Because there wasn’t a whole lot else to identify the poor bastard.

His left arm lay across part of the trail, and it was eerily undamaged, unmarked by so much as a bruise. Eerily because, from the elbow on, the damage was… extreme. Most of the flesh and muscle had been somehow stripped from the bones, leaving behind only bloody tags of sinew attached here and there. Most if not all of the internal organs were gone, including the eyes; the scalp had been ripped from the skull.

Ripped. Jesus, what could have ripped it? What could have done this?

“Any ideas what could have done this?” Duncan asked.

“No sane ones,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“So I’m not the only one imagining nightmare impossibilities?” He could hear the relief in his own voice.

She turned her head and looked at him, then rose easily from her kneeling position and stepped away from the remains to join him. “We learned a long time ago not to throw around words like impossible.”

“And nightmare?”

“That one too. ‘There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio….’ “Special Agent Miranda Bishop shrugged. “The SCU was created to deal with those stranger things. We’ve seen a lot of them.”

“So I’ve heard, Agent Bishop.”

She smiled, and he was aware yet again of an entirely unprofessional and entirely masculine response to truly breathtaking beauty.

“Miranda, please. Otherwise it’ll get confusing.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because,” a new voice chimed in, “you’re likely to hear all of us referring to Bishop, and when we do we’re talking about Noah Bishop, the chief of the Special Crimes Unit.”

“My husband,” Miranda Bishop clarified. “Everybody calls him Bishop. So please do call me Miranda.” She waited for his nod, then turned her electric-blue-eyed gaze to the other agent. “Quentin, anything?”