Behind them she could hear the four cops descending the couloir, still talking loudly.

Around a bend in the ravine, a graphic scene of death presented itself. Corrie paused, taking it in and struggling to maintain a professional expression. The coroner was bending over the body, taking its temperature, a process she had studied in depth but never actually seen performed. It was not pretty.

“Who’s been up through here before us?” Corrie asked.

“Just Wiggett and the coroner. We told everyone to stay away.”

Corrie nodded. She took a few more steps forward. The body lay about twenty feet in front of her, among jagged boulders. It was horribly mangled. She wondered if it really made sense to put on booties, gloves, a face mask, and a hair net to collect evidence, given that the coroner hadn’t. In the end she decided she’d better do it by the book, just in case. She pulled the requisite items out of the saddlebags she was carrying and put them on.

“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here,” she said to Dr. Kelly, “I’d like to take a closer look.”

“Of course.”

Corrie proceeded to the body. The coroner nodded a greeting. “I’ll just be a few more minutes and then it’s yours.”

“Thanks.”

She took another series of pictures of the overall scene, the cliff, and the various bones and other items scattered about from Peel’s torn saddlebags. The old bones from the excavation—the ones Peel had apparently made off with and planned to bury—were scattered about in profusion, including a badly shattered skull. The victim’s headlamp lay near his body.

She leaned over the headlamp, photographing it.

“Agent Swanson?” the coroner said. “I’m done here.”

The coroner backed off to one side and began jotting in a notebook while Corrie approached the corpse and examined it at close range. The damage was massive. The neck was so badly broken it was partially severed from the head. The back of the skull was crushed and a large pool of blood lay beneath it, the extensive exsanguination indicating he had been alive when he fell. Both arms and both legs were fractured in dozens of places, with exposed bone and more bleeding. Abrasions and contusions could be seen everywhere. The victim’s shirt and pants were ripped and abraded. One boot was gone, lying a good twenty yards off.

Moving around the body, she continued photographing.

Devlin, his deputy, and the two Forest Service officers came walking up, yakking away, having made no effort to put on protection, not even gloves. “Well, well,” said the sheriff. “Have you solved the case yet, Special Agent Swanson?”

Corrie spoke through the face mask. “Just gathering evidence.” She bent over the victim’s head, taking more pictures of the cuts and contusions.

“Think it’s…murder?” Devlin asked. Stifled laughter came from the deputy.

“As I implied, I haven’t drawn any conclusions.”

“Well, I have.”

Corrie did not respond, hoping he wouldn’t continue, but he did. “What we have here is what’s technically known as a bad fall.”

Ignoring him, she put her lens in macro mode and shot a series of close-ups of the facial contusions.

The sheriff went on. “The guy was building his little grave up there, hunting around for rocks, and just walked right over the edge.”

Corrie continued taking pictures.

“Isn’t that how you see it, too, Special Agent Swanson?”

“The question is not whether he fell. The question is how.”

“I can tell you that, too,” said Devlin, hiking up his utility belt with a jangle of metal. “Two nights ago—the night he died—the moon set at three AM. He’s up there, building a grave for these bones with no ambient light; it gets really dark. But he just keeps going, working away, and—off he goes.”

Corrie couldn’t help but point to the broken headlamp. “He had light. The switch is in the on position.”

“Yeah, but he’s agitated, he’s in a hurry. On that knife edge of a cliff.”

Corrie straightened up and looked at Devlin. He was smiling at her indulgently. Just be cool, she told herself. “Thank you, Sheriff Devlin, for your opinion.” She turned to the other three, who were doing nothing but walking around and gawking. One of them had inadvertently stepped on a bone fragment, and Corrie heard Dr. Kelly call out in protest.

Corrie turned back to Devlin. “I’d like to ask those of you not involved in active evidence collection to please stand behind the rope.”

The sheriff stared at her. “We are collecting evidence. I’m looking around with my two little eyes. So are they.”

Corrie’s heart accelerated, and that old boiling feeling of anger—the feeling she had tried so hard to control in recent years—began to rise up. She took a long breath in, let out a long exhale, then repeated the process, feeling a bit of equilibrium return.

“When I’m done,” she said, “you may resume your examination of the scene. But for now, I’d appreciate it if you could step back behind the rope and allow me to complete my work.”

A long silence from the sheriff. And then he said: “May I ask, miss, where you acquired the authority to give orders to the elected sheriff of Nevada County, California?”

It was the miss that did it. In a cold voice, Corrie said, more loudly than she intended: “This is federal land. On federal land, the FBI has jurisdiction. That includes priority over local law enforcement. You are here as a courtesy, Sheriff. I might also point out—” she turned her stare at the two Forest Service officials— “that you two gentlemen are directly under my authority.”

The Forest Service officials stared back at her. For a moment she feared they might push back, and she realized she didn’t have the slightest idea how to deal with that. But then one of them mumbled, “Yes, ma’am,” and the two turned and walked back behind the rope.

Corrie returned her gaze to the sheriff and his deputy. Devlin had gone red. He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and then retreated, scowling, with his deputy.

Breathing a secret sigh of relief, Corrie finished up her series of macro photos. She did a walk-through of the site, transects in four directions as she had been taught—seeing nothing more of interest—then returned behind the rope to where the others were standing around, chatting and glancing in her direction.

“If you gentlemen want to examine the area, it’s free,” she said.

“We don’t need to examine anything,” said the sheriff. “It’s clear as day what happened.”

As Corrie started packing up her gear, Dr. Kelly and the historian, Benton, approached. Kelly leaned over. “I heard that exchange. Good for you.”

Corrie tried to stay neutral, but inside she felt enormously grateful for the comment. She nodded.

“I wanted to ask you,” Kelly said. “What’s going to happen to the bones Peel stole from the dig?”

Corrie thought for a moment. “They’re evidence. And as such, they’d normally be kept in our custody.”

“May I offer another suggestion?”

“Go ahead.”

“They’re human remains—of great value archaeologically. Also, as human remains they must be treated with sensitivity. They’ve obviously been damaged in the fall, and they should be curated, conserved—and, if possible, reassembled. We won’t be able to do that if you lock them up as evidence.”