“That’s the humerus up there. You can see the ball of the shoulder joint and a little bit of the clavicle underneath. The crest of the pelvis is just visible there, and down here—” He pointed to the soil at the end of the grave; the jagged stumps of four small bones projected from the earth like tree roots where the backhoe had cleanly severed them. “This is a tibia and fibula,” Nick said. “Here’s the other pair right beside them. You can see that the legs were pressed close together; my guess is that the body was buried on its side, most likely in a fetal position.”

“Why?”

“When you fold a body up, it requires a smaller hole. It’s a real time-saver when you have to dig the hole yourself.”

Donovan looked at him. “You worry me sometimes.”

“Two bodies in the same grave,” Nick said, “the owner downstairs and a renter in the apartment above. It’s pretty clever if you think about it. What better place to hide a body than a graveyard?”

“Then you think the renter was murdered.”

“So do you—you wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t. This is a rural area, Donovan, there are plenty of places to bury a body—nobody has to double up. In older cities when the graveyards got overcrowded they used to bury people on top of each other, but always in a casket and always in ceremonial fashion—laid out on their backs nice and comfy so they could all ‘rest in peace.’ Nobody buried people like this— tucked up in a ball without even a wooden box to call home. This guy was murdered all right—a forensic anthropologist can probably verify that by looking for bullet fragments or cut marks on the bone. The question is, ‘Who is this guy? And who killed him—and why?’ What you need is a postmortem interval—you need to establish time of death so you can begin to assemble a list of suspects. I suppose that’s why you sent for a bug man—that’s why you need me. What I can’t figure out is why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why is the FBI involved in this? Why do you guys care?”

Donovan nodded to the remaining graves. “The third grave is just like the first one,” he said. “One grave, one body. But the fourth grave is just like this one—there’s a second body buried on top of the original casket. That strongly suggests the same person committed both murders.”

“So?”

“There’s a lot of land still to be excavated here—there’s no telling how many more graves they might find. They’ve already found two of these double graves; there could be more. You know how the FBI classifies these things: three or more murders with the same modus constitute a serial killer—that’s when we get involved.”