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didn’t want to tell me anything. Told me to send you over when you arrived and that he’d brief you personally.” Franklin continued to scan his notes. “Here it is. Anderson. You know the name?”
    Dunlevy thought for a moment and shook his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
    Franklin’s eyes dropped. “Don’t look now, but he’s coming up behind you,” he whispered.
    Dunlevy turned and extended his hand. “Agent Anderson, right?”
    The short, stocky ATF veteran had the look of ex-military. He simply nodded.
    â€œFranklin was just filling me in. What do we know at this point?”
    He shrugged. “Not a lot. Natural gas is definitely the accelerant. And since we’ve confirmed the explosion hit at eleven o’clock straight up, it’s a pretty good bet the ignitor was on some kind of timing device, maybe a simple alarm clock.”
    â€œWhat’s this about the gas main under the street?”
    Anderson pointed toward Front Street. “There’s a manhole almost directly in front of the building. Someone has been playing with the pipes. How about you guys? You have anything?”
    â€œNot at this point, but since some of the victims were foreign nationals, we’ll be pursuing this as a hate crime,” he said, subtly letting Anderson know the FBI would take lead jurisdiction. Dunlevy disliked the legislation designating some federal offenses as hate crimes; hate was the motivation for most murders.
    â€œKeep me posted, would you?” Dunlevy asked. It was an order politely couched as a request.
    â€œDefinitely,” the ATF agent promised.
    Franklin and Dunlevy moved on to the remnants of the structure’s foundation. They jumped from one piece of charred wood to another, trying to avoid falling knee-deep in sodden ash. From a distance it appeared as if the two grown men were playing hopscotch in the rubble.
    â€œHoly shit!” Dunlevy shouted as he lurched backward and landed in the soot.
    â€œWhat?” yelled the startled Franklin as he instinctively placed his hand over his service revolver.
    â€œI almost stepped in that,” he said, pointing to a badly charred torso and what appeared to be a second body immediately underneath it. Their limbs were entwined and indistinguishable. He had mistaken the corpses for a piece of debris. The bodies were wedged up against a stainless steel box, the remnants of the ice machine behind the bar.
    â€œOh Christ!” Dunlevy said, covering his mouth with his hand.
    There were no recognizable human features—no hair, fingers, toes, or clothes. The only hints there had once been life in the heap of charred flesh were the shards of tooth fragments catching the light along an otherwise charcoal jawbone.
    Dunlevy recognized one of the men on the coroner’s team and yelled for him to bring over two red flags. The flags dotted the crime scene—macabre little reminders for the medical examiner as to the exact location where remains had been discovered.
    A thin young man with thick glasses and a ponytail handed the markers to Dunlevy. He glanced, seemingly unfazed, at the grotesque bodies. “Husband and wife,” he mumbled.
    Franklin looked puzzled. He leaned closer to get a better look. “How in the hell could you possibly know that?” he asked, amazed.
    The young man let out a sigh and pointed to the top torso. “A man instinctively throws himself over his wife or children. Never a stranger or even a friend, just the wife and kids. Not that it ever does any good,” he said, letting out an inappropriate chuckle. “Since they both appear to be the right size and weight, my guess is husband and wife.”
    The agents shook their heads in unison. The coroner’s assistant was right. The husband’s body had offered little protection. Death by fire had made them one.
    ***
    It pained Dr. Ida Mosby to bend over to sort the bones from the