The first impression was unbearable. It never ended for her; the dead and the gone were always a mimicry of themselves, wrong, so very wrong. It took her a second to recognize death: slitted eyes, limbs tangled, mouth drawn back in a rictus grin. The next second registered the condition of the body. Though decomposing, something was clearly wrong. She glanced at the hands. Hand. Only one evident, sticking up from the muck and mud like it was reaching to the sky from a grave. Balled into a fist, a huge diamond winking. The rumors were right.

“She was burned.”

“Correct. Why?”

“To hide evidence, maybe? She didn’t do it to herself.”

“No? You’re sure?”

The world had reasserted itself, and Holly was able to look closer, taking the body in sections. “There is clearly animal damage. We’ll have to wait until autopsy to see what might be a wound versus a bite mark. Did Forensics find anything nearby, gas cans, lighters, the like?”

The edge of Moreno’s lip rose briefly. He nodded to a pretty, dark-haired woman standing ten feet to his left.

“This is Sherrie, she’s the death investigator from Forensic Medical. Holly Graham, Franklin Homicide. Talk.”

Holly kept her face straight at Moreno’s introduction, simply nodded professionally, as if hearing her name and title associated with the word homicide was a commonplace occurrence. Inside, her heart raced.

Jesus, you got it. Don’t blow it, sister.

“Good to meet you. We have to get her back to the shop, give her a thorough once-over, but it certainly looks like she was burned here. The grass and leaves are scorched around the body.” Sherrie referred to her clipboard. “To answer your question, no, we haven’t found gas cans, lighters, anything else flammable that would indicate she set herself alight. As you can see, the burns are worse on the lower extremities. Could be she was standing up when she caught flame, and then fell down. With her buried in the mud like that, anything could be hidden out of sight, but burning yourself to death without leaving some sort of evidence behind is hard to do. Whether this is our primary crime scene or just a dump site is yet to be determined. I don’t see that we’ll be able to pull usable prints, the hands are in bad shape, so without DNA or dentals... No sense jumping to conclusions until we have a chance to work it all out.”

Holly nodded sagely. “Thanks for the rundown.”

Sherrie made a note. “Cool. We’ll take her shortly, Sarge.”

“Do it. Make sure she’s first up, okay?” Moreno wasn’t asking, but Sherrie didn’t look impressed.

“I’ll let Dr. Fox know, sir.”

She walked to the nearby gurney, started giving instructions to the morgue guys with her.