“I’ll get a van for transporting her when it’s time.” Rusty is talking about the body now.

“How do you plan on handling that?” I ask. “Without driving right through the middle of the scene.”

“I think we pull in as close as we can without messing up anything,” Rusty says. “Then by the time you’re ready for us to carry her out, she’ll be pouched with an evidence seal. And that’s all anybody’s going to catch on camera, just the usual pouched body on a stretcher. I’m thinking we’ll have her in the receiving area by nine P.M. if all goes well.” The two of them look at each other, and nod.

“I can notify Anne,” Harold says.

She’s the CFC’s chief forensic radiologist, and I’m going to want the victim in the CT scanner as soon as possible. I reply that yes, Anne needs to come back in if she can. It would be wise to mobilize now, I couldn’t agree more.

“You’re thinking she was murdered,” Rusty says.

“I don’t know what I think yet.”

“To play devil’s advocate,” he adds, “I’m wondering if she could be a heat-exposure death. Like she’s riding her bike, faints, wrecks and hits her head. We sure have had our share of heat-related fatalities of late, a lot of them weird-ass stuff.”

“A bike accident wouldn’t explain her belongings strewn everywhere,” Harold says thoughtfully.

“It depends on who touched her stuff and when it happened,” Rusty disagrees. “You know, like if somebody was looting? Like in small-plane crashes? If you don’t get there fast, people steal everything.”

“But not out here. That’s not going to happen here,” Harold says somberly.

“Stealing happens everywhere.” Rusty unrolls another section of black polyurethane siding.

I tell them more about the twins who found the body, and that we can’t be certain who did what. Kids don’t always understand consequences, Rusty drawls in his slow amicable way, the headlamp cushioned by the do-rag over his long shaggy hair.

“They move something, take something. They don’t know any better at first.” He interlocks the frame of a large panel. “Then maybe they freak out and lie because they’re afraid of getting in trouble.”

“We’ll build the components here out of the way,” Harold says to me as I survey the trolleys and what I want from them now. “Then we’ll finish the final assembly in the target area when you’re ready and feel it’s safe for us to work over there.”

“We’ll mark off a perimeter, and you can set up the tent right over the bicycle and the body.” I add that Marino will use spray paint to clearly designate the footprint for the tent, a safe zone for laying something down.