Two other glove-wearing detectives removed the sheet, revealing the corpse of a white woman in her midthirties, partially embedded in dark soil, as if she were frozen in her bid to rise from it. Studying the body without touching it, Bogan’s gum chewing slowed as he digested everything, while Zelinski made notes and sketches.

“She’s a pretty one.” Bogan drew closer to where the dirt yielded the first of her wounds. “She’s been stabbed,” he said. “Repeatedly.” He continued looking with an expert’s eye and compassion. “Who are you? Who did this to you?”

Zelinski made more notes and sketches. Then he started a video, even though the techs would make a meticulous visual record of every iota of the scene. Zelinski was thorough because, with a homicide investigation, you could never take enough notes and pictures.

All the investigators then set out to do the work that needed to be done.

They noted the position of the body and its condition. It was not badly decomposed, indicating death was recent. The woman was clothed, but to even suggest she had been sexually assaulted or not was, at this stage, a fool’s guess, and something the autopsy would confirm. Cord bindings on the wrists led Bogan and Zelinski to speculate that the woman had been bound but the bindings were broken by the grader’s blade.

In the hours that passed, they collected a statement from Buster Etter, then arranged for a grid search, using metal detectors. K-9 was brought in to determine if there was a scent to track to one of the properties nearby. The Federal Aviation Administration was contacted for the okay to use a drone so close to the airport to make an aerial video record of the scene.

When the time came to move the body, they carefully lifted it from its position, placing it on a clean blanket where Bogan began searching it. The soil under and around where the body had been would be sifted and searched for additional evidence afterward. For now, with Zelinski watching over his shoulder, Bogan began by sliding his gloved fingers inside a back pocket of the woman’s slacks. He felt a thin, hard rectangle, then withdrew a phone. With a hint of a smile, he held it up for Zelinski to see.

The phone was photographed, bagged and documented for chain of custody to preserve its value as evidence. In the second back pocket, Bogan found a key affixed to a plastic tab with worn lettering reading Oceanwave Gardens, Allapattah. Again, procedure was followed to protect it as evidence.

In the front pocket, Bogan found a folded sheet of yellow paper. He unfolded it to read an invoice for a guest stay at the Oceanwave Gardens.

The guest’s name read Vida Warren.

“Oceanwave Gardens,” Bogan said, contemplating it for a moment.

Then he passed it to the tech to be preserved with the other items.