“Oh, I think human. Let’s go outside where it’s warmer.”

Even with a cloudy sky it felt infinitely warmer outside the cave. “Why human?”

“It’s a human skull, Sergeant. I used to work arson investigation and I’ve seen a few. It’s human, all right.”

Liam drew in a breath and let it out on a long, expressive exhale. “Well, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“We have to get it out of there.”

To her credit and his everlasting gratitude she didn’t say, “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

The chief checked in with her people and they were to a man willing to play, probably because it meant that much more time away from their day jobs.

From a frankly unbelievable selection of tools, in the end they defaulted to a crowbar, a sledgehammer, and brute force. It didn’t take as long as he expected before he was peering into a roughly round hole sharply edged with jagged rock. Rafferty moved the lamps so the light fell full onto the scene within.

“Fuck,” one of the men said. “He’s, like, totally mashed.”

“Pulverized,” another said.

“Pulped,” said a third.

Not quite any of those things but not far off, Liam thought. With an inner sigh he got out his phone and opened the camera app to take more photos.

“Something’s been chewing on him.”

“What could get in there?”

“I don’t know. Rats, I guess?”

“Do we even have rats in Baytown?”

“Maybe Rodents of Unusual Size?”

“Gary!”

“Jesus, dude, put a lid on it.”

“Ever the class act, Feldman.”

A brief silence, while everyone looked everywhere but at Liam and the chief.

“Cockroaches then,” a subdued voice said. “Or bats, maybe?”

Everyone involuntarily looked up at the cave’s ceiling.

“I’ve seen year-old bear kill with less damage.”

“Chief, could I trouble you for another body bag?”

“Certainly, Sergeant. Garvey, would you do the honors?”

“Sure, Chief.”

Liam stepped carefully through the hole, and wasted only a few blasphemous moments freeing a shoelace from a snag.

“Ought to get you some boots with Velcro fastenings, Sergeant. Easy on, easy off, and they don’t catch on anything.”

Liam crouched over the skeleton, taking more photos from every angle. He had a one-yard tape measure attached to his key chain. He ran it out next to the skeleton and took more photos. If this was a crime scene, the photos were the only crime scene evidence he would have.

Other than the skeleton itself. It was, as the firefighters had said, in ruins, all of the bones broken more than once and the skull broken in on both sides. Had the body been dismembered? He crouched down for a closer look. The hip, knee and elbow joints looked as if they might still have been intact when they were—What? Fell? Placed?—in the cave. They still fit together, or they would until he tried to pick them up.

He looked up, ignoring the faces peering in at him. The bones were just this side of the common wall between the two caves. He got down on one knee and took more photos.