“We’re straight,” Quinn said. “She sent me and Maggie a set of steak knives for our wedding.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re straight.”

“Tell her we might have a crime scene here,” he said. “Like it or not, she’s the county coroner and we’ll need her to exhume whatever we got.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Reggie said. “What’d you touch?”

“Bones.”

Reggie put a hand to his mouth, his eyes watering.

“Be sick up top,” Quinn said. “We got some work to do down here and not a lot of daylight left.”

THIRTEEN

It had been a week since they found the body on the Penningtons’ land. Caddy sat up in the football bleachers with her momma and Maggie, talking about damn well anything but the Brandon Taylor case. This was the first game, a bright and clear Saturday morning, and Jean had brought donuts and coffee. Jason’s team was down by a touchdown just into the second quarter and Caddy was a little annoyed they’d moved her son from quarterback to halfback, not giving him the ball but twice.

“They better check the birth certificates on those Booneville boys,” Jean Colson said. “I passed one before the game and he stood nearly tall as me. Had a little mustache and a neck as thick as a bull’s.”

“Some kids grow up quicker than others,” Caddy said. “Maybe they feed them more over in Booneville.”

“Must be all the beef and sweet potatoes,” her momma said. “Getting all those hormones they shoot into the cattle. This boy didn’t have some milk mustache. It was damn-near as thick as Sam Elliott’s.”

Maggie laughed. Caddy shook her head, knowing her mom was prone to exaggeration. It was damn hot that morning, the three of them finding some shade under the canopy of a pop-up tent another family had brought. Jean shared her donuts and coffee, but Caddy was too nervous to take a bite, watching Jason, waiting for those six-foot kids to knock him in the head.

“Sorry Quinn had to work,” Jean said.

“He’s gonna try and get here by halftime,” Maggie said. “It’s been a week.”

Caddy didn’t say a word, knowing a great deal about those bones they’d found. It hadn’t made the papers yet, but Quinn said Ophelia Bundren could tell the remains were those of a young woman. They’d worked for forty hours straight tagging evidence down by the creek, not finding much but bones, a blue tarp, and tattered bits of old clothing. One high-heeled shoe and an empty snakeskin purse. Everyone in town was talking about it.