“Doc thinks Saturday. No time yet, and even the day’s an estimate until they get the bodies back to the lab to run some tests.”

“Smells like Saturday,” she said.

“Smells like shit,” he said. He coughed and put a hand to his face.

“Found this morning?”

Stone nodded. “Place was closed yesterday, and no one was around. They were supposed to be closed today, too, for Patriots’ Day, but one of the mechanics stopped by to do some work on his own car and found them.”

She threw a quick look at her partner. He was young and good-looking in an overmuscled, athletic sort of way-the kind of a man whose neck strained against his collar, and who developed a five o’clock shadow as he pulled away from the sink after shaving. His hair was thick and dark and his brow jutted forth just a little more than necessary. His accent chopped his hard consonants and slid through his “r”s in a manner characteristic of lifelong Bostonians from working-class neighborhoods. She’d worked with men like him before. The jury was still out on him, as far as she was concerned. She’d be disappointed in the end, she was sure-she always was. It had become such a predictable pattern that she now thought of a “partner” merely as an obstacle to be negotiated as she focused on getting the job done.

As they approached the back of the building, toward the bays where the cars were dismantled, a uniformed sergeant in his early fifties broke free from a group of officers and strode to meet them. She reached into her pocket and fished out her badge, holding it up for the sergeant.

He nodded to her. “Detective,” he said. He looked at Stone and said nothing.

“Sergeant…” Sanchez scanned her memory and the tag on the front of the man’s shirt for a name, “McAfee.” She squinted at him. “We’ve worked together before.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “Two years ago.”

“Right. The Darvos case.”

“That’s correct, ma’am.”