But not quite yet. First, she wanted to carefully document the injury to his temple that Sammie had first noticed when pretending not to disturb the body.

It was visibly an impact wound, and Hillstrom’s experience made her confident it had involved something blunt and heavy, probably wielded at high speed. Beyond that, she couldn’t tell yet.

She put down the heavy camera and placed a magnifier headset over her scrub cap, adjusting it before her eyes. Carefully, working with a dental probe, she began examining the damage at Don Kalfus’s temple.

She took her time, as was her habit. The office, for a state the size of Vermont, was remarkably busy, especially since, from a peak of three in-house pathologists, they were now down to her and one deputy. This despite a recent and apparently permanent surge in numbers. Vermont’s population had been aging, drug deaths had taken off, as had fatal resolutions to what had once been fistfights and screaming matches.

Nevertheless, Hillstrom rarely rushed. The world might choose to speed up and risk going off the rails. Beverly, like Joe, she was pleased to admit, took her time and aimed for consistent accuracy. If a few people or events had to wait as a result, so be it.

It was peaceful in the morgue right now, which helped. It had been a hectic morning, following only a few hours of sleep. She’d felt badly about letting Joe down with this procedure, especially after she’d been so confident she’d get on it upon reaching Burlington.

But here she was at last and feeling much better. Not only was she comforted as always by her environment, a facility for which she had fought long and hard, years ago, featuring all the accoutrements of an A-level forensics lab, but right now, she thought she might have found something to lift Joe’s spirits a little.

Reaching for a long pair of tweezers and working them alongside the probe, she carefully extracted an approximately four-centimeter sliver of blood-soaked wood.

“Look at you,” she said, holding it up. “Won’t it be nice to find where you came from?”

“Things are warming up,” Joe told the assembled squad that afternoon, the rain still beating against the window. “Last meeting, Fred was unpacking the phones, and we knew next to nothing about Don Kalfus. From what you’ve been filing, it looks like we’re making progress. Fred used the image of a piñata to describe how this case fell open at our feet.” He held up his prime exemplar of that, explaining, “So, it should come as no surprise that something else has fallen out of nowhere.”

“That a flip phone?” Lester asked.

“It is. More than that, it’s Scooter Nelson’s.”

“You’re kidding,” Willy said, in an unusual show of surprise.

“Does it still work?” Sammie asked. She had been particularly devoted to the case at the time. The mother’s death by overdose shortly thereafter and Mr. Nelson’s permanent departure from the region in an alcoholic stupor hadn’t helped. All of them were used to the shambles left in humanity’s wake, but this case had left its mark, in large part because of its lack of a conclusion.