"Finister. Bert Finister. Looking for bodies, somebody said. That's what you're doing. You could listen to me. I live off back there, other side of the road. I do chores around here. Most of the camps. Everybody knows me. Carpentry work, plumbing, masonry. Put the docks in. Take 'em out in the fall. I know these camps."
"So you know the camps. If you were hunting for bodies, Finister, where would you look?"
"I'm getting to that. I know the camps. I know the people that come stay in them. Knew George and Timmy Warden and their pa. Knew that Eloise, too. Knew when Timmy used to come up and swim all the way across to see Ruthie Stamm. Showing off, I guess. Then last year there was a fellow named Fitzmartin up here. Guess he rented this place from George. First time it was ever rented, and now it's been sold, but that's beside the point. You know there's all this do-it-yourself stuff these days. Takes the bread out of a man's mouth. Takes honest work away from him. People do things theirself, they botch it all up. Me, I take it like an insult. That Fitzmartin, he was digging around. Didn't know what he was doing. I figured whatever he was doing it was something he could hire me to do. Then by God, he trucks in cement and he knocks together some forms, and I be damned if he doesn't cement the garage floor. Pretty fair job for an amateur. But it was taking bread out of my mouth, so I remember it. He put that floor in last May. If I was looking for any bodies I'd look under that floor because that Fitzmartin, he's a mean-acting man. I come around to help and he chases me clean off the place. Walks me all the way up to the road with my arm twist up behind me and calls me a trespasser. Nobody ever called me that before. Folks are friendly up here. That man he just didn't fit in at all. And I'm glad he wasn't the one who bought it. The folks who bought it, people from Redding, they seem nice. Got two little kids. I let them know when they want anything done, they get hold of Bert Finister."
We stood in the glow of car lights. Captain Marion looked at Prine. "Fitzmartin?"
"Runs the lumberyard for George. Shall I go get him?"
"We better look first, Steve."
"That cement floor fooled me. I went over it carefully. It hadn't been dug up and patched. It never occurred to me that the whole floor had been—"
"I saw a pickax in the shed," Captain Marion said. "Maybe you better swing it yourself, Steve. Maybe you need the workout."
"Yes, sir," said a subdued Lieutenant Prine.
They parked the cars so that the headlights made the inside of the garage as bright as a stage. Prine swung and grunted and sweated until Captain Marion decided the punishment was enough. Finister came back out of the darkness with another pick and a massive crowbar. The work began to go faster. A big slab was loosened. They pried it up, heaved it over out of the way, exposing black dirt. The men worked silently. For a long time it didn't appear that they would get anywhere. I was out in the darkness having a cigarette when I heard someone say sharply, "Hold it!"