Chapter 76 Chapter 76

After hanging up the phone, Towns immediately dispatched personnel to seal off the area. At dawn, the excavation work officially began.Terrence and another agent came to pick me up, after a trip to Dunkin' Donuts for donuts.When we arrived at the destination, we found that the police cars had blocked the street front and back, and the red police lights were turning silently.Vans and government black antelopes took over the streets, with backhoes standing by.Mercury lamps lit the house and the grounds, and the woods were brightly lit.The chaos woke up the neighbors, and they went out to watch the action, forming a line on the porches and driveways, as if they had seen a circus come to town, and planned to set up camp across the road.The police let us pass, and I saw the young mother I met last time, standing next to the Volvo, looking across the street at the dilapidated house that she always thought was haunted, and she would soon know who the ghost was.

We stop and get out.The sky will be bright and the wind will be a little cold.Bureau agents in black coats, police officers in uniform, and forensics officers in white dust suits gathered around to get coffee, the creamer and sugar packets we kept on the hood, and the sweet treats in the oversized box. In the lap, the still-cool engine acts as a warmer. The door of the room opened, and Towns appeared at the door, probably drawn out by the smell of coffee.He nodded at me, but first whispered something to his men, and they dispersed. "I've been talking to my foster mother, that Gretchen," he said, picking up a cup of coffee from the cardboard tray and lifting the plastic cover.Steam rose.

"and then?" He tore open two packets of sugar and poured it into the coffee, then added two small boxes of creamer.He took a long swig of coffee from the rim and put the plastic lid back on.He sighed. "She doesn't match her words, but yes, Clay comes over a lot, visits her, takes care of her. Occasionally helps her pay off the loan." "That's suspicious," I said. "Clay hated her." "Yeah. Also, her boyfriend got caught for child abuse." "Where is he?" "Dead, lung cancer, fifteen years ago." "Do you think she knows about Clay's plans?"

He shrugged and said, "Probably not. We're going to take her back for a full statement, but I guess she doesn't seem to want to know. Easier life with gin and Price Picks." He looked I glance, "Also, draw the blinds when Clay says he's going to clean up the backyard." "What? She said that?" "Yes, help her tidy up the yard." "But it's not the backyard, I think it's the woods. He said the gerbils or something are buried there, and that's where he took the pictures. That's his place." "Yes, I know, come and see."

As we walked between the cars, another agent came running up, whispering to Townes, and making gestures to the growing crowd of onlookers behind the tape.The crowd parted reluctantly, and several policemen escorted the small group to the front row.It was the family members of the deceased who came: Mr. Hicks, the Harrells, John Toner, and they blinked and looked around, as if they had just awakened from a deep sleep. "Wait a minute," Towns said.He took a sip of coffee and walked over.He shook hands with the family members in turn, and when he encountered a man, he shook them vigorously, and gave Mrs. Harrell a gentle pinch.They gathered around him, talking in low tones, and everyone glanced at me.Mr. Harrell blinked blankly, with the same dull expression from last time.Hicks nodded, and I nodded to him.Mrs. Harrell looked at me, smiled sincerely, raised her finger and waggled it lightly.I smiled back and waved back, indescribably grateful.Only Tona refused to look at me, probably because of the embarrassment of what happened last time.He watched Townes, writing and drawing on the little notepad until the phone rang, and he turned to answer it.Towns came back and nodded to me, and I followed him across the street when I suddenly saw Dani standing alone at the other end of the crowd.I raised my hand in greeting, but she didn't seem to see it.She stood still, her eyes piercing my skin.

"Come," Townes said, "this way." We walk through the gate and I walk again past lush bushes and rotting Buicks and sunken houses with shutters drawn, this time full of people in blue raincoats and rubber gloves poking here and there Wipe, god knows what you're looking at.The section of the railing that fell down in the backyard has been removed and a strip of red tape is pasted in its place.A policeman nodded and lifted the tape to let us pass. It was still dark in the woods.The light came across from between the trunks and leaked through the gaps in the leaves above.The light drives away one mass of darkness at a time, illuminating in turn a branch, a stone, a reflective face, a hand.The forensic officers who excavated also had flashlights and helmet lights on.They move and dig as if tethered to the ground by beams.The surroundings gradually brightened, and the lights went out one by one.They used duct tape to divide the woods and grass into a grid, and planted small flags and numbered plastic positioning stakes.There was static and the buzzing of the radio.

Nothing has been found yet.We are patient.The sun rises and the day falls.I take off my coat.From time to time, agents came to find Towns, his walkie-talkie and cell phone kept ringing, and every time he answered, he put a finger in his ear and yelled at the walkie-talkie or cell phone, but most of the time he just talked to me Just stand there.After he finished his coffee, he looked for a place to throw out the garbage, and finally gave it to a detective who was digging up the dirt with a plastic bag.Another hour passed and he looked at me and shrugged. "how to think?" I shrugged too. "I don't know." I hesitated for a moment, looked around, and then said in a low voice, "Uh, I need to pee."

He frowned and said, "Can't hold it anymore?" "I can't hold it anymore." In fact, I wanted to go to the toilet when I first got here, but no matter which tree I hid behind, I would bump into the agents of the Bureau of Investigation. Townes sighed, "Go inside. There can be no accidents." "Ha, ha. Is she in the house?" "Who? Foster mother? Not here, she went to headquarters." "Okay, I'll come as I go." "Whatever, don't worry." I returned the way I had come, carefully rounding the marked place, and entering the backyard through the railing.The place, which might once have had the air of a childish haunted house, was now, like most scary places, small and sad in daylight.That being said, I was still a little nervous at the thought of going inside, and I stood on the back porch with one hand on the rusty doorknob, hesitating.I looked for the dog through the dusty back window.

Just then, I heard a commotion in the woods.Not very noisy, just a sudden increase in radio conversations and people running around the back yard, but enough to let me know they've made a discovery.I turned and ran back, through the fence, through the woods, to where the police and detectives were gathered, and now they were like a group of curious spectators, who also needed to be kept in order.I squeezed my way out and found Townes. "Towns," I called.He turned his head and waved me over.Everyone else stepped aside. He stood in front of a ravine a few feet deep, where agents in jumpsuits and white boots dug carefully, using brushes, platters and knives, like treasure hunters entering ancient ruins.

"Did you find anything?" I asked.He just pointed to the ground.They hit a gold mine.A tooth and an earring.Both were wrapped in dirt and placed on a white cloth waiting for a photographer to take a picture.You can see the white roots where the teeth meet the jaw.The earrings are scalloped charms with yellow pendants. "The teeth aren't sure yet," Townes told me, "but the earring, I know it better than my wife's engagement ring. It belongs to Janet Hicks." They continued digging inch by inch while others stood by and watched.Half an hour later, they found the first head.What started out was just a few strands of hair.They carefully separate each hair from the dirt.Then the top of the skull appeared, a broken white arch like a sleeping dinosaur egg underground.A large man (looking ridiculous in black-rimmed glasses, white bootie jumpsuit, and shower cap) knelt down and cleaned his skull with a ermine paintbrush.He dug around the skull with dental appliances, leaning over to blow away the dirt.Five minutes later, the upper half of the skull appeared before our eyes, staring at us from above the dirt with empty eye sockets.Something is shining.

“Another earring,” he said, standing up to let the cameraman take a picture, then ducked back to work, using a brush to clean up the cheekbones and the hole that used to be a nose. "Here," called a woman squatting a few feet away.If she didn't make a sound, I thought it was a man.Dressed in a white spacesuit, white overboots, white hair cap and goggles, she looked indistinguishable from her colleagues.She took off her goggles and looked up at Townes, who I saw was a little freckled girl in her twenties. "Another head," she said. In the next hour, they dug up a total of three heads.The buried head was arranged in a triangle, surrounded by the skeletons of what experts believe to be guinea pigs (not gerbils or hamsters) and a cat. "Did Klay mention cats?" Townes asked me.I stood shoulder to shoulder with him and watched. "No." "Maybe he forgot. He has a lot of bodies to remember." "No, he won't forget." "Yes." He agreed.That sounded awful.Everyone stood there looking at the three heads.They were once living beings, living beings with faces, and behind the faces were thoughts.Now they are empty, like broken china, the brain and blood gone, the black holes that were once the organs of seeing, smelling, and breathing.Three heads smile at us, ready to laugh.Townes guessed that the one with the two gold molars was Nancy Harrell, whose dental records he had memorized.Although the other skull was cracked and covered with mud, the teeth were once amazingly white.Dora Giancarlo.Dani's twin sister.Townes says she doesn't have cavities - Miss Perfect. The whole venue was silent.People walk around, talk in hushed tones, and cameras snap.No one said the question everyone was thinking: Where is the fourth head? "Is it dug deep enough there?" Towns asked, pointing to a spot a few feet away.The big man shrugged and said, "That's rock down there, sir. He can't dig in without dynamite or a pick." Towns nodded, putting his hands in his pockets.Another hour passed, and there were still only three heads staring at us.The barren crops planted many years ago have finally come to harvest.We've waited so long, but the truth is finally revealed, right in front of us, with empty eye sockets and open mouths offering not answers but questions: Why us?Why not you?They have no intelligence to say what we already know, the obvious stupid truth: that everyone is mortal.They're saying: Everyone is going to be like us, in this garden of skeletons, garden of bones, vacant lot, waste heap, dump.