“My father smashed a Thanksgiving platter over my head, then screamed, ‘LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!’—but six hours later, a doctor discovered something inside my head that my father had spent nearly 30 years convincing me never existed.”

The blue and red strobes turned the falling snow into ribbons of purple fire.

Two state troopers had Marcus spread-eagled against the hood of an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria before I even reached the gravel drive. A third officer, shotgun held at low ready, screamed at me to keep my hands visible as I dragged myself out of the mud.

"Hands where I can see them! On your knees! Down!"

I didn't argue. I dropped to the slush, my hands interlaced behind my head. But as my fingers locked over the swollen scalp wound where the platter had split my flesh twelve hours earlier, I felt the unmistakable hum. The metal inside my skull wasn't inert. Ever since my hand had touched that halo in the pit, the plate had been vibrating at a frequency so low it was more like nausea than sound—a steady, rhythmic drone at roughly sixty cycles per second. The hum of an electrical grid.

"Hold your fire! He’s the complainant!"

A heavy trench coat pushed through the uniform line. It was Detective Vance, the lead investigator from the county prosecutor’s office who had taken my statement at the emergency room six hours ago. His face was gray with exhaustion, a lit cigarette tucked under his mustache against the driving wet snow.

"Stand down, Miller," Vance ordered the trooper with the shotgun. He crouched in front of me, his knees creaking, and looked at the blood running from under my wool hat down my collar. "You look like hell, Arthur. What did you dig up out there?"

"The orchard," I choked out, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely form the syllables. "Under the trees. It’s not a landfill, Vance. It’s an annex."

Vance motioned to an EMT idling by an ambulance near the gate. "Get him into the back of the rig. Warm him up before his blood turns to slush."

"No," I said, grabbing his forearm. My grip was wild, muddy, leaving black grease on his wool sleeve. "Don't let them take Billy to the precinct until you see the cribs. He knew. James gave him the key to the backhoe. Billy was supposed to tear the floor out before your search team got here."

Vance stared at me for a long moment, then looked over my shoulder at the giant excavator, its arm frozen mid-air like an iron scythe over the black mouth in the orchard. He clicked his tongue, turned his head, and whistled toward two plainclothes crime-scene technicians standing by a white panel van.

"Get the portable light towers out here," Vance shouted. "And call the coroner. Tell him to bring the forensic anthropology unit from the university."

"There aren't any bodies down there," I said, my voice hollow.

Vance looked back down at me, his eyes dark under the brim of his fedora. "Then what’s that smell coming out of the trench, Arthur? Because that ain't old motor oil."

He walked toward the pit. I tried to follow, but two paramedics flanked me, wrapping an aluminum survival blanket around my shoulders and dragging me toward the warmth of the ambulance.

As they forced me to sit on the edge of the stretcher, my hand stayed inside my coat, fingers pressed flat against the waterlogged leather journal I had pulled from the duffel.

Through the rear doors of the ambulance, I saw Billy. They had cuffed his hands behind his back and sat him on the bumper of a cruiser. He wasn’t looking at the officers or the flashing lights. He was staring directly at the second-story window of the Duke Street house.

The master bedroom window.

The house was supposedly empty; James had been taken into custody at 9:00 PM at the diner three miles north.

Yet, as the sweeping red strobe lit up the glass on the second floor, a curtain drifted aside. A tall, thin silhouette stood motionless behind the lace, looking down at the orchard, holding what looked like an old military radio handset against its ear.