Tasker sticks his head through the open driver’s-side window. “All I see is a duffel bag in the back seat.”

“I’ll grab it,” says Josephs. He opens the rear door and pulls out the worn denim bag. He puts it on the trunk and unzips it, then rummages around inside.

“Just some work clothes and tools,” he says. The tow-truck driver writes it down on a clipboard. Tasker walks around to the passenger side and checks the glove box. Nothing but manuals and a flashlight. He grabs the flashlight and peeks under the seats. “All clean,” he calls out, “except for candy wrappers.”

Josephs reaches into his pocket for the Sentra’s keys. “I’ll pop the trunk.”

Tasker and the tow-truck driver meet him at the back of the car. He sticks the key in the slot and turns it.

The lid pops open; the interior light flashes on.

“Jesus Christ!” The tow-truck guy takes two steps back.

“Fuck me,” says Tasker.

Josephs feels his stomach turn. But he leans in to get a closer look.

Alongside a set of jumper cables and some road flares is a bundled-up filthy blue sheet.

Staring out through a gap in the fabric is a grinning human skull.

CHAPTER
48

Seabrook, New Hampshire

In the motel shower, I press my hands against the tile, hang my head, and watch the dirt swirl down the drain. The soap and water sting my blistered hands. I breathe in the steam and imagine it seeping deep into every pore. Cleaning me out.

I’m exhausted. From digging all that dirt out of the hole and then putting it all back.

I cannot believe this night.

And I cannot believe what this investigation has turned me into:

Brea Cooke, attorney-at-law and grave robber.

On the way back from the woods, Garrett wanted to dump the shovels in a lake.

But the lawyer in me said no. That felt like cognizance of guilt.

But guilt about what? Trying to solve a crime that everybody else had given up on? Trying to bring closure to a family after seventeen years? Trying to find out what really happened to Suzanne Bonanno? Or are Garrett and I thinking more about our damn book than about solving the crime?

A quote from Sir Walter Scott comes into my head. My law professor Dr. Graham kept it pasted above his whiteboard at Columbia. He said it was a good caution for aspiring lawyers:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave / when first we practice to deceive.