Chapter 12: The Trunk

It took the excavator forty minutes to clear the roof, and I watched every minute of it.

The sky behind the pit went from black to grey to a dirty pink.

The gulls came in off the harbor and sat along the fence, waiting.

Donal stood beside me at the rim with his hands in the pockets of his dark coat.

He had not said a word since we got out of the car.

Three of his men worked below with shovels and a chain.

One of them was the quiet driver, and he kept his cap pulled low and his eyes on his boots.

"Plates," the man on the excavator called up. "It's a Lincoln. Massachusetts plates."

"Read them to me," Donal said.

The man read them out.

Donal said nothing, and then took a small notebook from his pocket and found the page.

"That's Ambrose Teller's car."

Nobody in the pit made a sound.

"It's the car he said was stolen," I said.

"Yes."

"It's the car that sat at the church. With a cone in front of it."

My voice had gone flat.

"He had his hand on the trunk."

Donal turned his head and looked at me.

I hadn't known I had said that last part aloud.

"He leaned on it," I said. "When he talked to my father. The whole time. He didn't take his hand off the trunk."

"Dahlia," he said.

"I'm going down," I said.

"It's not safe."

"I'm going down."

He didn't stop me.

He went first and held out his hand at the foot of the ramp.

I took it, and we walked the last thirty yards across the loose wet earth.

The car sat in the bottom of the hollow with clay up to its windows, the black paint cracked and scoured.

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