She jabs a thumb at her screen. “I’m working on the National Center for Missing Adults now. Hope to have a list for you within the hour.”

I tell her about Stevitch’s discovery of the surgical plate. “The deceased may have had a broken arm—the radius or ulna—and had the plate surgically implanted. If you run across anything about a broken bone in any of the profiles, kick it over to me.”

“Will do. I’ll let Lois and Mona know to do the same.” She tilts her head. “Do you have any idea who it is?”

“Not yet.” I think about that a moment. “Get in touch with the local Crime Stoppers. Tell them we’re offering five hundred dollars to anyone with information that leads to the identification of the remains. All callers will remain anonymous.” I pause. “And I’m going to need the name of the owner of the Gellerman Road property.”

She jots furiously on a yellow legal pad. “Got it, Chief.”

“Skid on duty tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Get on the radio and tell him I need help unloading the generator.”

“Will do.”

I start toward my office, then remember one more thing and turn back to the dispatch station. “Jodie, can you run Paula Kester through LEADS and see if she’s got any outstanding warrants?” I spell the last name for her. “If she’s married, run her husband, too. I don’t have a name, but you should be able to find it.”

“Roger that.”

After unlocking my office, I let myself inside and make a beeline for my desk. While my computer boots, I quickly unpack my dinner. Experience has taught me that in the course of any death investigation, the first order is always to identify the victim. Without that information, there’s no way to build any sort of victimology. At this point, I don’t know if I’m dealing with a homicide, an accident, or death by natural causes. But my gut is telling me there was foul play involved, and anyone who’s ever worked in law enforcement knows the majority of homicides are committed by someone the victim knew. If I can’t name the victim, finding his killer will be next to impossible.

I wolf down my burger as I skim e-mail, responding to the ones that won’t wait until morning. But I’m anxious to get to the file. I open it as I pop the lid off my coffee. Not for the first time, I’m impressed by Lois’s ability to dig through reams of useless data and get to the pertinent information.

The NamUs reports are on top. The site went live with a fully searchable system in 2009 and contains over eleven thousand unidentified decedent cases and nearly twenty thousand missing person cases. It’s a mountain of data, especially when the only information I have right now to narrow my search is location, sex, and the broad age range of eighteen to thirty-five.

My job would be infinitely more difficult if this were a large metropolitan area, where there are many more missing. But since Painters Mill is a small town and the whole of Holmes County is sparsely populated, the numbers are much smaller. Depending on how old the bones are, there may be someone living in Painters Mill who remembers something and comes forward.