The CSU team had now surrounded the hole and were lowering a ladder, preparing to start work. Swanson turned to the sheriff. “Have you secured the scene?” she asked.

“We did, ma’am, as soon as we ascertained the nature of the situation.”

The ma’am bit temporarily threw her, but she made no sign. It was the equivalent of sir and she’d better get used to it.

The sheriff took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of one arm. Swanson noticed his head was shaved, the brim of his hat soaked with sweat.

“Sheriff, could you please take your people and look to establish ingress and egress? Note any evidence such as tire tracks for the Crime Scene Unit.” She nodded. “That photographer one of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Put her to work.”

The sheriff hesitated just a moment. Then he turned toward his deputy and spoke in low tones. A minute or two later, about half of the crowd that was standing around began to disperse, a little reluctantly, around the cemetery.

Swanson decided not to call in the FBI’s ERTU to supplement the Santa Fe people. It probably would piss a bunch of people off, and Larssen seemed like a competent guy.

She turned back to watch the CSU work. Larssen and another technician had climbed down the ladder and were standing on the iron coffin, on either side of the body, carefully sweeping the dirt from it, marking up evidence. For now, Swanson was content to observe, let the team do its work. Off to one side, she heard somebody call for a coroner’s van, then change their mind and request two vans.

Photographs were taken; the tarp was removed from the hole, followed by the tools, followed by the dirt, in large yellow evidence bags. Almost coyly, the corpse revealed more and more of itself until it lay completely exposed atop the well-preserved iron coffin. Now Swanson descended the ladder to take a closer look of her own. The deceased was dressed in a plaid work shirt, jeans, and steel-toed Dr. Martens. He appeared to be about fifty, but with his clothes on it was hard to be sure: he was lying facedown, the front of his skull blown away. Two shots. The first had dropped him, and the second, point blank to the back of the head, had ricocheted off the iron coffin. No firearm had been discovered. She watched for a few minutes more, then knelt by Larssen.

“What do you figure?” she asked, careful to keep her tone neutral and respectful. “Double tap, execution style?”

“That’d be my guess,” Larssen said. “See that?” He nodded at the dent in the coffin.

“Looks like the first bullet entered just above the base of the skull,” Corrie said, “causing extreme fragmentation of the occipital bone. The second bullet would have entered a little higher, as he was lying facedown. That’s probably what took off his face.”

Larssen grunted. “Overkill. That first bullet clearly took care of business.”

He was undoubtedly right, but Swanson had been taught that professional killers didn’t improvise. The second bullet was a cheap enough form of insurance. “Based on the limited mushrooming and the size of that dent, I’d guess solid point, maybe nine-millimeter. I hope your team can recover the rounds.”

Larssen nodded.

“No ID,” called out the second CSU technician, who had been going through the corpse’s pockets.

“Print him, please,” Swanson said. Maybe they’d get a hit from IAFIS.

As the corpse’s left hand was lifted for fingerprinting, his sleeve slid back, revealing a tattoo of what looked like a half-built wall of red bricks. Swanson pointed to it. “Mean anything to you?”

“Nope,” Larssen said.

Swanson glanced at the other. “Prison or biker gang? Military?”

The second CSU man shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Hands are pretty chafed, though—he’s almost certainly the one who dug this hole.”

“Let’s see what the prints on the shovel have to say.” Swanson examined the body for another minute or two. Then she stood up. Most of the forensic analysis would be done in the lab.

“Once you’ve bagged him, let’s open the coffin,” she said.

Ten minutes later, the unidentified corpse had been carefully placed in a body bag, removed from the hole, and set on a morgue stretcher for transport to the coroner’s office. What evidence had been located around the body had been tagged and removed as well. Swanson remained in the hole, feet balanced along one edge, looking at the coffin. It had a double lid and was still in good condition. The top half of the lid, she noticed, looked a little scarified, freshly disturbed by metal tools. Someone had recently opened—or been about to open—the coffin.

She called for Grant, who quickly came over and looked down into the open grave.

“You said something earlier,” Swanson told her. “About grave robbers maybe having ‘come for Regis.’ The body buried in this coffin was named Regis?”

Grant nodded down at her. “Florence P. Regis.”

“A woman? Buried in a Civil War cemetery?”

Grant smiled for the first time since Swanson had met her. “She’s the closest thing we have to a celebrity around here. Florence was about as die-hard a Confederate as they come. Her father, Edward Parkin, was a big slaveholder in Georgia. He taught her to shoot at an early age. And her husband, Colonel Regis, led a Confederate battalion until he was killed by a Yankee sniper right after First Manassas. Following his death, Florence pulled up stakes and moved to El Paso. When she heard General Sibley was sending half a dozen companies up the Rio Grande in preparation for an attack on Fort Union, she was determined to avenge her husband’s death. She donned a Confederate uniform and joined the ranks, pretending to be a man. After the truth came out following her death in battle, the general ordered her buried with full military honors.”

No doubt this was the story the ranger disgorged to tourists on a daily basis. Swanson looked down at the coffin with fresh interest. Despite the grisly scene, she felt the investigation was going well, and she hadn’t made any major screw-ups. Every now and then she felt the nervousness spike, but each time she pushed it away—if she was going to have a meltdown, she’d do her best to stave it off until she was back in her apartment that evening, where a bottle of Cuervo Gold was handy.

She nodded at Larssen, who—having secured the dead body—had clambered back down into the hole. “Mr. Larssen? Time to open the coffin.”

“Very good.”

Larssen bent over and, with a grunt, opened the top half of the coffin lid.

Swanson looked down in surprise. Except for a few scattered chunks and slivers of dried bone and tatters of clothing, the upper coffin was empty, its rotting velvet lining drooping into dust.

“Hoo boy,” said Larssen.

This was bizarre. It seemed the victim had been shot after the body was stolen.

She tried to sort the sequence of events into some kind of rational order. Under what circumstances would somebody unearth a body, remove it, then get shot and left on the coffin? The man with the brick tattoo was, it seemed, hired help. Dispensable hired help. This killing was looking more and more professional.

Turning to Larssen, she said: “Let’s take a look at the bottom half of the coffin.”

They climbed out of the hole, and then Larssen had his men lower a hook and snag the lower lid. With some effort, they raised the hook. The lower half of the body came into view, badly decomposed—the desiccated bones and tattered remains of flesh were clearly visible through holes in the ancient dress Florence Regis had been buried in. The corpse had been crudely sawed in half.