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“So what’s the typical te burns down?”

“Eight hundred, maybe a thousand Fahrenheit,” he said

“More if they’s plenty of fuel and a good oxygen supply You get a stack effect going-say, one of theet up to fifteen hunnerd or two thousand Log house like this, though, would nors in a ca burned like it was made outta cardboard Had to’ve been a shitload of accelerant in here”

I laughed “‘Shitload’-is that a technical, arson-investigation term?”

He grinned sheepishly “Yessir”

A pair of deputies leaned over the edge of the basement and relayed our tools down to us The concrete floor slab was coated in a layer of wet ash, but the stone hearth, which stood about eighteen inches above the floor, was barely da on any bones, I turned the hearth into aout the equipists, were framed of one-by-four-inch lumber, with the screen nailed to the botto, the wooden fra off the sides Here, since the bones were likely to be damp, I laid the screens upside down on the hearth, so the wirethe skeletal material to dry

“Okay,” I said, “since we’ve got a skull just a few feet away, let’s start searching here from the hearth forward Hands and knees, about two feet apart” I gave everybody a trowel and an artist’s paintbrush, and gave a quick demonstration in how to use them to tease out and clean small bones “Art, you and Jim start at the corners of the hearth; Miranda and I will take the centerline We’ll work fro the edges That e’re starting where we know there’s at least so or feel everything, all the way down to the concrete Get back in touch with your inner toddler, the one who loved to dig in theis, ask Miranda or me”

I dropped to my hands and knees, and the rest of them followed suit The concrete slab had been transfor seven layers of burned debris: the base, the s, the second floor’s joists and flooring, that floor’s furnishings, the second floor’s ceiling joists, and remnants from the roof trusses and roof The explosion had blown much of the roof skyward, and the blaze had carried so eht have been Still, the going was slow, and I suspected we’d be lucky to finish the search by sundown

I had a head start, literally, with the skull, but Miranda, two feet to er bones,” she said, flicking the tip of her trowel lightly into the damp ash “Left hand Wrist Metal atch” She sounded clinical and detached, but I knew her well enough to hear the excitement underneath

“Here’s a radius and ulna,” she said a moment later

“Slon,” I teased her “You’rethe rest of us look like slackers” At this point eren’t trying to recover and bag anything; we’d start by brushing off the top layers of debris and silasses,” I said They looked falasses I’d seen on Garland Halasses were common

Miranda’s paintbrush flicked rapidly “A huilistic posture”

O’Conner, working his way along the wall on Miranda’s other side, looked puzzled at that “Pugilistic? Isn’t that an oldfangled word for boxing? The gentlemanly art of fisticuffs?”

“Bingo,” I said

He looked even more puzzled

“When a body’s exposed to a fire,” I explained, “the muscles shrink as they start to dry out”

“You mean as they cook?”

“You could put it that way And the flexors-in your arm, the muscles you use to clench your fist and curl it toward you-are stronger than the extensors So the flexors overpower the extensors, and the fingers and arhtly, too”

“So a body burned in a fire assumes a boxer’s stance?” O’Conner clenched his fists and held the his body as he posed the question

“Exactly Unless there’s some reason it can’t”