ONE ADVANTAGE OF SUMMER IN THE FAR NORTH: TWENTY-plus hours of daylight. The sky was noon-bright as I drove the squiggle of road out to Lakeview.

Several cars and pickups were already parked in the lot. A kid sat behind the wheel of a hearse, playing a game on a handheld device. He did not look up as I pulled in beside him.

One disadvantage of summer in the far north: man-eater insects. Mosquitoes struck the instant I left the Camry, whining around me to telegraph the happy news of another food source.

Lakeview Cemetery had old-style markers, not just ground-level slabs for the convenience of mowers. Some were homemade: a wooden chair, a pair of carved elk or caribou horns, an engraved paddle. Others were more traditional headstones, featuring crosses or angels holding flowers or harps.

I spotted King to the right of a grave surrounded by a white picket fence. At her side was a man in a tweed jacket several sizes too large for his frame. An idle backhoe sat ten feet beyond them, bucket in the upright and locked position.

I started toward King and her companion, slapping away predators the size of pelicans. Though damp, the evening was reasonably warm. The air smelled of dead grass, moldy wood, and freshly turned earth. Eau de exhumation.

King’s crew consisted of six men, all native. They’d removed the topsoil and gone down three feet with the backhoe, then jumped in with spades. They stood shoulder-deep in the hole, shoveling dirt from around Beck’s coffin and tossing it onto the ground above.

King introduced the tweed guy as Francis Bullion and explained that he was with the Department of Community Services. Bullion had confirmed the location of Beck’s grave. We shook hands. He had gray hair, rimless glasses, and a very small head.

“Everyone was here, so I figured we might as well start,” King said.

“I’m good with that.”

“This is so extraordinary.” Bullion sounded like a bird. A very excited one.

I smiled at Bullion, then refocused on King. “You move fast.”

“People need work. Snook was eager.”

“As was I.” Bullion, chirpy. “I don’t mind that today is Saturday. Not at all.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“I saw this on television. It was just like this.”

“I’m sure you did.”

The crew was equally eager. And efficient. They had the coffin out by seven-forty. Loaded into the hearse by eight. Bullion offered to hang with the team. King thanked him and sent him on his way.

King and I followed the hearse to Stanton. A nurse and two male orderlies met us at a loading dock in back. They, King, the kid driver, and I wrestled the coffin onto a hospital gurney. Then it was just us girls.

The nurse’s name was Courtney. She had long blond hair, hazel eyes, and looked about twenty. She addressed King by first name, so I assumed they were acquainted. Or related.

Courtney led us to a large room entered through swinging double doors. It had a green tile floor, buzzing fluorescents overhead, a wall clock with a second hand that moved in noisy little hops, and a stainless-steel tub and counter.

A second gurney had been centered on the tile. The items I’d requested lay on a tray on the counter.

We positioned the casket along one wall. It was an inexpensive model, probably eighteen-gauge steel. The exterior was pink, the hardware embellished with orchids. It was in good shape, given its four years underground.

Already the room had taken on the odor of the coffin and its contents. Rusting metal. Rotting fabric. Moist earth. I noted none of the sickly organic smell associated with most disturbed burials.

King and I removed our outerwear. She set up a case file card and shot pictures. Then we all gloved and tied aprons behind our waists and necks.

I held out a hand. King handed me a metal implement. I stepped to the coffin and opened the locking mechanism. The upper portion of the lid lifted easily.

The plastic tub was snugged between mildewed and badly stained pink velvet cushions once marketed as an “eternal-rest adjustable bed.”

King shot more photos.

I transferred the tub to the second gurney.

Courtney watched with very large eyes. She’d yet to say word one to me.

I lifted the lower portion of the casket lid. King offered a flashlight. I checked the coffin’s interior, removing padding and fabric, probing creases and recesses with my fingers.

Found nothing.

I looked at King.

“Let’s pop her,” she said.

I pried off the lid of the tub.

King wasn’t kidding. The fire had left little of Daryl Beck. More likely, those who’d processed the scene hadn’t possessed the skill to recognize or the patience to recover badly burned bone.

The tub held only the thicker, more robust parts of the skeleton. Or those portions protected by large muscle masses. I saw no vertebrae or ribs. No scapula, clavicle, or sternum. Nothing from the face, hands, or feet.

Every element had suffered extensive heat damage. The skull had exploded, then the individual fragments had burned. Only two small bits of mandible remained, each from the area near the angle of the jaw. The ends were missing from the six long bones that had survived. The pelvis consisted of two charred masses, once the hip sockets, and a hunk of sacrum.

I began arranging the bones in anatomical order. Cranium. Right arm. Left arm. Right leg. Left leg. Straightforward. Until I came to the pelvis.

Then I stopped.

Stunned.

Grabbing the lens from the counter, I reexamined each carbonized ilia under magnification.

No way.

I held them side by side. Reoriented them. Did it again. Again.

No freakin’ way!

“What?” King picked up on my agitation.

I’d left the jaw fragments for last. Ignoring her question, I studied first one, then the other. The gonial angle. The foramen. The mylohyoid groove. The truncated bits of ascending ramus and dental arcade.

No freakinsonofabitching way!

But there was no question.

Palms sweaty inside my latex gloves, I set one pelvic fragment and one jaw fragment off to the side, then added their counterparts to my reconstruction.

“What does that mean?” King asked.

I pointed to the isolated fragments. “These are portions of jaw and pelvis. Both come from the right side of the body.” I pointed to the corresponding fragments in the partial skeleton I’d created. “These fragments are from identical locations. They also come from the right side of the body.”

“Meaning?” Her expression said she already knew the answer.

“There are two people here.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“How was Daryl identified?”

“Mostly context. It was his house. His bike was there. A neighbor heard him pull in that night, never heard him leave. Said he would have heard, since the bike was noisy as hell.”

“That was it? No dental records?”

“Daryl wasn’t big on oral hygiene. Couldn’t have afforded a dentist if he’d wanted one.”

The lights hummed. The clock ticked.

“So which one is Daryl?” King was staring at the gurney.

“Both are male,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“There’s enough detail.” I lifted the two hunks of ilia. “Both sciatic notches are deep and narrow.” I pointed to a slice of crescent that had survived on each fragment. “These rough areas are the points where these ilia articulated with their respective sacra. Neither surface is elevated; both are flush with the surrounding bone. And neither has a groove along its edge.”

“Male traits.”

“Yes.”

I noticed that Courtney had edged closer. “Would you like to see?” I asked her. She nodded. I showed her the features I’d described.

“There’s a little of the acetabulum left on each fragment. The hip socket. Eyeballing the partial diameters, I can say that one man was larger than the other.”

I got the calipers from the counter. The others watched as I took measurements to confirm my suspicion.

“Can you say anything about age?” King asked.

“A little.” I held a fragment in each hand. “Notice that the larger man’s articular surface is billowy and that the bone looks granular. That of the smaller man appears smoother and denser.” Oversimplified but close enough.

I looked up. King and Courtney were clearly baffled.

I set the fragments on the table, got the flashlight, and killed the overheads. “Watch this.”

I directed the beam horizontally across each surface. The subtle indentations appeared as transverse shadows on that of the larger man.

Courtney spotted the difference first. “The bigger guy has furrows. The smaller guy has none.”

Maybe King saw it, maybe not. “What does it mean?” she asked.

“The bigger man was younger, probably in his twenties. The smaller man was more likely in his forties. These are very rough estimates. This aging technique only allows for broad ranges, and only a portion of each surface is observable.”

“Daryl was twenty-four,” King said. “A six-footer.”

The hopping hand ticked off seconds.

“So who’s the other guy?” King spoke aloud, more to herself than to us.

I raised both palms in a “who knows” gesture.

“Can you determine race?” King asked.

“Very unlikely. When exposed to extreme heat, fluids in the brain expand, causing the skull to explode. Then the fragments burn. That’s what happened here.”

“Did anyone go missing at the time of the fire?”

Good question, Nurse Courtney.

“You two good here if I leave to check on that?” King asked.

Courtney and I nodded.

“It’s all so black and gray and crumbly.” Courtney was staring at the partial skeleton. “How can you be sure the bones are sorted right?”

Nurse Courtney nails another one. Because of a preconceived mind-set, I’d made the amateur mistake of assuming the remains represented a single individual.

I turned on the lights and studied one jaw fragment under magnification. It was toast. I studied the other.

And felt a little flip in my gut.

“Hot diggety.”

“Zippy whiz bang?”

I looked up. We both smiled.

“This fragment retains about two centimeters of the posterior end of the dental arcade, including two molar sockets. I may see root fragments down in them.”

“Shazam!”

“Nurse Courtney, you’re on for X-ray.”

She did everything but snap a salute.

I got the tray, transferred the jaw fragments, and instructed her on the angles I needed. “While you do that, I’ll reexamine every bone. Then you can shoot films of both individuals.”

The skull fragments were mostly parietal and occipital. All edges and surfaces were fried. Not a single ectocranial or endocranial detail remained. Only DNA would sort them out. I doubted any had survived the fire.

Based on size, I was able to separate what remained of the midshaft portions of the long bones. A femur, tibia, and ulna stayed with Daryl. A femur and tibia transferred to the smaller man. A humerus went with the unassigned cranial fragments.

I was recording observations in my notebook when Courtney returned, pushing a portable light box. The jaw fragments sat atop small brown envelopes on the lower shelf.

“I think you were right.” Electric with excitement. “And I think the older guy had dental work.”

I slid the films free, clamped the first onto the box, and thumbed the switch. The fragments lit up in shades of gray. The one on the right showed nothing but amorphous trabecular bone. Courtney pointed to it. “That’s Daryl. The younger guy.”

The older man’s fragment had more of the dental arch, including the sockets I’d spotted. They appeared as dark indentations in the spongy gray. Deep in each was a tiny white cone, a root fragment. Running vertically up the center of each cone was a brilliant white filament.

“Those are root canals, right? That could get him identified?”

She was correct. On both points.

That wasn’t what stopped the breath in my throat.