But he cuts me short. “Get some sleep. We’ve got an early start.”

(fifty)

In a remote section of Montgomery Woods, an hour southwest of us, Shannan’s Firebird lies hidden in a stand of trees beyond a little-used dirt service road. It looks as if gasoline was poured over the hood and interior, or some other chemical that intensified the blaze enough to incinerate the seats and melt the paint, the tires, the mats and steering wheel. The windows exploded at some point, sending glass out in a mortar fan, over the ring of burned vegetation and beyond.

When we arrive, Denny Rasmussen and his men are on site, along with a medical examiner and a team of forensics people who have already begun to process the car, which is scorched, collapsed. I’m disappointed to see the extent of the damage. We need fingerprints or hair or fibers, anything that can provide essential information, but the car is little more than a blistered husk. It’s hard to imagine any evidence surviving the incineration.

“You okay?” Will asks.

I can’t tell from his tone if he means okay with the look of the scene, or something more personal, but either way I don’t have time to answer him. The crime scene specialists have moved around to the trunk, which seems to have been more protected than the rest of the car. We join them as they manage to pry it open. And then silence falls. The smell hits us like a wall, a thick and heavy rot. Her body is curled fetally and her eyes are open, sunk back into her skull like jelly. Her mouth gapes, a ring of teeth jutting from a seeping hole.

I steel myself, pulling down a layer of emotional armor so I can focus on the work at hand. But it isn’t easy. Her arms have been wrenched behind her body, her hands bound with skinny electrical wire, probably an extension cord. The trunk has shielded the body from the blaze, but it’s also held in moisture and heat. Her fluids have puddled, as if she’s suspended in a lake of herself, while maggots writhe like foam, a moving tide.

“Mother of Christ,” Denny mutters. He’s muscular and fair-haired with the legs of a cyclist, thick calves stretching against the fabric of his khakis. Physical stamina won’t help him here, however. His face has gone white. Mine has, too, probably. No matter how many times I’ve seen the remains of a murder victim, it never feels like less than a rape of the psyche. The human mind wasn’t built to make sense of this.

And yet we have to. Have to see everything with investigative eyes. Have to admit that as awful as it is to find a body like this, at least she’s no longer missing. That’s a win. A shitty win but a win nonetheless.