It was impossible to tell from looking how much had been done while he was living. In fact, it was almost impossible to determine that the remains were those of a man.

Almost.

Diana half turned away to look at Quentin as she breathed jerkily through her mouth. “Jesus,” she muttered.

Quentin took another long look at the remains, then turned away as well, his face still. “Come on,” he said, his voice a bit hoarse. “We need to call Bishop.”

It took nearly fifteen minutes for Bishop and one of Finn’s deputies to arrive from, he told them, the grave of Megan Hales.

“He—the guide, Daniel—was there for just a minute,” Diana explained steadily to their team leader. “Less. Seconds. Beside the boulders. Sort of . . . smiling at us. At me. Quentin couldn’t see him, but he looked so alive. And then he walked around behind the boulders, vanished behind them. He wasn’t there when—when—”

“When you found the body.”

“What’s left of him,” Quentin said, only years of experience in standing over the horrific evidence of what human beings could do to one another keeping his voice level, even detached. “Honestly, I doubt we would have gone back there behind the boulders otherwise. That little trail we were following more or less faded out at the beginning of the clearing. We probably would have just crossed the clearing and gone on into the woods again.”

Diana, with much less experience, was struggling to manage detachment. She said, “I didn’t see any clothing. Isn’t that supposed to be evidence of a sexual crime?” She was still in the learning stages of becoming a profiler.

“Often,” Bishop responded. “Though it could just as easily be a sign that the unsub removed the clothing to give us less to work with, since TV and books have made the science of forensics well-known. Or because he wanted the maximum shock value, which could also be the reason for the way he arranged everything. Anyone moving around the boulders was going to get a shock. But, in any case, with this much damage, we’ll need a good pathologist to tell us exactly what was done to the body and when, if it’s even possible.”

“You said this morning that Jill Easton was on her way?”

“In town and on her way to Megan’s grave now, since it’s closer for her. Since Finn doesn’t yet have crime scene techs, she and Sam will need to check the scene and supervise the removal of Megan’s remains. And then come here and do the same. We need to know for certain who this victim was, and I don’t think a solid ID is likely or even possible from—appearance. With the face battered, discolored and swollen, the teeth knocked out, hands and feet so badly burned, all the rest of the damage to the body, we’ll probably have to rely on DNA. But there is that scrap of hair left. Finn’s on his way up to take a look.”