“I’ve seen murder,” the chief shouted; “even out here people get murdered. But nothing like this. One wasn’t bad. It was like when some guy loses it and hits his wife with a baseball bat and it’s a lucky hit. You’ve seen those. One clop and she’s dead, and he just meant to scare her, to teach her a lesson. That’s how it was with the little one. They threw him against a wall or something, broke his neck, and bang, the kid’s dead. But the others . . . oh shit.” The man coughed and Hawkins wondered if he was crying. “They beat them and beat them.” The chief raved on. “They twisted parts of them . . . we were slipping in blood.”

“And clay,” Hawkins said.

The chief stopped, then said, “How’d you know about the clay?”

Hawkins looked at Rachel. “I have a friend who lives on Sutter Lane,” he said.

“We don’t know what to make of the clay. There wasn’t enough to smother them or anything, but it was everywhere the bodies were. It was on the bodies . . .” The chief stopped. “I never saw such a thing. It wasn’t enough to kill them, to beat them up like that, but to throw mud on them . . . oh my . . .”

“Where did it come from?” Hawkins asked.

“Wading River, Swan Pond, Linus Pond.”

“Any way to tell which?” Hawkins asked.

“No. There’s clay all over here. Riverbanks, streams, swamps.”

“Any weapons?”

“We didn’t find any. But there must’ve been.”

Hawkins didn’t answer.

“They couldn’t do that with their bare hands.”

Hawkins asked, “Is there any chance the husband did it?”

“No,” the chief answered. “We found him at a meeting in St. Louis. He’s on his way home.” The chief stopped again. “Oh my God,” he said, “that poor bastard. That poor, poor bastard.” The chief choked again and this time Hawkins knew he was crying. Hawkins waited, but the man couldn’t talk anymore and after a moment Hawkins hung up.

“Where did the clay come from?” Rachel asked.

“They don’t know.”

“Why was it there?”

He shook his head.

“It means something,” she said desperately. “Some ritual.”

Hawkins shook his head. “Ableson asked his mother’s­­­­ rabbi. He never heard of a ritual with clay. But he said that some village sects had their own rituals, handed down for two or three hundred years, that he wouldn’t know about.”

“Who would know?”

“They would know. Or someone else from the same village.” He looked at her. “Who else is from there?”

“No one,” she said. “The Nazis killed them.”

“All of them?”

“I think so.”

She said it so calmly he realized that she was used to the idea.

“Who would know for sure?”

“Golda might.”

“Call her,” Hawkins said.