The captain said, “He had gotten into a car accident earlier in the day, struck a stone wall, one-car accident. Didn’t report it.”

Mrs. Colina said, “Maybe he hit his head. Eddie would never do something like this.”

“I am so sorry,” said Odessa, again taking the widow’s hand, then backing off. “I don’t want to interrupt your conversation. I’ll just take a quick look around. Captain.”

The trooper nodded back to Odessa, curious, but sitting back down, unable to leave Mrs. Colina’s side.

Odessa stepped back outside, avoiding the pair of troopers there, following the front walk to the driveway. The garage door was open, the interior cluttered around an old Subaru. She poked through bins of outgrown athletic equipment, storage cartons, a tool bench, a rider lawn mower. She was looking for an iron cauldron like the one Agent Solomon had described. She found an old umbrella stand and a few planters, but they held only dead moths.

Back outside, she climbed four brick steps to the side yard. Angled before a line of trees separating the property from the neighbor’s was a garden shed: not one of the prefabricated resin toolsheds sold at Home Depot and Walmart, nor the fancy, cottage-shaped custom sheds, but an old, dark pine wood shed with an old iron clasp, probably built by one of the previous property owners.

Odessa pulled open the door, smelling grease and sawdust. Light from the only window—a single pane of cracked glass—fell over an old hand mower, bicycles, a croquet set and other lawn games, and a cracked bird fountain. She lifted aside a rusty bicycle pump, looking at the cobwebby rear of the shed.

She would never have given it a second glance if she hadn’t been looking for it. A fat black pot with a curved rim set in the back corner. It was full of trash: sticks, a string of colored beads, and string. Tufts of brown hair that could have been mistaken for clumps of dead grass. The plastic handle of a long knife set upside down.

She turned on her phone light, wishing she had a pair of gloves. What she had dismissed as sticks…they were bones. Grayed with age. Human or animal, she could not tell.

“Agent?”

The trooper’s voice startled Odessa. She saw part of a hat brim through the cracked window.

“Yes?” she said.

“Captain would like a word with you—inside.”

“Sure thing!” said Odessa, forcing a cheery note in her voice. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

She remained frozen until the hat brim moved on. Quickly she snapped a handful of photographs with her flash on, then backed out without knocking over any of the bikes. She walked down the side of the house to the street and turned to her car, getting in and driving away.

“Sorry—I thought you were a reporter.”