In the exam room, Diaz pulls out the specimen drawer and lays the bones on paper, where they can examine from all sides.

Kateri leans but doesn’t touch. “Can you explain the birth scars to me again?” Kateri asks.

Dr. Diaz pulls on fresh gloves and turns the pelvis over. The burn marks are surface stains, the way smoke leaves a trail up a wall, curling and sheer.

“Birth is a trauma to the body, Detective Fisher,” Diaz says. She points to several pits in the bone. “These here, along with these depressions, indicate a body that has given birth—at least once,” she says.

“Is there any way to tell if there were further births?” she asks.

“No,” Diaz says. “We can generally tell if a body has never given birth, or if it has. It’s more difficult with cesarean deliveries.”

“And what about the spine?” Kateri says, looking at the other knuckles of bone. “How hard would it be to tell if a bone had been broken?”

Hurt paces around the table while the women stand still, heads bent.

“Oh, quite easy,” Diaz says. “A fractured humerus, or a femur, for example, shows postmortem.”

“Would a fractured spine?” Kateri asks, without looking up.

“Mostly likely. Maybe not in the case of a hairline fracture.”

“No,” Kateri says, “a compound fracture, in vertebrae L3 and L4. Which,” she says, looking up at Elise Diaz, “we have here.”

Diaz draws in a sharp breath. “These have not been broken,” she says.

Kateri looks at Hurt. “It’s not her,” she says.

“How do you know?” he says.

“I pulled her medical file from Mercy Hospital. When the fire burned that house down, Pearl Jenkins broke her back. She had surgery on it. She was in recovery for months. It was probably never the same. I have the summary that describes the fractures to L3 and L4.”

Diaz looks at Hurt and raises an eyebrow, but the conversation is between him and Kateri.

“When’s the arraignment?” he asks.

“Friday morning,” Kateri says.

“And no further sighting of the kid.”

“No,” she says.

“Let’s search Miller’s house,” he says.

Kateri looks to Elise Diaz, who looks down at the bones on the table and not at Kateri. Hurt, meanwhile, leans in very close to the bones, without touching.

“What else could these be?” he asks Diaz. “Besides human.”

“There are several animals similar in size,” Diaz says. “The DNA is not back on these yet.”

He takes a pen from his pocket and tips the piece of pelvic bone over on the table.

“What is it?” Kateri asks.

“I think it might be a bear,” Hurt says.

They rush back to the car as a sharp wind whips through the trees behind the building. What leaves are left are quickly falling, raining down on the cars.

“Did you look at Miller’s file?” Kateri asks Hurt.

“Yeah, it’s definitely a cover-up,” he says. “He paid to get out of something.”

“He killed that kid,” Kateri says.