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left of the glass swayed back and forth in their frames, like paper moving in an auspicious breeze. Outside the photographer snapped another picture. In the quick light from the flash I could see further inside the farmhouse, trying to gather as many details as possible in the truncated visibility. There were darkened squares on the walls, indicating where paintings or portraits had once hung.
    Another camera flash.
    I could see an old-fashioned steel radiator running underneath the window ledge. I hesitated slightly then touched the surface. It was terribly cold. I remembered how I had burned my hand on one when I was younger. I instinctively pulled off one of the gloves. The scar was still there on the flesh of my palm but most of the original color of the wound was gone.
    There was a small, cracked, terracotta flowerpot, the dried soil scattered across the chipped paint. There was a barely legible name imprinted across the rim. Lily. I wondered how old she had been when she had made it, or simply put her name on it. I looked out through the remains of the windows and scrutinized the darkening sky, the vacancy and the isolation of what was happening here.
    I tried to remember what color the leaves had been that day; that last day on my family farm when the adolescent sun was burgeoning atop the blighted stalks of corn and oat plants, brightening the peaches a bleached russet shade that changed from beautiful to dangerous, like a rotting apple to the inside of a woman’s mouth …
    The photographer brushed aside the branches of some dead foliage then concentrated on the empty field behind the house.
    Another camera flash.
    Then another.
    And another …
    I stepped quickly through the door of the farmhouse and back outside. There was a rusted porch swing on my right that overlooked the woods next to the house. Several men and women were moving through the edge of the woods and I noticed the small moons of their flashlights scattering across the barren trees. Mull had asked that volunteer firemen and municipal workers be brought in to thoroughly search the surrounding woods. The tragedies of a truncated childhood were beginning to scream louder in my head when I heard Mull call out to me from the direction of where the body had been found.
    The soil around the base of the silo was saturated, moist, and there were various patterns of footprints indented into the ground. It appeared to be a bottom-loaded storage compartment which made it the oldest style of farm silo. Most modern farms now used top loaders because repairing them was much easier. In all, the stave silo measured some 250 feet in height. Even though there was no sun, I shielded my eyes with my hand when I looked towards the top.
    â€œHow did it get filled with water?” I asked.
    Mull turned around and scribbled something onto his notepad and then gave low toned verbal directions to another officer before finally answering my question. “Most likely the heavy rains we had the other night raised the level up some. There’s a large section of the cone that covers the top that’s missing, or has simply broken away over time. Snow that came in through the opening could have simply melted. There’s been a lot of it this year. The inside of the cylinder appears to be intact, but you could give us a better answer on that once you’re inside. What’s in there could have been building up over time. It might just be a coincidence. The perpetrator might have filled it with water to decompose the body, but I don’t see how he could have done it. The well out the back of the property was just searched and it’s as dry as a bone and there were no depressed tire tracks leading towards or away from the silo according to the first officers on the scene. Then again, we don’t know for certain how long the body has been here. After you pull the body out, go down as far as you can and see what else is in there,” he