For an entire minute Bryce and I have a useless conversation about chain of evidence, and I don’t have the patience for his incessant chatter. I continue interrupting him. The CFC isn’t even ten minutes from here and I want the truck swapped out immediately for an SUV. Get Harold or Rusty to take care of it right away. I apologize about the inconvenience but I need this truck out of here now. The chain of evidence must be preserved. Not just the evidence packaged inside but also the truck itself.

“I don’t understand.” Bryce has said this several times. “Because like you just pointed out you’re ten minutes from here. You sure you and Marino can’t drop it off yourselves when you’re done, Doctor Scarpetta? I mean you’re coming here anyway? I’m not trying to be a pain but we’re kind of up to our eyeballs? We’ve had quite the full house this morning with you not here, and Luke’s only just now starting his third case while Harold and Rusty clean workstations and suture up bodies for the other docs. And two of them decided to pull out that box from the skeleton closet so to speak? Remember the one from the other week …?”

“Bryce …”

“The remains that washed up on Revere Beach? The anthropologists just got the DNA results and it’s for sure the girl who vanished from her houseboat near the aquarium last year? They have the bones all spread out like a jigsaw puzzle, and …”

“Bryce, please be quiet and listen. It appears the truck has been vandalized. I want it to go straight into the evidence bay for processing, and I have additional evidence in a locker that needs to go to the labs ASAP.”

I give him a list of what I want the scientists to look for first.

“There appears to be biological materials such as blood and tissue, and I want DNA as fast as we can get it,” I add as I stand inside the truck and Marino is hunched against the relentless rain like Eeyore in Winnie-the-Pooh. “And trace evidence because I’m seeing dirt, fibers and an unknown material that looks like quartz. Plus tool marks on a screw.”

“Quartz and a screw? Oh my God that sounds exciting.”

“Let’s get Ernie on it right away.”

Ernie Koppel is my senior trace evidence examiner. He’s a superb microscopist, one of the best.

“Texting him as we speak,” Bryce says in my earpiece. “And B-T-W? What’s all that racket in the background? It sounds like someone is beating an oil drum with a stick.”

“Have you looked out your window?”