“Very,” I said. “Anyone else here?”

“Dr. Larabee will be in shortly. Dr. Siu is lecturing at the university. Dr. Hartigan is in Chapel Hill.”

“Joe?”

“Gone to collect some poor soul from a Dumpster. Bless his heart. It’s gonna be another hot one today.” Mrs. Flowers’s vowels could have landed her a role in Gone With the Wind.

“Is the landfill body getting any attention?”

“Made the Observer. Local section. I’ve answered a half-dozen calls already.”

Mrs. Flowers’s tidiness includes not just her person but everything around her. At her workstation, Post-it notes hang equidistant, paper stacks are squared, pens, staplers, and scissors are stowed when idle. It is an orderliness of which I am incapable. Unnecessarily, she adjusted a photo of her cocker spaniel.

“Do you still have the paper?”

“I’d like it back, please.” She handed me her neatly folded copy. “The Belk ad is good for twenty percent off on linens.”

“Of course.”

“The consult requests are on your desk. I believe Joe placed everything in the stinky room before he left.”

The facility has a pair of autopsy rooms, each with a single table. The smaller of the two has special ventilation to combat foul odors.

For decomps and floaters. My kind of cases.

Good choice, Hawkins. Though the sandpit bones would be relatively aroma-free, there was no telling about the landfill vic. And I was uncertain how best to free the remains from the asphalt. Depending on their condition, things could get messy.

Passing the cubicles used by the death investigators, I checked the erasable board on the back wall. Five new arrivals had been entered in black Magic Marker. A newborn found dead in her bed. A man washed ashore at Mountain Island Lake. A woman bludgeoned with a frying pan in her kitchen on Sugar Creek Road.

My sandpit recovery had been designated MCME 226-11. Though the bones and teeth were probably those of the missing housewife, that assumption could always prove false. Thus, a new case number was assigned.

The landfill remains had been designated MCME 227-11.

My office is in back, near those of the three pathologists. The square footage is such that, were I not on staff, the space might have been used for the storage of buckets and mops.

Unlocking the door, I tossed the newspaper onto my desk, dropped into the chair, and placed my purse in a drawer. Two consult requests lay on the blotter, both signed by Tim Larabee.

I started with the Observer. The article was on page three of the local section, just six lines of copy. The byline said Earl Byrne, the mushroom guy I’d spotted in the Focus.