Free Force of Blood by Joseph Heywood

have mentioned something about empathy. That’s when she went off.”
    “Follow-up?”
    “No point then, but she’s on my list. What is it we want from her?”
    “Not sure. How’d the body look, what position it was in, anything with it, was it just bones, wrapped? You know … stuff?”
    “She’ll just default to weather.”
    “How people deny things is often a statement and a clue.”
    “Sometimes deniers are telling the truth. Maybe winter did uncover the remains. Katsu says it brings new artifacts to the surface every spring.”
    “Maybe,” he said. “What’re those handmade signs I keep seeing?”
    “LOL?” she said. “Laughing Out Loud.”
    “Really?”
    She grinned. “Only in the computer world. Out here it means Lands of the Lord—a religious camp,” she told him. “Catholic wilderness retreat over toward Bear Lake, a few miles south of where we’ll be. What religion are you?”
    “Earthling … mostly.”
    “I was raised Baptist-Fundamentalist-Agape-Evangelical—you know, no sex standing up ’cause it just might could lead to dancing.”
    He laughed.
    “My church is out here,” she said, with a wave at the woods.
    “Mine too,” he said.
    • • •
    They left his truck parked off a faint two-track about two miles west of the old Crisp Point lighthouse, unloaded the RZR, and headed east, keeping south of Lake Superior in the woods beyond the barrier dunes. Service carried his handheld GPS to capture the route and final destinations for future use. He’d dump all the data into his truck computer when he got time. He parked the RZR precisely 3.6 miles east of Crisp Point, dismounted, and looked around, stretching his stiff muscles. The four-wheeler pounded your back, even if you were taking it easy.
    “I think I came up from the south last Thursday—east of this hill we’re on.”
    “You did,” she confirmed.
    “You spend a lot of time out here?” he asked her.
    “Some, not a lot. But I figure whenever I’m up this way it makes sense to poke around to see what I can see and learn rather than waste gas going back south just because.”
    “How far is Katsu’s spot from here?” Service asked.
    “Half-mile, max,” Sedge said, “mostly downhill.”
    “Let’s leave the RZR and hump it on foot,” he said, grabbing his ruck.
    At the top of the hill he stopped and squatted.
    “Problem?” she asked.
    “No. You know standard military hand signals?”
    “I think so.” They reviewed them quickly and he nodded. “Delay like this is an old fly fisherman’s habit. You never wade right into the river. It’s better to stand back, watch, and see if you can figure out what’s happening before you jump into action.”
    “Sounds applicable to a lot of things,” Jingo Sedge said.
    “It is. Show me our target from here.”
    “Eleven o’clock, to the right of that scrub oak stand.”
    “What’s over at one o’clock?” he asked.
    “Sand. That’s where the ATVs have been tearing up shit.”
    “Beyond that, see the outline?”
    “Sort of.”
    “What’s it look like to you?” he asked.
    “Amoeba?” she ventured.
    “Yeah,” he mumbled. “That’s as good as anything I can think of.”
But there’s something swimming in the back of my mind, just out of reach
, the voice in his head said,
something crucial and not so obvious
.
    An hour later they were in the sandy area and she was pointing out artifacts, flint chips, pottery shards—some decorated with impressions. “There’s stuff
everywhere,
” Sedge said.
    “The copper point was
here?
”
    She pointed. “Over there, right on the surface, Katsu said. See all those little bunches of vertical twigs?”
    “I see them.”
    “They’re Katsu’s idea: two means tools, three means pottery, four means weapons—stone points, hammers, stuff like that. There’s a lot more pottery than anything else.”
    “What’s a one?”
    “Put there by chance and wind.”
    The things she’s showing me are certainly interesting,