The Long Burial

Forty minutes is how long Sadie Voss stares at a single femur before she understands what the fracture line is telling her. The bone should not exist. It has been missing for years, and the town of Briarton has done a careful job of pretending so. Sheriff Dale Hutton takes the case expecting a routine inquiry and gets something far more dangerous: a list of residents who all have reason to want the remains forgotten. As forensic findings point toward a death the county never properly investigated, Hutton, Deputy Owen Marek, and medical examiner Dr. June Krell find their evidence quietly disappearing, their witnesses growing cautious, and their colleagues, Margot Lindstrom, Vera Pound, and the Cresswells among them, revealing loyalties no one anticipated. With Theo Marrow and his sister Liesel pressing for answers and real estate developer Karen DiMarco circling the land where the body was found, the bones threaten to upend more than a cold case. Each new clue narrows the field and raises the cost of digging deeper, forcing Hutton to choose between a safe verdict and one the town may never forgive him for pursuing.