Quickly, I recap my conversation with Lois. "Could turn out to be nothing. Some guy who plays demolition derby on the weekend."

"Or if you're a gla.s.s-half-full kind of guy like me, it could be our first break."

Rasmussen, the eternal optimist.

CHAPTER 7.

The abandoned grain elevator sat at the edge of the woods like a ghost ship listing on a dark sea. The ma.s.sive structure was slowly being devoured by a forest determined to reclaim its rightful domain. Trees embraced the backside, vines reaching into the broken windows and wrapping their spindly arms around the wood and concrete exterior, as if trying to pull the structure more deeply into the woods to consume it.

Jack Mott and his best friend, Leon, turned twelve last month, and they'd been coming here all summer. It was the perfect place to explore and play army. Once, Leon had brought his BB gun and they'd played cowboys and Indians. Leon had shot a bat that had been hanging from one of the rafters. It plopped down at their feet, a b.l.o.o.d.y hole in its side, dead as road kill. Jack thought it was a lucky shot, but Leon had spent the next week bragging about it to the girls at the pool where they were on the dive team. The girls had been impressed because word around town was that the old place was haunted. By whom, no one knew. Jack didn't care; the rumors made for some good stories, even if they weren't quite true.

Jack wheeled his bike up the gravel track and laid it on its side twenty yards from the yawning mouth. "You bring smokes?"

"I got two off my dad." Leon leaned his bike against a good-size sapling and hopped off.

"Just two?"

"My old man catches me smoking and I'm dead meat."

The boys started toward the overhead door, which was rolled halfway up and off its track on one side. The afternoon air was humid, hot, and thick with end-of-summer bugs swarming in the rays of sun slanting down from the treetops. Jack ducked through the door first and stepped into the hazy shadows of the elevator. Even after coming here all summer, he couldn't get over how big the place was-or how creepy. The office was the scariest. There were papers and bird s.h.i.t all over the place. Once, they'd found blood and feathers on the floor. They hadn't come back for almost a week. But this old place had been the most exciting part of their summer, and despite the creep-factor, neither boy had been able to stay away. They were explorers, after all, and danger was part of the allure.

School started on Monday, so this would be their last day to explore, before football practice and all those extracurricular activities crowded their schedules. Both boys would be in seventh grade. Jack wasn't looking forward to middle school. He liked being a sixth grader because that made him one of the oldest-and biggest-kids. He was king of the playground and no one messed with him. Seventh grade would put him back at the bottom of the totem pole and he'd have to start all over again. The good news was, once he got up the nerve, he planned to ask Lori Deardorf to go steady.

"Come on, you dip."

Pulled from his daydreaming, Jack trotted up beside Leon. The murky interior smelled of dirt and mold and rotting wood. Jack liked the smells. He was going to miss this place when school started.

They walked along the cracked concrete slab where farm trucks had once rolled in with loads of corn and soybeans. Ahead, the office with its broken windows and rusty file cabinets beckoned. There was an old chair inside. Some animal had ripped up the seat and pulled out the stuffing. Every time Jack walked in, he checked the office first because he was always afraid he'd find someone sitting on that old chair, watching them. Once when they'd come here on a windy day, they'd been in the office and the old overhead door where they entered fell down another foot. Aside from finding the blood, it was the creepiest thing that had ever happened.

Remembering, Jack quickened his pace. "Gimme a cig."

Leon reached into the pocket of his hoodie. "Wish I'd brought the BB gun. We could have shot us some rats."

Jack looked around uneasily. He didn't like the idea of rats. "They only come out at night."

"Still, it woulda been-"

Leon's words were cut off as he went down. One moment he was walking beside Jack, digging for his smokes. The next he was being sucked into the ground, like in the movie where the corpse grabs your ankle and yanks you into his casket. Jack looked down to see that his friend had stepped into some kind of hole and fallen in up to his waist.

"c.r.a.p!" Leon's hands scrabbled on the dirt as he tried to claw his way out. "Help me!"

"s.h.i.t! Hang on!" Jack grabbed one of his arms and pulled as hard as he could.

Within seconds, Leon was back on his feet and both boys found themselves staring into a deep, dark pit. "Holy cow!"

"That's a deep f.u.c.kin' hole!" Jack exclaimed.

"Gotta be ten feet down."

"More like twelve."

Leon brushed the dirt from his jeans. "I ain't never seen that before. What the h.e.l.l is it?"

Jack lived on a farm a few miles down the road. Just last week, he'd gone to the grain elevator in Painters Mill with his dad. He knew what the boot pit was and had a pretty good idea how it worked. "It's where the farmers dump corn and s.h.i.t."

"I wonder why they didn't cover it up."

"Looks like they did. Sort of." Jack used the toe of his sneaker to uncover the edge of the steel grate. "They just didn't cover it all the way."

"Some old lady could walk in here and break her leg!"

Jack looked at Leon and they cracked up. "Old ladies don't go into grain elevators, you moron."

Leon felt around for the stolen cigarettes and his eyes widened. "I dropped the smokes!"

"Hang on." Jack had never had cause to use his new flashlight, and he was pleased he'd remembered to bring it along as he tugged it out of his back pocket. Leon watched as he dropped to his belly and shined the light into the pit. "Whoa."

Leon got down on his stomach beside him. "Holy s.h.i.t."

"Man, that's creepy."

"It's cool is what it is." Leon thrust his finger toward the bottom of the pit. "Lookit! There's the smokes!"

Jack shifted the beam. Sure enough, two tiny white cigarettes lay side by side atop a dust-covered two-by-six.

"Let's go down," Leon said.

"I ain't going down there."

"Come on! Man, this is the best! We can climb down-"

"We ain't got no way down."

"I saw a rope in the office." Leon jumped to his feet.

"It's probably rotten." Jack rose as well. "We get stuck down there and no one will ever find us."

"Jack, you are such a puss! The rope's nylon and nylon don't rot. We're not going to get stuck."

Realizing there was no way he could refuse the challenge and save face, Jack sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was start seventh grade with Leon calling him chicken. "d.a.m.n it, Leon."

But the other boy was already running toward the office. Jack watched him disappear inside. Dread landed like a brick in his gut when he came back with a coil of dirty yellow rope.

"This is awesome!" Leon declared.

Jack didn't think so. "We're going to have to tie it to something. Is it long enough?"

They looked around. "That post over there," Leon decided.

"We should probably tie some knots in it so we can climb out."

"Good idea." Leon took the rope over to a ma.s.sive wood beam and tied one end around the base.

Jack reluctantly set to work on the rope, tying knots a foot apart so they'd have something to grip when they climbed out.

Within minutes, the rope was secure, knotted, and dangling into the pit. "How're the batteries on that flashlight?" Leon asked.

"I just put 'em in."

Leon looked at him, as if the gravity of what they were about to do was starting to sink in. "You want me to go down first?"

Relief slipped through Jack, but he didn't let it show. Instead, he shrugged. "I'll keep the light on you from up here."

A grin spread across Leon's face. "I can't wait to tell everyone about this." He went to the opening, picked up the rope, and looked down. "Wish I had some gloves."

"Don't fall, you idiot."

Leon gave a cavalier wave and started into the hole. "Geronimo!" he cried, his voice echoing.

Jack held the flashlight steady and watched his friend descend. In less than a minute, Leon was standing at the base, looking up at him. "Nothin' to it."

"Here." Jack tossed the flashlight at Leon, who caught it with one hand. Mr. Cool. "I'm coming down."

The descent was easier than Jack had imagined. The rope bit into his palms, but war wounds were a good thing when you were about to ask Lori Deardorf to go steady. He couldn't wait to brag about this.

When he reached the base of the pit, Leon was already lighting up. "Jeez, you could have waited on me."

Leon shoved a cigarette at him. "Go for it, dude."

Proud of himself for making it down without incident, Jack lit up, trying not to cough when the smoke hit the back of his throat. "This place is cool."

"A lot of c.r.a.p down here."

"Lookit all this old corn and s.h.i.t."

"Bet there are rats down here."

"Probably as big as f.u.c.kin' groundhogs."

The smoked in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Leon dropped his on the ground and crushed it beneath his foot.

Jack had just tossed his b.u.t.t into the dirt and was about to step on it when something beneath a pile of wood caught his attention. "Hey Leon. What's that? Over there?"

His friend turned around, walked to the dusty heap. "Looks like a rock."

"I ain't never seen a rock like that."

Leon squatted, reached for a splintered two-by-four, and tossed it aside. Dust motes swirled when it landed in the dirt behind him. Next came a rusty one-gallon paint can. A piece of rotted cloth.

Kneeling beside him, Jack reached for the rock, tugged it from its ancient nest. "I got it." It was smaller than a soccer ball, but too lightweight to be a rock.

"I bet it's a dog skull," Leon said with a nervous giggle. "Look at them eye holes."

"Musta been a big dog." Jack brought it to him, blew the dust off, and turned it over in his hands.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" Leon sprang to his feet.

Jack Mott stared down at the human skull in his hands, and then he started to scream.

The Voss Brothers Body Shop sits at the edge of town next to a junkyard that's enclosed by a tall corrugated barrier fence. I pull into the pothole-laden lot, steering the Explorer around holes large enough to swallow a tire. A small frame house with a big stump in the yard serves as the office. Through the door I see a heavyset man in bib overalls behind the counter, watching us. Though the Explorer is clearly marked with the Painters Mill PD insignia, he makes no move to greet us.

The shop consists of a large metal building with two overhead doors in front. One of the doors stands open and I see a silver Toyota Camry on a hydraulic lift. A shop light dangles from the undercarriage and two men in coveralls squint up at the bottom side of the engine. Parked next to the building, an SUV that looks as if it's been run through an auto crusher waits its turn.

I park adjacent the office and Rasmussen and I get out. We're midway to the door when a man yells, "Hey!"

We turn simultaneously to see a large, round-bodied man clad in denim bib overalls striding toward us. His gray hair and weatherworn face tell me he's well into his sixties. "I'm Bob Voss." From ten feet away, he sticks out his hand, leaves it extended as he closes the s.p.a.ce between us.

Rasmussen and I identify ourselves. When we shake, Voss grins from ear to ear. "I've never met a lady cop before."

"There's a first time for everything," I tell him.

"Thank goodness for that," he says with a chuckle.

Rasmussen gets right down to business. "You called the hotline about a customer that had the front end of his truck reinforced."

"Hope I ain't wasting your time. But when I saw the news about that hit-and-run kilt that Amish family, I remembered this guy bringing in a truck. I thought I should let someone know."

"We're glad you did," the sheriff says. "What kind of work did he have done?"

"Well, that's the thing. He had the front end reinforced with a steel plate. We don't get requests like that every day so it kind of stuck out."

"Did he say why?" I ask.

"Said he had this old stump he needed pushed out of the way." He scratches his head. "Anyone with a brain knows you don't use the front of your truck for that. You burn it or grind it or get a backhoe after it, but you don't use your d.a.m.n b.u.mper. To tell you the truth, he didn't look like the stump-pullin' type."

"You get a name?" Rasmussen asks.

"I got everything." Giving us some Groucho Marx eyebrow action, he motions toward the office. "Pulled the invoice 'fore I called. Come on in and I'll show you."

Rasmussen and I follow him to the house. He takes us up the steps, across the porch, and through the entrance, the old screen door banging shut behind us. The office is small with dirty linoleum floors, a ragtag sofa set against the wall, and a chest-high counter that looks as if it came from some highway roadhouse that got shut down by the health department. I glance at the man behind the counter and do a double take. He's an exact duplicate of Bob Voss, replete with a matching crew cut, bib overalls, and the SUV-size gut. He gives me a gotcha grin and I notice the only difference is that the man behind the counter is missing a lower tooth in the front.