Page 46 of The Bone Hacker

“Thank you, ma’am. I does my best.”

Musgrove got straight to the point. “Since Dr. Lindstrom won’t arrive until tomorrow, I’d like to get on with prelims. Take photos. Search for IDs. You know the drill. If we pull any names, my investigators can begin making inquiries.”

“Yes, ma’am. I roll them out to you one by one?”

“That would be good.”

As Bernadin disappeared down the short hall, Musgrove turned to me. “In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get word regarding the boat’s registration. You ready?”

“Always.”

Musgrove led me to a bank of lockers where we suited up over our civvies. Paper caps, gowns, and shoe covers. Masks. Gloves.From the dressing area we crossed to an unremarkable autopsy room outfitted with the usual paraphernalia.

Bernadin joined us shortly, similarly garbed. The gurney he was pushing held a black body bag.

Following a nod from Musgrove, Bernadin prepared a handwritten ID card and shot several pics. Then he unzipped the bag.

The teen lay inside, his skin more shriveled, his orange hair damp with refrigeration. Otherwise, he looked as I remembered him.

“Check his labels, his pockets,” Musgrove directed.

The neon green shirt yielded nothing. A quick two-handed pat down, then Iggie pulled a plastic rectangle from a side pocket of the shorts. Gingerly laying his find on the counter, he stepped aside so Musgrove and I could see.

“Kyle Samuel Overby.” Musgrove read the name from a driver’s license issued by the state of Florida. “Lived in Vero Beach. Born in 2008.”

“Sixteen years old,” I said, feeling the same gut twist I’d felt at first seeing the kid on the boat.

“Note the expiration date.”

“Jesus. He’d had his license less than a year.”

The twist tightened as I imagined the boy’s joy at having successfully navigated that adolescent rite of passage.

We moved on.

I observed each victim, vigilant for the subtlest hint of trauma. Iggie searched for personal items and took photos. Musgrove dictated notes into her phone.

By ten we’d collected four licenses, one Mastercard, one Visa, one comb, a set of keys, and five hundred and eighty-nine dollars in badly weathered cash. The licenses and credit cards provided three additional names. In all, we had four presumptive IDs:

Kyle Samuel Overby, sixteen, a resident of Vero Beach, Florida.

Samuel Joseph Overby, forty-nine, a resident of Vero Beach, Florida.

Conrad Paul Malvino, forty-six, a resident of Fort Pierce, Florida.

Martin Patrick Doyle, thirty-two, a resident of Grand Harbor, Grand Cayman.

The bare-chested passenger had opted to carry nothing on his person.

I spotted zilch to indicate why these people were dead. But the state of their bodies was suggesting a gruesome possibility.

“What do you think?” Musgrove asked at one point.

“I hate to speculate before Lindstrom has a look at the internal organs.”

“Do it anyway.”

“It appears there’s been a lot of postmortem shrinkage. Still.”

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