“Stay there. I’m coming right over.”
Twenty minutes later he was on the course, a bit away from the second fairway. Mr. Brown was a sharp-looking sixty-something, but there was no reason why a queasy stomach should not inhabit a strong body. They shook hands and Brown pointed with his iron to the undergrowth under some sycamore trees.
“You’ll see my ball there. I don’t think I’ll be playing any more today.”
Paulson followed the direction indicated, and saw the white ball waiting to be hit back into play. Then he looked at the brambles around it, growing with their usual speed and ferocity. Going closer, he saw that underneath the brambles were not soil or weeds but the old dirty blanket.
He went nearer. The blanket certainly covered something, and it was large enough to be a human body — not a large one, but probably a full-grown human being. No one had told him how large Annaleese was. Most of the blanket was tucked in around the object it covered, but in one place it had come away, and a fringed edge lay on the ground. Paulson stayed where he was, and used Brown’s iron to raise the edge of the blanket.
The sun obligingly pierced through the clouds and shone on the thing he had exposed to view. It was an old brown hand, the veins standing out, the knuckles skeletal, the fingers stained with nicotine.