We positioned the casket along one wall. It was an inexpensive model, probably eighteen-gauge steel. The exterior was pink, the hardware embellished with orchids. It was in good shape, given its four years underground.

Already the room had taken on the odor of the coffin and its contents. Rusting metal. Rotting fabric. Moist earth. I noted none of the sickly organic smell associated with most disturbed burials.

King and I removed our outerwear. She set up a case file card and shot pictures. Then we all gloved and tied aprons behind our waists and necks.

I held out a hand. King handed me a metal implement. I stepped to the coffin and opened the locking mechanism. The upper portion of the lid lifted easily.

The plastic tub was snugged between mildewed and badly stained pink velvet cushions once marketed as an “eternal-rest adjustable bed.”

King shot more photos.

I transferred the tub to the second gurney.

Courtney watched with very large eyes. She’d yet to say word one to me.

I lifted the lower portion of the casket lid. King offered a flashlight. I checked the coffin’s interior, removing padding and fabric, probing creases and recesses with my fingers.

Found nothing.

I looked at King.

“Let’s pop her,” she said.

I pried off the lid of the tub.

King wasn’t kidding. The fire had left little of Daryl Beck. More likely, those who’d processed the scene hadn’t possessed the skill to recognize or the patience to recover badly burned bone.

The tub held only the thicker, more robust parts of the skeleton. Or those portions protected by large muscle masses. I saw no vertebrae or ribs. No scapula, clavicle, or sternum. Nothing from the face, hands, or feet.

Every element had suffered extensive heat damage. The skull had exploded, then the individual fragments had burned. Only two small bits of mandible remained, each from the area near the angle of the jaw. The ends were missing from the six long bones that had survived. The pelvis consisted of two charred masses, once the hip sockets, and a hunk of sacrum.

I began arranging the bones in anatomical order. Cranium. Right arm. Left arm. Right leg. Left leg. Straightforward. Until I came to the pelvis.

Then I stopped.

Stunned.

Grabbing the lens from the counter, I reexamined each carbonized ilia under magnification.

No way.

I held them side by side. Reoriented them. Did it again. Again.

No freakin’ way!

“What?” King picked up on my agitation.

I’d left the jaw fragments for last. Ignoring her question, I studied first one, then the other. The gonial angle. The foramen. The mylohyoid groove. The truncated bits of ascending ramus and dental arcade.

No freakinsonofabitching way!

But there was no question.

Palms sweaty inside my latex gloves, I set one pelvic fragment and one jaw fragment off to the side, then added their counterparts to my reconstruction.

“What does that mean?” King asked.