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that role by so much as a single strand of gray hair.
    “Hello, Henry. I saw the sheriff’s jeep in the driveway. Thought you might need a good lawyer.” Ad Winston had a smile that could charm a suicide bomber—but not the judge.
    The attorney’s lean jawline was suspiciously well preserved. His hair was cut to a youthful shoulder length, and the Vandyke beard, no doubt dyed the same shade of brown, was trimmed to a sharp point. The judge was convinced that if he could only see the man’s ears, they would be pointy, too. And so, in a Dorian Gray kind of way, Addison never seemed to age.
    “I don’t need a celebrity lawyer,” said the judge.
    “Well, Henry, if you’re down to your last million, I could take you on as a charity case.” The attorney sat on the tree stump and raised his face to the sun, as if he were not tanned enough.
    The judge also looked up, but to the north where the Winston lodge perched on a foothill. All that could be seen above the tree line was the conical roof of the tower atop Addison’s castle of logs. “You got a telescope up there?”
    “Three of them,” said Addison. “Tools of the trade for an ambulance chaser. Actually, I passed the coroner’s van on the road. So, naturally, I assumed you were dead.” His smile faded off as he turned toward the house. “Please tell me the coroner didn’t come for Hannah.”
    “Hannah’s just fine.” Or was she? He was still speculating on the pharmacy bottle in his hand.
    “Not dead. Glad to hear it. My daughter mentioned seeing Oren in town. So the boy’s come home.”
    “Josh, too.”
    Ad Winston wore a look of stunned surprise. And the judge would have enjoyed that so much if he could only believe that it was genuine.
     
 
Oren Stood at the center of Josh’s bedroom and looked down at the coffin, where his brother’s bones blended with those of a stranger.
    “It’s official now,” said Sheriff Babitt. “Twenty years late, but we got ourselves a homicide investigation.” He rolled up a cloth tape measure that looked like something borrowed from Hannah’s sewing basket.
    So this was where the time had gone. The sheriff had been measuring the bones of arms and legs.
    As a CID agent, when Oren had no DNA samples or dental records, he had sometimes used these same markers to identify victims found in the mass graves of combat zones. And, on one occasion, all he had was the vertebrae of a baby mingled with bones of the mother. But Cable Babitt was probably more concerned with the body count in the coffin. This man would not care to wait on a pathologist’s report to tell him how many people it had taken to make this one partial skeleton.
    “A double homicide,” said Oren. “Unless you think there might be three victims.”
    The sheriff smiled. “Nice catch, son. Hannah told me you figured on at least two people here. If I come up with a different number, you know I won’t be sharing that with you.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Cable Babitt glanced at his wristwatch. “Where the hell is Dave?” He called out to the coroner’s man in the hallway. “Harry? No need to wait for my deputy. I guess we can just load the bones into a body bag.”
    “No,” said Oren. “Don’t bag them.” He reverently lowered the heavy wooden lid. “Just load the casket into the van.”
    The sheriff nodded to the man in the hall. “Go get another pair of hands, Harry.” When the other man’s footsteps had died off down the hall, he said, “Good idea, son. It’s best if your dad doesn’t keep the coffin in the house. He might get to thinking that’s a normal thing to do. Now, about these bones showing up on the porch. Hannah tells me this has been going on for a while . . . but you just got home last night.”
    Oren nodded, looking down through the open window as a jeep pulled up in front of the house. The door opened, and the driver dropped to the ground on the run. Only seconds later, the coroner’s man entered the room, followed by Dave