Boyd’s discovery lay beyond the hedge dividing the McCranies’ property from the adjacent farm. According to Sarah’s father, no one occupied the neighboring house, which belonged to someone named Foote. A quick check drew no response, so we brought in our equipment through its driveway and yard.

I explained the situation to Hawkins as two crime scene techs unloaded cameras, shovels, screens, and other equipment we’d need for processing.

“It may be an animal carcass,” I said, feeling apprehensive about cal ing people out on a Saturday.

“Or it may be some guy’s wife with an ax in her head.” Hawkins pul ed a body bag from his transport van. “Ain’t our job to second-guess.” Joe Hawkins had been hauling stiffs since DiMaggio andMonroe married in ’54, and was about to hit mandatory retirement age. He could tel some stories. Autopsies were performed in the basement of the jail back then, in a room equipped with little more than a table and sink. WhenNorth Carolina overhauled its death investigation system in the eighties, and theMecklenburgCountyME facility was moved to its current location, Hawkins took only one memento: an autographed portrait of Joltin’ Joe. The picture stil sat on the desk in his cubicle.

“But if we’ve got a bad one,you’l make the cal to Doc Larabee. Deal?”

“Deal,” I agreed.

Hawkins slammed the van’s double doors. I couldn’t help thinking how the job had molded the man’s physiognomy. Cadaver thin, with dark circles under puffy eyes, bushy brows, and dyed black hair combed straight back from his face, Hawkins looked like a death investigator from central casting.

“Think we’l need lights?” asked one of the techs, a woman in her twenties with blotchy skin and granny glasses.

“Let’s see how it goes.”

“Al set?”

I looked at Hawkins. He nodded.

“Let’s do her,” said granny glasses.

I led the team into the woods, and for the next two hours we photographed, cleared, bagged, and tagged according to ME protocol.

Not a leaf stirred. My hair bonded to my neck and forehead, and my clothes grew damp inside the Tyvek jumpsuit Hawkins had brought me. Despite liberal applications of Hawkins’s Deep Woods, mosquitoes feasted on every mil imeter of exposed flesh.

By five we had a pretty good idea of what we were facing.

A large black trash bag had been placed in a shal ow grave, then covered with a layer of soil and leaves. Close to the ground surface, wind and erosion had taken their tol , final y exposing one corner of the bag. Boyd had accomplished the rest.

Beneath the first bag, we discovered a second. Though we left both sealed, except for such tears and holes as they already had, the odor oozing from the sacks was unmistakable. It was the sweet, fetid stench of decomposing flesh.