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hands?”
    Swift blinked. He could feel the snow on his eyelashes. “No. Left everything for you just the way it was.”
    “Let’s get him to bag the body’s hands immediately.” She moved off fast, and Swift hurried to get in step with her.
    “How do you want to handle this?” he said.
    “Well, let’s start to process. We’ll work up to the body, just the way we’re supposed to.” She seemed to be talking to the night, to the relentless weather, as much as to Swift. Within another couple steps they were next to Hal Woodruff, Deputy Cohen, and the body.
    Brittney turned on a high-wattage smile for Hal Woodruff. “Hi, Hal.”
    “Hi Brit.”
    “Decedent identified?”
    “No ma’am.”
    She put her hands on her hips. Swift saw she was wearing snug ski gloves. CSIs had been referred to as Evidence Techs not long ago, a term they surely resented. The scene was Swift’s to control, but he could already feel Silas insinuate herself. Her breath plumed out in front of her. She looked around. She peered into the trees, then she rotated around and looked at the field. Now she was looking down the length of route 9N, at the house in the distance. “When’s the last time you worked a DB case?”
    Swift thought back. “Two years,” he said. There had been a suicide in the woods. A man around his own age, late fifties.
    “Okay,” she said. “Hal, let’s check for an ID.”
    “Probably too young for a driver license,” said Swift.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. Before this layer of snow here, we could see the face better. Young male, Caucasian, about 120, 130 pounds, somewhere between twelve and fifteen years of age.”
    “No wallet, no ID, nothing in his pockets,” said Hal. “Think he’s wearing pajamas.”
    “Thanks, Hal.” She walked away from the body. Swift followed. As she walked she pointed to Lenny Duso, who was watching them from beside the trooper’s car.
    “That’s our discoverer?”
    “That’s him.”
    She pointed beyond, into the road.
    “And probably we’ve driven all over the tire tracks. The vehicle he said turned around and hightailed it out of here.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She shot him a quick look, and Swift realized he was on the defensive. “We had to approach somehow,” he said.
    “Wish we could have protected a little more of the core scene.”
    “Deputy Cohen was the first to arrive. Then two of my troopers, and then I got here.”
    She said nothing and he could sense the tension rising between them. “I’m sorry, Ms. Silas, but this is the best we got. This is a pretty major route here.”
    “Have to turn the vehicles around.”
    “We’re rerouting traffic, yes. In two hours, there’s going to be twenty cars trying to come through every minute.”
    “Too bad for them. Processing the scene can’t be rushed.”
    “I know it can’t, and, Ms. Silas, I’m not trying to fight you here. But we’re in the middle of a blizzard at three o’clock in the morning. I don’t think you’re going to be tagging a whole lot to take back to the lab. That body is the most important piece of evidence, so the sooner we can get to it, the better.”
    She stopped walking and faced him directly, frowning up at him. They were near one of the vehicles, which washed one side of her in thin white light. “Do you think this is a homicide?”
    “My kneejerk reaction? Yes. But I can’t say for sure. I’ve got to put my worksheet together. I need you to document the scene as best you can, given these conditions. It’s going to be your chain of evidence. But we do need to get an ID on that kid and find out who his parents are. Start questioning his friends, family, associates. Someone was here, according to a witness, who did a one-eighty right over there and took off.”
    “They weren’t just scared by what they saw? Maybe someone just didn’t want to get involved?”
    “I don’t know. Anything’s possible.”
    “Well you made the call, detective. You think there’s foul play, that