She could hear him tearing into the wrapper of something, taking a bite. After a moment, he said, “Sorry, didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast. So COD, in this case, it’s tricky. There’s really no way to tell exactly how she was killed. Burning a body is a very effective tool for hiding a murder cause. I can rule this a homicide—there’s no evidence of smoke or fire damage in her lungs, so she was dead when she was burned. There was also some whitish residue that we collected, chemically consistent with sodium bicarbonate.”

“So she was burned on-site, then the killer put out the flames with a fire extinguisher? That’s twisted. But it explains the hair not burning completely away.”

“Maybe he’s an environmentalist. Happy to burn the body, but didn’t want to burn down the forest.”

“Hardly. Whoever did this wanted to obscure the cause of death without drawing attention to the site.”

“You’re probably right.” He munched some more. “That’s really as far as I can go. We’ll probably never know exactly what killed her.”

“Okay. That official homicide ruling is what I needed. When you get the positive ID, can you let me know?”

“I will. Before you go, though, there was one really odd thing. The hair isn’t real.”

“Come again?”

“One of the evidence bags that came in had a reddish-blond wig in it. It’s real hair, but there’s a synthetic compound mixed into it.”

“Why would she be wearing a wig?”

“No idea. Ask her husband, he might know. She could have had some hair loss because of a medical condition, she could be vain and want luscious locks. Either way, the scalp itself is lightly burned, and there’s evidence of scraps of fabric clinging to the skull. We found some sticky residue on the top of her head. I ran it through the mass spectrometer, and it’s an adhesive commonly used to help the front of the wig adhere to the forehead. Other than that, there’s nothing of note on this autopsy.”

“Fascinating. That’s it?”

“That’s it. You’ll get my full written report within the week.”

“Thank you, Dr. Fox. Have a good day.”

She hung up, refreshed the computer screen. The report appeared. She read through it carefully, twice. Looked at the photos, enlarged several of the face and head. She couldn’t tell anything.

Occam’s razor. A preponderance of evidence said this was Sutton Montclair.

So why did Holly suddenly get the feeling there was something much bigger going on?

She gathered up her things and headed down to the holding cells. Gave the guard on duty a smile and a high five as she rushed by.

Montclair was sitting in the same position she’d seen when she last checked.

“Mr. Montclair?”

He didn’t move.

“Ethan.”