HOUGH CONTACT WITH THE GROUND HAD DISCOURAGED MOST flies, a few hardy ladies had managed to maneuver beneath the body. A white circle seethed in the pale, hairless chest. A smaller oval churned on the belly.

“What the hell?” Muffled through red polyester.

Leaning close, I could see that the egg masses weren’t evenly distributed, but appeared to cluster into patterns. With one gloved finger, I nudged outlier eggs back toward thicker bands that seemed to rim and crisscross the circle.

And felt coldness congeal in my chest.

The eggs formed an inverted five-point star.

“It’s a pentagram,” I said.

The others remained silent.

Using the same finger, I proceeded to “clean up” the oval until that pattern was clear: 666.

“That don’t say Old Time Gospel Hour to me.” Slidell’s voice was thick with revulsion.

“How…?” Rinaldi’s question trailed off.

“Flies are like the rest of us,” I said. “Given a choice, they take the easy route. Orifices. Open wounds.”

Slidell knew what I was saying. “The kid was carved up.”

“Yes.”

“Before or after his head was whacked off?” Angry.

“I don’t know.”

“So Lingo’s right.”

“We shouldn’t jump to—”

“You got another theory?”

I didn’t.

“Let’s go.” Stone-jawed, Slidell strode off.

“He means no disrespect.” Rinaldi’s tone was apologetic. “His niece had some problems in high school.” He stopped, considered whether to elaborate. Decided against it. “Anyway, he’s anxious to wrap up the Greenleaf business. We’ve got a line on Kenneth Roseboro, the kid that inherited the house.”

“Wanda Horne’s nephew,” I said.

“Yes.” Again, Rinaldi offered nothing further. “You want a cadaver dog to come sweep the area, maybe try to sniff out the head?”

I nodded.

“I’ll call in a request.”

When I returned from the car with my field kit, Hawkins was shooting video and the CSS team was walking the area. Already the shoreline was dotted with orange markers indicating the presence of potential trace evidence. Cigarette butts. Candy wrappers. Tissues. Most of it would turn out to be useless, but at this stage no one knew what was relevant and what was present due to accidental association.

Opening my kit, I spread out supplies. Beside me, the ME unsheathed a thermometer for insertion into the anus. Or the egg mass. I couldn’t be sure. For two hours we gathered and labeled evidence, Larabee on the corpse, Brennan on the bugs.

First I took close-ups, in case something matured into something else in transit to the entomologist. I’d made that mistake once.

Using a dampened child’s paintbrush, I then scraped up eggs. Half I preserved in diluted alcohol. RIP. The rest I wanted alive for the entomologist to raise to maturity for species identification. That lucky half I placed in vials with beef liver and damp tissue.

Then, I went for maggots. Since the few larvae present appeared to be of the same species and newly hatched, I didn’t worry about separation according to size, merely area of collection: neck, anus, surrounding soil. As with the eggs, one half went into vials with air, food, and perching material. The other half went into hot water, then an alcohol solution.

After netting and packaging adult flies, I gathered representatives of every species present within a yard of the body. My inventory included two black beetles, a long brown crawly thing, and a handful of ants. The yellow jacket got a pass.

Bugs sealed and labeled, I collected soil samples, then made notes about the habitat: freshwater lake, hardwoods and pines, semiacid soil, elevation five hundred to six hundred feet, temperature ranging from midsixties to mideighties Fahrenheit, low humidity, full sunlight.

Finally, I jotted comments concerning the body. Naked. Prone, buttocks raised, arms straight at the sides. Decapitation, no blood or bodily fluids at the scene. Head missing. Incised wounds on chest and belly. Minimal decomp. No aquatic or animal scavenging. Egg masses at neck and anus with internal temperatures of 97 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. Unknown cause of death.

It was half past four when I finished. Larabee and Hawkins were leaning on the back of the van, drinking bottled water.

“Thirsty?” Hawkins asked.

I nodded.

Hawkins pulled a six-ouncer from a cooler and tossed it to me.

“Thanks.”

We all drank and stared at the lake. Larabee spoke first.

“Slidell’s convinced we got devil worshippers in our midst.”

“Commissioner Lingo will have a field day.” I couldn’t keep the disdain from my voice.

Hawkins shook his head. “Old Boyce was sounding off less than twenty-four hours after you and Skinny wrapped up in that cellar.”

“Don’t you know? Lingo has a hotline to God.”

Larabee snorted.

“Remember that stabbing off Archdale?” Hawkins tipped his bottle in Larabee’s direction. “Lesbian lady took issue with her partner coyoting around? Body bag’s barely zipped and Lingo’s pontificating on the evils of homosexuality.”

“Not a peep last week when that trucker blew his ex-wife’s boyfriend away. That was a righteous heterosexual murder,” Larabee said. “Biblical motive. If I can’t have her, nobody can.”

“If Lingo gets wind of this one, he’ll roll it into his current soap opera.” Hawkins tossed his empty bottle onto a Winn-Dixie bag beside the cooler. “The Devil Goes Down to Georgia.”

“He’ll be dead-ass wrong,” I said.

“You don’t get satanic vibes from this?” Larabee asked.

“From this one, yes. From that cellar, no.”

I described what I’d found.

“Don’t sound like Baptists to me,” Hawkins said.

I outlined what I’d told Slidell and Rinaldi about syncretic religions. Santería. Voodoo. Palo Mayombe.

“Who’s into animal sacrifice?”

“All of them.”

“Satanists?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your money?” Larabee’s bottle joined Hawkins’s.

“The colored beads, the coins, and the Catholic saint point to Santería. The wooden sticks and the padlocked nganga suggest Palo Mayombe.”

“The human remains?”

I raised my hands, frustrated. “Take your pick. Voodoo. Santería. Palo Mayombe. Satanism. But the cellar had no inverted pentagrams or crosses, no six-six-six symbols, no black candles or incense. Nothing typical of devil worship.”

“Nothing like this kid here.” Larabee tipped his head toward the lake.

“No.”

“You think there’s a link?”

I pictured the mutilated body lying on the shore.

The cauldron skull and leg bones.

I had no answer.

Wending toward the highway, I passed two cars. One pleased me. The other did not.

The SUV held the search dog promised by Rinaldi. I wished the canine better luck than I’d had in locating the missing head.

The Honda Accord was driven by the same woman I’d seen outside the Greenleaf house Tuesday night. What had the Observer photo credit been? Allison Stallings.

“Just friggin’ great.” I palm-smacked the wheel. “Who the hell are you, Allison Stallings?”

Noting her plate number, I wished Radke luck in keeping Stallings far from the body.

My mobile rang as I was merging from the entrance ramp onto I-77. Traffic was heavy, but not yet the bumper-to-bumper crush it would be.

The caller ID showed an unfamiliar number with a 704 area code.

Curious, I clicked on.

“Go Mustangs,” a male voice said.

I was tired, preoccupied, and, to be honest, disappointed the call was local and therefore not from Ryan. My reply wasn’t overly courteous.

“Who is this?”

The response was the first line of the Myers Park High School fight song.

“Hi, Charlie.”

“Up for that coffee?”

“It’s not a good time.”

“Six o’clock? Seven? Eight? You name it.”

“I’ve been in the field all day. I’m tired and grubby.”

“As I recall, you clean up real good.” An old Southern expression.

I am competitive. Play hard. Work hard. Some people manage to do those things and remain well-groomed. I’m not among them. Following our tennis tournaments, Charlie usually looked like a GQ model. I usually looked like a badly permed shih tzu.

“Thanks. I think.”

“Katy tells me you like lamb chops.”

The veering segue caught me off guard.

“I—”

“My specialty. How about this? You shower while I hit the Fresh Market. We meet at my place at seven. You relax while I toss a salad and throw chops on the grill.”

Whoa, big fella!

“Katy’s invited, of course. I’ll catch her before she leaves here.”

I suspected his co-conspirator was right at his side.

“It’s been a long day,” I said.

“A shower will make a new woman of you.”

“But the old one will still have to work in the morning.” That sounded lame even to me.

“Look. You like lamb chops, I like lamb chops. You don’t feel like cooking. I do.”

He had me there.

“I have to go to the ME office to FedEx some bugs.”

“Dead ant, dead ant.” Sung to the opening bars of The Pink Panther theme.

“Mostly flies.” I couldn’t help grinning.

Curtis Mayfield. No lyrics.

“Superfly,” I guessed.

“Very good,” Charlie said.

“I can’t stay late.”

“I won’t let you.”

A car cut into my lane, forcing me to brake hard. The phone dropped to my lap. Steering one-handed, I groped it back to my ear.

“You still there?”

“Thought you’d hung up on me,” Charlie said.

Looking back, I probably should have.

My clothes went directly into the laundry. My body went directly into the shower.

Emerging, I found Birdie batting a blowfly around the bathroom floor. Before I could act, he ate it.

“Gross, Bird.”

The cat looked proud. Or smug. Or introspective, pondering the nuances of fly.

Smiling, I spread orange blossom body cream onto my skin.

Charlie was right. I felt rejuvenated. Cheery, even. Going out was a good idea. Making new friends was a healthy move.

A group of memory cells offered a collage of images, fuzzy, like snapshots left out in the rain.

The Skylark.

Charlie in cutoffs. Just cutoffs.

Me in shorts and a tank with bling on the front. A sparkly butterfly. Or was it a bird? Hair doing that layered, flippy seventies thing.

Upholstery stinging my sunburned back.

Maybe this wasn’t such a peachy idea.

Reacquainting with old friends, I amended my thinking. Friends. Just friends.

Uh-huh, the memory cells said.

Moving to the bedroom, I clicked on the news and crossed to the dresser.

“—sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. Those words of Revelation never sounded more true. Lucifer is right here, at our own city gates.”

I froze, panties half out of the drawer.