To this woman, it’s a professional insult to her made worse by a group of FBI techs flying in from D.C. to go over the scene. It’s not personal, but it always feels that way.

The most basic thing a medical examiner should be able to do is spot death. When you hear stories about infants coming back to life or grandmothers waking up at their own funerals, they always happen in other countries—places where stethoscopes are considered high tech and your average medical professional has less education than a high school teacher.

A woman like Gladys doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes. They’re impossible on a body you’ve autopsied. In one of my college classes we watched a human dissection. The examiner made the offhand comment after he sawed into the chest that if the subject isn’t dead at the start, there’s no doubt by the end.

One of Danielle’s team members places a disk-shaped object a few feet away from the girl. A black cable leads from it to a laptop set up on a foldout table. I walk over to have a look at the display behind everyone else.

The screen shows an overhead green grid. I assume the disk is in the center. Danielle presses a button, and a low humming sound comes from everywhere, like the woofer on a stereo. Circles radiate from the center of the grid, indicating the sound waves. I don’t know if they are the actual sound waves or a simulation the programmer put in there so people would know the thing was working. It reminds me of a submarine’s radar.

She presses another series of buttons and the disk makes the weird sound again. The circles radiate away and a rectangular outline becomes visible on the screen.

The image resolves and I can see we’re looking at the coffin below our feet. I’ve seen hazy ground radar before. This is nothing like that. This image is clear, like a monochrome picture. I imagine what it would be like to use that on the other side of a wall in a hostage situation. Along with armor-piercing rounds, you could take out the bad guys without ever setting foot in the door. I get why this is military grade.

One of the other agents calls out a number from the screen. “Two-and-a-half meters depth.”

Danielle nods and hits a key.

Two-and-a-half meters. Eight feet under. Most coffins aren’t buried this deep. In some places you can bury them under just eighteen inches. This cemetery is old. They probably do so out of habit. Occasionally you bury them deep because you have animals that like to dig. Sometimes those animals walk on two feet.

The screen pulses again and another image begins to form. We all lean in to get a better view, consciously ignoring the gruesome body just a few yards away. The screen is reassuring. The numbers are precise and scientific. The body is unearthly.

Gimbal whispers something to Shannon about them already doing this with the local field office radar.