The Bone Catalog
A hiker following a dry creek bed along a forgotten county drainage easement discovers what the scrub oak has hidden for years: a human skull wedged inside a rusted drainage pipe. County Coroner Maren Holloway arrives to find the bones belong to a child, and that the case has been quietly buried before it ever reached her table. Working alongside Sheriff Whit Dobie, whose patience with her independent inquiries wears thinner by the day, Maren begins assembling a catalog of remains that someone powerful would prefer stay in the ground. Her investigation draws in retired coroner Gene Polk and his unsettling assistant Pia Aoki, a ruthless private security team, and a journalist whose questions cut closer than she expects. As pressure mounts from Judge Harriet Fenwick's bench and the politically connected Calloway family circles in protection, Maren must decide how deep she is willing to dig, especially when the digging endangers everyone who has ever tried to tell the truth. Every catalogued fragment is a choice, and the next set of bones could be hers.