It was not easy digging up a grave, but at least the ground was soft and sandy, free of rocks and roots. Now and then he stopped to listen, but there was never anything except the night noises of the surrounding forest. Down he dug, neatly squaring off the hole as he went, digging first on one side and then the other, still humming “Brick House.” Sooner than expected, he heard the blade of his shovel hit something. But it didn’t sound like wood. Bending down, he brushed off the dirt and saw to his great astonishment that the old casket under his feet was made of iron, ancient and pitted. It looked more like a frigging treasure chest than a coffin. Shaking his head, he cleared away the rest of the dirt from the top. The casket had a double lid—at least that was something expected. Digging around the sides, he freed up some space to get the hooking bars in place, then lifted the top half of the lid. It was heavy as a bitch. An unpleasant smell arose from the dark recesses. Keeping his penlight below ground level, he flicked it on to examine the man’s corpse.

Another surprise: it wasn’t a man at all, but a woman. At least, he assumed it was a woman, because it was clothed in a disintegrating brown dress. It was hard to tell from the disgusting face: fuzzy with mold, all shriveled up, more skeleton than visage, mummified lips pulled back in a manic grin. Thank God the identification wasn’t his problem. He obviously didn’t need to pry open the bottom part of the coffin, if identity was what they were after. He’d done the first part of his job and now he just had to wait for the men to come. He checked his watch: one twenty. He was right on time; ten minutes early, in fact.

He climbed out of the hole, perched himself on a nearby grave marker, and lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag. He was trying to quit and had limited himself to two cigarettes a day. Seeing as how it was past midnight, this would count as his first.

Sure enough, at one thirty sharp he saw a glow of headlights on the winding road that came up the hill past the cemetery, and as the car reached the top the lights went off and the car swung into the dirt lane and pulled up next to his. Both doors opened and two men got out. They walked over to him. One of them held a duffel.

“You’re Bricktop?” the man with the duffel asked.

“That’s me. Your guy—I mean, what you want—is down there.”

He showed the men to the grave. They stood on either side, looking down at the open coffin. Clouds had drifted over the moon, and he couldn’t really see their faces. He waited.

Now both guys snapped on latex gloves and put on N95 face masks. One got into the grave and stood on the lower lid of the iron coffin, bent down, and briefly shone a light on the dead woman’s face. Then the other guy pulled a long, serrated bone saw out of the duffel he was carrying and passed it down to the guy in the hole, along with a couple of oversize dry bags. The metal saw gleamed faintly in the moonlight. The man bent over the corpse’s midriff and Bricktop heard a horrible crackling, sawing sound. It was pretty obvious what the guy was doing—and it wasn’t just determining identity. But Bricktop held his tongue. Never ask questions, never show curiosity: that was his mantra.

The man put something heavy into one of the dry bags, sawed some more, put something else in the other bag. Then, sealing them, he handed them carefully to the man standing above. Then he stripped off his gloves and mask and slipped them into a pocket.

“Are we good?” Bricktop asked.

“We’re good.” The man reached into his coat and withdrew a manila envelope. “Remember: this never happened.”

Bricktop nodded, opened the envelope that was handed to him, and saw it contained fresh banded hundreds. Three bands, each labeled $1,000. He riffled through and then slipped the envelope inside his jacket.

“Okay,” said the man. “Close the lid and refill the hole.”

Bricktop was only too eager to finish the job and get the hell out of there. He bent down, grasping the heavy lid. It was just as he thought—the crazy fuckers had sawed the corpse in half and taken it from the waist up. None of his business. Pulling out the hooking bars, he heaved it closed with a muffled thump.

He felt a sharp tickle against the back of his skull—and that was it.

* * *

The man in the grave bent over the figure sprawled on the coffin, then dispassionately squeezed off a second round from the silenced Maxim 9 pistol, taking off the top of the gravedigger’s head. Pulling the latex gloves on again, he gingerly reached inside the man’s jacket and took out the envelope with the money, along with wallet, car keys, and the instruction document. He climbed back out and the two men, in silence, dragged the tarp and some of the dirt it held into the freshly dug hole, loosely covering the corpse and his tools. The dry bags and saw went back into the duffel. Dark clouds now began to blot out the moon, the arrival of the predicted front, bringing thunderstorms and heavy rain. The man with the pistol got into the dead man’s car, and the man with the duffel got into the other. Bricktop’s car went off one way, and a few minutes later the other drove off in the opposite direction.

Hefty drops of rain began spattering into the graveyard, first a few and then many, while lightning split the sky and thunder rolled among the hills.

8

April 23

THE PHONE ON Swanson’s desk rang. Two short bursts: an internal call.

She picked it up. “Yes?”

“Swanson?” It was Morwood.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?”

“I’ll be right there, sir.”

Swanson pushed aside the files she’d been examining—cold case number seven—and stood up. It wasn’t like Morwood to call her into his office like this; not at this hour of the morning. He was quite punctual about their weekly debriefs and review sessions, every Thursday afternoon at two. From long habit, the first feeling she had was of guilt and anxiety. Shit, had she done something wrong?

Over the last couple of weeks, in addition to the ongoing desk work, Morwood had let Swanson ride shotgun with two DEA teams on meth lab raids in northeast Albuquerque. They were low-level busts, and she’d been no more than an observer in body armor—she suspected that Morwood had specifically chosen the ops for their minimal danger potential—but in the process she’d gotten some firsthand experience with interagency rivalry.

She’d already heard the FBI’s opinion of the DEA: knuckle-dragging Neanderthals whose main talent was for cracking skulls. But on these ride-alongs, she’d learned the DEA’s own impression of the FBI. The assault teams had let her know, in no uncertain terms, that she’d joined the wrong agency, and that the FBI was a sorry collection of pencil-necked, limp-dicked, nerdy accountants who rarely if ever broke leather their entire careers. At first, Swanson had endured the ribbing good-naturedly. But by the end of the second ride-along, just yesterday, one crew-cut-sporting agent in particular just wouldn’t let the joke go, and as they’d returned to headquarters—suspects in cuffs, the crank in evidence lockers, and Clandestine Lab Enforcement securing the site—Swanson’s anger had gotten the better of her, and she’d let her tormentor know, in graphic detail, precisely where he could shove the meth they’d just confiscated.

It was only later in the evening that she’d learned Breitman, the agent with the crew cut, had been squad leader.