White Fire by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page B

moonlight as she hiked, her feet squeaking in the layer of fluff atop the hard-packed snow. Below, the lights of the town spread out in a magical carpet; above, she could see the warehouse, illuminated by lights on poles and casting a yellow glow through the fir trees. It was two o’clock in the morning and all was quiet. The only activity was some headlights high on the mountain, where the grooming equipment was being operated.
    Again and again, she had choreographed in her head the exact series of steps she’d need to take, rearranging and refining them to ensure that she would spend as little time in the shed as possible. Five minutes, ten at most—and she’d be gone.
    Approaching the shed, she did a careful recon to assure herself that she was alone. Then she stepped up to the fence gate and peered over it. To the left was the side door that she and the chief had used, illuminated in a pool of light, the snow well beaten down before it. The door was securely padlocked. By habit, she carried a set of lock picks. In high school, she had practically memorized the underground manual known as the MIT Guide to Lockpicking , and she took great pride in her skills. The padlock was a ten-dollar, hardware-store variety—no problem there. But she would have to cross the lighted area in order to reach the door. And then she’d have to stand in the light while dealing with the lock. This was one of two elements of unavoidable danger in her plan.
    She waited, listening, but all was quiet. The grooming machines were high up on the mountain and didn’t look like they’d be passing by anytime soon.
    Taking a deep breath, she vaulted the fence and darted across the lighted area. She had her set of lock picks ready. The lock itself was freezing, and her fingers quickly grew stupid in the cold. Nevertheless it took only twenty seconds for the padlock to spring open. She pulled the door ajar, ducked inside, and gently closed it behind her.
    Inside the shed it was very cold. Fumbling a small LED light out of her backpack, she flicked it on and quickly moved past the rows of snowmobiles and antique snowcats to the rear of the structure. The coffins, laid out in neat rows, gleamed dully in her light. It only took a moment to find Emmett Bowdree’s coffin. She removed the lid with care, trying to keep the noise to a minimum, then knelt, playing the light over the bones. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her hands were shaking. Once again, a voice inside her pointed out that this was one of the dumbest things she’d ever done, and once again another voice responded that it was the only thing she could do.
    Get a grip , she whispered to herself. Focus.
    Following her mental script, Corrie pulled off her gloves again, laid her backpack on the ground, and unzipped it. She quickly inserted a loupe to her eye, tugged the gloves back on, pulled out the broken femur she’d noticed before, and peered at it under the light. The bone showed several long, parallel scrapes in the cortical surface. She examined them carefully for any sign of healing, bone remodeling or periosteal uplifting, but there was none. The longitudinal marks were clean, fresh, and showed no sign of an osseous reaction. That meant the scraping had occurred perimortem: at the time of death.
    No bear could have made a mark like this. It had been done with a crude tool, perhaps the blade of a dull knife, and—clearly—it had been done to strip the flesh from the bones.
    But could she be sure? Her field experience was so limited. Removing her gloves again, she fumbled out her iPad and called up one of her school e-textbooks, Trauma Analysis . She looked through the illustrations of antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem injuries, including some with scrapes similar to these, and compared the illustrations with the bone in her hand. They confirmed her initial impression. She tried to warm her frozen fingers by breathing on them, but that didn’t work and so she pulled her