147

The town was Breck­en­ridge, and Saint stood out­side the old lodge in the shade of the Ten­mile Range while Sum­mit Coun­ty cops guard­ed the scene in the kind of stone silence that accom­pa­nied only the death of a child.

It was held for her, frozen in place by six uni­formed cops who closed down the sur­round­ing streets and taped off the wood­land behind. She met the local chief, skin­ny with a horse­shoe mous­tache, his pal­lor a lit­tle green like he’d spent the ear­ly hours bent over a toi­let try­ing to purge the mem­o­ry. She did not tell him it would not get eas­i­er. It would not fade.

She wore gloves and zipped her­self into white cov­er­alls. Bags over her shoes as she ducked beneath the tape and fol­lowed him down a steep slope to a flat­land of felled trees, machin­ery and work­men a good way back, hard hats in hand as they watched her.

“New homes,” the chief said.

Saint saw the round­ed aggre­ga­tion of large stones and beside it hills of damp earth.

The cloth­ing had held up well enough. Beneath it were bones.

And the rea­son she had come.

With gloved hands she care­ful­ly removed the rosary beads.

Saint held the mar­bled blue to the light and stared at the medal.

The girl had been buried in her clothes and shoes and with her school­bag. Saint plucked a purse from the debris and ran her thumb over the poly­ester shell and then care­ful­ly unclasped it.

“You know her?” the chief said.

“I know all of them,” Saint said.