drumlins rising from the depths, the long thin deposits of silt from a glacial retreat. As glistening contours of limbs and torsos and heads took shape, Morgan grieved. He mourned because no one had missed these girls and women enough to resolve the circumstances of their disappearances.

      Just as he had immediately accepted that Robert Griffin was a serial killer, Morgan knew with certainty that the man’s victims were female. How many had gone missing each year from the streets, how many would have leaped at a ride in a sleek convertible, driven by a man getting on in age who would easily be satisfied and undoubtedly generous? He might just want to bring them home to talk.

      Someone turned a hose on the pile with a gentle spray. Morgan’s assumption that they were female was confirmed as body after body separated in the wash from the mass, each of them wrapped naked with plastic sheeting and duct tape, in various stages of dilapidation. Their flesh seemed shrivelled to the bone despite the water. Decay had been arrested and the effects of putrefaction had been controlled by the clay silt that shrouded each body in layers stirred up by the fish, season by season over years, and by the coldness of the water and its continuous flow through the soil, leaching through the embankment into the ravine.

      Morgan felt an overwhelming loneliness. It should never have happened this way to these human beings, most of whom were known only to God. He was drawn, he wanted to hold them, and he was repelled by what they revealed of human depravity and the human condition. Morgan gazed away, up into the foliage of the silver maples, then down into the gaping hole. His eyes were dry, his mouth was dry. He could taste his own blood.

      On impulse he looked around and saw that Mrs. de Cuchilleros and Dolores were absent from the window, but striding toward him from the direction of the door below the carriage house was the young woman he had last seen at the morgue. Before he could stop her she was at his side. He tried to steer her away from the hellish scene, but she was focused on him. Her eyes were raw and her expression was resolute. She had clearly been coping with demons of her own.

      “Jill, for goodness’ sake, you shouldn’t be here!” he declared.

      “I need you to come with me, Mr. Morgan.”