Sometimes, you know, you just give out. Those were the most recent deaths. But Tyler Lassiter had been gone about two years, if I was remembering correctly, so I had to check out a lot more bodies. None of them turned out to be Tyler. They were all exactly who they were supposed to be according to their headstones. I was glad Doraville wasn't bigger, and glad some people were buried in the newer cemetery, which was south of Doraville.

We were now on the western edge of town, and Twyla once more pulled to the side of the road.

"The man that lives there was arrested for attacking a boy," she said, pointing to a dilapidated white frame house barely visible behind a tangle of vines and young trees. "He's been questioned over and over."

I wasn't getting anything from the car. I got out and took a couple of steps forward, closing my eyes. I picked up a buzz from my left, much farther back in the woods, but it was the faint buzz I associated with old cemeteries. I heard Tolliver's window roll down. "Ask her if there's an old church back there with its own cemetery," I said.

"Yes," Twyla called to me. "Mount Ararat is back there."

I got back in the car and said, "Nope."

Twyla inhaled deeply, as if about to play her last card. She put the car in drive and we pulled out, heading even farther out of the small town of Doraville. We drove northwest, the readout on Twyla's car told me, and the ground began to climb. I looked up at the mountains and I thought that if Jeff's body were up there, I would never find it. I did not want to go hiking in those mountains, especially in this weather. I had a brief selfish thought: Why couldn't Twyla have called me in two months ago? A month, even? I shivered, and thought of the biting cold, the snow that lay in patches on the ground, the predictions of bad weather in a few days. We began to go up, though the pitch of the ground was not so steep here.

And then Twyla stopped again.