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there, but by now any last traces of disgust had left her – she was completely and utterly absorbed in her work.
    Reilly felt a little frisson of excitement tickle her spine.
    Despite the circumstances, she had to admit that these cases – the difficult one s were what made the job for her. Intrigue, puzzlement, frustration … these were all in a day’s work for a crime scene investigator.
     
    Afterwards, Reilly checked on her fellow GFU techs. 
    ‘We’ve covered the perimeter,’ Lucy reported. She was in her mid-twenties, with curly fair hair cut into a stylish bob, and dark-framed glasses. Energetic and enthusiastic, she often provided the enthusiasm the team needed when energy levels flagged. ‘I went from the wall, Gary from the house, and we met up in the middle.’ She pointed to the fence line behind the septic tank, where the property ended and the woods began.
    ‘Anything?’  Reilly asked, although she suspected she already knew the answer.
    ‘No one has entered the property from those directions anytime recently,’ confirmed Lucy.
    ‘The ground is soft from all this rain,’Gary said.  He was older, late twenties with an open, appealing face, and a scruffy beard. He was more detail-oriented than Lucy, but lacked her intuitive skills, the ability to take disparate facts and make connections. ‘Anyone climbing over the fence would leave deep prints where they landed.’
    Especially if they were hauling a body , Reilly thought. ‘Dr Thompson believes Coffey was still alive when he was put in the tank,’ she reminded them.
    ‘I know,’ Gary nodded. ‘But I can’t imagine he went in voluntarily, so I’m thinking he would need to have been bound or sedated.’
    ‘True. I don’t think anyone would be dumped in there without a fight.’ 
    Lucy shuddered. ‘That’s got to be a horrible way to die – in the dark, flailing around in sewage, choking on all those fumes …’
    Reilly could see the discomfort in her face. She really was young to be doing this kind of work. But then again, there was no way of being fully prepared to deal with the things the GFU investigated.
    ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Reilly reminded her. ‘To act on behalf of those who can no longer defend themselves.’ Even as she said it, it sounded trite, but it seemed to have the desired effect. Lucy’s face lost its emotion, and she turned her focus back to the case, to the evidence.
    She looked at Reilly, her bright-eyed enthusiasm returning. ‘Did you find anything in the tank?’ she asked. ‘I’ll bet that was fun.’
    ‘Nothing obvious. The whole area outside it is a mess of footprints – the plumber, Mrs Coffey, the uniforms …’
    ‘Just once,’ Gary said frustratedly, ‘just once could we get an uncontaminated crime scene?’
    ‘And what would be the fun in that?’ Reilly said drily. She gazed out over the trampled sod. ‘No, this is what we get, and it’s down to us to make some sense of it.’ She paused. ‘But I did have an idea.’ She looked at Gary. ‘Can you do me a favor?’
    ‘Of course, what do you need?’
    ‘My iPhone’s back in the van, and because I can’t get down and dirty in the tank—’
    ‘I’ve got the camera here if you need to take some shots,’ Lucy interjected.
    ‘No, that’s not what I had in mind.’
    Gary’s eyes widened. ‘iSPI? You’re going to use it?’ he asked, his enthusiasm almost palpable, as Reilly anticipated it would be.
    ‘iSPI’ – Investigative Scene Processing Integration – was a portable app Reilly had promised to beta-test for one of her old Quantico classmates, Jet Miller, a former master hacker, now working in the FBI’s forensic science division. Th e Academy had tasked Jet with researching the application of mobile computing technology to forensic field investigation, and he’d recently developed a suite of software designed to simplify and improve scene-processing by forensic technicians. Currently in development stage, the