pupa. Eventually they hatch as adults and fly off to start the whole thing over again.”
“Why don’t all the bugs arrive at the same time?”
“Different species have different game plans. Some come to munch on the corpse. Others prefer to dine on the eggs and larvae of their predecessors.”
“Gross.”
“There’s a niche for everyone.”
“What will you do with the bugs?”
“I’ll collect samples of larvae and pupal casings, and try to net some adult insects. Depending on the state of preservation, I may also use a probe to take thermal readings from the body. When maggot masses form they can raise the internal temperature of a corpse appreciably. That’s also useful for PMI estimation.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll preserve all the adults and half the larvae in an alcohol solution. The other larvae I’ll place in containers with liver and vermiculite. The entomologist will raise them to hatching and identify what they are.”
I wondered where Sam would come up with nets, ice cream containers, vermiculite, and a thermal probe on a Sunday morning. Not to mention the screens, trowels, and other excavating equipment I’d requested. That was his problem.
“What about the body?”
“That will depend on its condition. If it’s fairly intact I’ll simply lift it out and zip it in a body bag. A skeleton will take longer since I’ll have to do a bone inventory to be sure I have everything.”
She thought about this.
“What’s the best-case scenario?”
“All day.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Longer.”
Frowning, she ran her fingers through her hair, then tied it into a loose knot on her neck.
“You keep your appointment on Murtry. I think I’ll hang here then catch a ride to Hilton Head.”
“Your friends won’t mind picking you up early?”
“Nah. It’s on the way.”
“Good choice.” I meant it.
It went as I’d described to Katy, but for one major variation. There was stratigraphy. Below the body with the crab face I was shocked to find a second decomposing corpse. It lay on the bottom of the four-foot pit, facedown, arms tucked below its belly, at a twenty-degree angle to the body above.
Depth has its benefits. Though the upper remains had been reduced to bone and connective tissue, those below retained a large amount of flesh and soupy innards. I worked until dark, meticulously screening every particle of dirt, taking soil, flora, and insect samples, and transferring the corpses to body bags. The sheriff’s detective took videos and stills.
Sam, Baxter Colker, and Harley Baker watched from a distance, occasionally commenting or stepping forward for a better look. The deputy searched the surrounding woods with a Sheriff’s Department dog specially trained to alert to the smell of decomposition. Kim looked for physical evidence.
All to no avail. Except for the two bodies, nothing turned up. The victims had been stripped naked and dumped, robbed of everything that linked them to their lives. And as hard as I studied the details, neither the body positions nor anything I observed in the grave contour or fill revealed if the victims had been buried simultaneously, or if the upper corpse had followed at a later date.
It was almost eight when we watched Baxter Colker slam the door of the transport van and lock the handle in place. The coroner, Sam, and I were gathered beside the blacktop, above the dock where we’d moored the boats.
Colker looked like a stick figure in his bow tie and neatly pressed suit, his trousers belted high above the waist. While Sam had warned me of the Beaufort County coroner’s fastidiousness, I’d been unprepared for business attire at an exhumation. I wondered what the man wore to dinner parties.
“Well, that does her,” he said, wiping his hands on a linen handkerchief. Hundreds of tiny veins had burst and coalesced in his cheeks, giving his face a bluish cast. He turned to me.
“I guess I’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Whoa. Hold on. I thought these cases were going to the forensic pathologist in Charleston.”
“Well, now, I can send these cases up to the medical college, ma’am, but I know what that gentleman is going to tell me.” Colker had been “ma’aming” me all day.
“That’s Axel Hardaway?”
“Yes, ma’am. And Dr. Hardaway is going to tell me that I need an anthropologist because he doesn’t know beans about bones. That’s what he’s going to tell me. And I understand Dr. Jaffer, the regular anthropologist, isn’t available. Now, where does that leave these poor folks?” He waved a bony hand at the van.
“No matter who does the skeletal analysis, you’re still going to want a full autopsy on the second body.”
Something startled in the river, breaking the moonlight into a thousand little pieces. A breeze had picked up and I could smell rain in the air.
Colker knocked on the side of the van and an arm appeared in the window, waved, and the van pulled away.
