Free The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter

something by the careful way he stepped, examining each inch of dirt before moving forward.
    He called to the boy, who came over at a jog.
    “What did you see when you found the box?” he said.
    “Just a bit of white, sir. It was the corner sticking up from the ground.”
    “Look again now. See if you can find anything. You do that side.”
    The boy ran off to the other side of the grave, and then he also began to pace the ground step by step. The farmer and his neighbors saw what was happening, and they too began to spread out, looking down.
    The officers were awkwardly extracting the coffin from its shallow grave.
    “Here! Here!”
    Everyone looked up. It was one of the men who must have come from the car. He was only a few feet to the west of the grave and several paces closer to the road, looking at Pelleter, waving him over. He knelt.
    The whole crowd approached, and the man indicated whathe had seen. There was an impossibly straight line in the dirt as though the ground had sunk into a crack. The man was digging with his hand, and he quickly revealed what appeared to be the edge of another coffin.
    The group went into action without Pelleter saying anything. The two shovels were brought over, and the farmer and the man who had made the discovery began to dig. Meanwhile, the truck owner helped the officers load the coffin into the bed of his truck, while Pelleter had the boy and the fourth man continue to scan the ground.
    The seven-man team fell into a rhythm as will any group of men who have a large physical task before them, and they worked silently and efficiently, as the sun traversed the sky overhead. Pelleter took his turn with the shovel when it came, but he soon appeared overtaxed, and the men relieved him of the task. He smoked a full cigar, and walked far afield, determined to not leave any of the coffins undiscovered. One was revealed almost twenty feet away.
    Cars and trucks passed in both directions on the road, but no one else stopped.
    When the fifth box was found, the owner of the truck said, “I hope this is the last of them. My truck can take only one more.”
    Pelleter had the officers begin to fill in the holes that had been made, while he and the boy went around thrusting the shovel in at random points on the off chance that they would strike wood.
    The sun was nearing the horizon, and the weather had once again turned cool. The two men who had come in the car said their goodbyes and left. The officers loaded the last coffin on top of the others in the truck bed.
    Pelleter had five numbers written one under the other inhis notebook, but one of them he didn’t need. He recognized Glamieux at once. As Mahossier had said, his throat had been cut.
    “Come on, that’s enough,” he called.
    The boy turned a few feet ahead of him, his spade sticking upright from the earth. The men near where the holes were being filled in looked up as well.
    “Fill in the holes, and we’re going home. There’s no point in working in the dark.”
    The farmer came up to him nervously. “But what if there are more down there, and we go over them with the plow? You see? I wouldn’t want to desecrate the dead.”
    “You won’t.”
    “But if we uncover one...”
    “You let the police know, just like last time. But I think we got them all. We’ll know soon enough anyway.”
    “How?”
    “Because we’ll be able to ask somebody who knows.”
    Pelleter walked off before the farmer could ask anything else.
    The man with the truck was already on his way back to town.
    The graves had been mostly filled in, at least enough to satisfy the farmer whose son would be plowing over them the next day anyway.
    “You let us know,” Pelleter said again, as he got into the police car. The officer who was driving started the automobile and turned on the lights, which lit the few feet of road just ahead of the car.
    Verargent’s town square was almost unrecognizable. It was as though it had been an empty stage waiting for