That case was my first encounter with coroner work. Today the only seminar I teach is in forensic anthropology, and I commute betweenCharlotte andMontreal serving as forensic anthropologist to each jurisdiction.

The geography had been difficult when I’d taught ful -time, requiring complex choreography within the academic calendar. Now, save for the duration of that single seminar, I shift as needed. A few weeks north, a few weeks south, longer when casework or court testimony requires.

North CarolinaandQuebec ? Long story.

My academic col eagues cal what I do “applied.” Using my knowledge of bones, I tease details from cadavers and skeletons, or parts thereof, too compromised for autopsy. I give names to the skeletal, the decomposed, the mummified, the burned, and the mutilated, who might otherwise go to anonymous graves. For some, I determine the manner and time of their passing.

With Tamela’s baby there’d been but a cup of charred fragments. A newborn is chump change to a woodstove.

Mr. Banks, I’m so sorry to have to tel you, but—

My cel phone sounded.

“Yo, Doc. I’m parked out front.” SkinnySlidel . Of the twenty-four detectives in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD Felony Investigative Bureau/Homicide Unit, perhaps my least favorite.

“Be right there.”

I’d been inCharlotte several weeks when an informant’s tip led to the shocking discovery in the woodstove. The bones had come to me.Slidel and his partner had caught the case as a homicide. They’d tossed the scene, tracked down witnesses, taken statements. Everything led to Tamela Banks.

I shouldered my purse and laptop and headed out. In passing, I stuck my head into the autopsy room. Larabee looked up from his gunshot victim and waggled a gloved finger in warning.

My reply was an exaggerated eye rol .

The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner facility occupies one end of a featureless brick shoebox that entered life as aSearsGardenCenter . The other end of the shoebox houses satel ite offices of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Devoid of architectural charm save a slight rounding of the edges, the building is surrounded by enough asphalt to paveRhode Island .

As I exited the double glass doors, my nostrils drank in an olfactory cocktail of exhaust, smog, and hot pavement. Heat radiated from the building wal s, and from the brick steps connecting it to a smal tentacle of the parking lot.

Hot town. Summer in the city.

A black woman sat in the vacant lot acrossCol ege Street , back to a sycamore, elephant legs stretched ful length on the grass. The woman was fanning herself with a newspaper, animatedly arguing some point with a nonexistent adversary.

A man in a Hornets jersey was muscling a shopping cart up the sidewalk in the direction of the county services building. He stopped just past the woman, wiped his forehead with the crook of his arm, and checked his cargo of plastic bags.

Noticing my gaze, the cart man waved. I waved back.