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D.D. had always been good at looking ahead.
    Not that he was complaining. Being the only state detective on a city team was awkward at best, filled with daily shots of resentment at worst. But such arrangements had precedent. D.D. declared him a source of “local knowledge” and, voilà, hijacked him for her purposes. The fact that he was new and not embroiled in any major state investigations made the transition swift and relatively painless. One day he’d reported to the state offices, the next he was working out of a teeny tiny interrogation room in Roxbury, Mass. Such was the glamorous life of a detective.
    From his perspective, it was a no-brainer: serving on a high-profile task force would add heft to his file. And having entered that underground chamber, having seen those six girls…It wasn’t the kind of thing a cop walked away from. Better to work it than to just dream about it night after night.
    Most of the other detectives seemed to feel the same. The case wasn’t lacking for overtime hours. Bobby’d been at the BPD headquarters for nearly two days now. If people disappeared, it was simply to shower and shave. Food consisted of pickup pizza or take-out Chinese, consumed mostly at one’s desk, or perhaps in a task-force meeting.
    Not that real life magically went away. Detectives still had to attend to previously scheduled grand jury hearings, sudden developments in a current case. The arrival of an informant. The murder of a key witness. Other cases didn’t stop just because a new and more shocking murder leapt into the fray.
    Then there was family life. Last-minute calls to apologize for missing Junior’s soccer game. Guys disappearing into interrogation rooms at eight p.m., trying to find a little privacy for the good-night phone call that would have to do in lieu of a kiss. Detective Roger Sinkus had a two-week-old baby. Detective Tony Rock’s mother was in the intensive care unit, dying of heart failure.
    High-profile homicide investigations were a dance, a complex work flow of officers fading in and out, of attending to critical tasks, of abandoning any others. Of single guys like Bobby staying until three a.m., so a new father like Roger could go home at one. Of everyone trying to push one case forward. Of no one getting what they needed.
    And at the top of it all sat D.D. Warren. First big case for the newly minted sergeant. Bobby had a tendency to be cynical about these things, but even he was currently impressed.
    For starters, she had managed to keep one of the most sensational crime scenes in Boston history under wraps for nearly forty-eight hours. No leaks from the BPD. No leaks from the OCME’s office. No leaks from the DA. It was a miracle.
    Second, while operating under the full onslaught of a dozen major TV personalities screaming for more information, ranting about the public’s right to know, and alternately accusing the Boston police of covering up a major threat to public safety, she’d still managed to organize and launch a half-decent investigation.
    First step in any homicide case, establish a time line. Unfortunately for the task force, a time line was usually generated by the victimology report, which included an estimated time of death. Forensic anthropology wasn’t exactly an overnight kind of analysis, however. Plus, in Boston, the forensic anthropologist’s position wasn’t a full-time one, meaning one half-time expert, Christie Callahan, was now trying to handle six remains. Then you had the mummified condition of such remains, which no doubt demanded a whole slew of painstaking, methodical, and frighteningly expensive tests. All in all, they’d probably have the victimology report about the same time Detective Sinkus’s new baby hit college.
    D.D. had brought in a botanist from the Audubon Society to help them out. He’d studied the woodland brush, grass, and saplings that had taken root above the subterranean chamber. Best guess—thirty years’ worth of