Dr. Brennan: Uplifted Murder Mystery Novelist
Bright mid-afternoon sunlight flowed thickly though the branches of the trees to soak into the soft mat of compressed leaves and pine needles on the forest floor below. The warm breeze created an ever-shifting mosaic of shadows and light, and the collective voices of the birds kept up a continuous line of commentary on the activity of the crowd of people working on the ground.
Dr. Kathy Reichs had never seen a more idyllic crime scene.
Even in that, the murderer or murderers had done little to disturb the peace of the forest when they had disposed of the body. The charred corpse was nestled in a shallow, gentle depression that had been hollowed out at the center of a small, flower-strewn clearing.
The soot and ash from the fire only lightly ringed the hole’s edge-the blaze hadn’t been all that strong. No more destructive than a pleasant hearth fire. Not even hot enough to remove the majority of the tissue from the bones, but definitely enough to require Reichs’s expertise to establish identity. The muscle contortions caused by the heat had curled the body so that (had it had flesh and still been animate) the person in question could have been sleeping comfortably.
Her partner, Special Agent Andy Lister, was standing out of the way of the forensics team, allowing them to work without interference or distraction. Kathy was certain that he had questions-plenty of them-but he would keep them until they had completed their work. He knew that there was no logical point in peppering the team with impatient inquiries before all the facts had been assembled, and even less so in tossing out conjecture and half-formed theories. So for now, until his part in this investigation started, he was standing aside, contemplating a pair of deer who had paused a few hundred feet off to watch the scene with wary curiosity. The crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze like...
Dr. Kathy Reichs had never seen a more idyllic crime scene.
Even in that, the murderer or murderers had done little to disturb the peace of the forest when they had disposed of the body. The charred corpse was nestled in a shallow, gentle depression that had been hollowed out at the center of a small, flower-strewn clearing.
The soot and ash from the fire only lightly ringed the hole’s edge-the blaze hadn’t been all that strong. No more destructive than a pleasant hearth fire. Not even hot enough to remove the majority of the tissue from the bones, but definitely enough to require Reichs’s expertise to establish identity. The muscle contortions caused by the heat had curled the body so that (had it had flesh and still been animate) the person in question could have been sleeping comfortably.
Her partner, Special Agent Andy Lister, was standing out of the way of the forensics team, allowing them to work without interference or distraction. Kathy was certain that he had questions-plenty of them-but he would keep them until they had completed their work. He knew that there was no logical point in peppering the team with impatient inquiries before all the facts had been assembled, and even less so in tossing out conjecture and half-formed theories. So for now, until his part in this investigation started, he was standing aside, contemplating a pair of deer who had paused a few hundred feet off to watch the scene with wary curiosity. The crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze like...