Evil Bones

The twenty-fourth novel in Kathy Reichs's Temperance Brennan series opens during a violent storm in rural North Carolina. An elderly woman named Bella Abato crashes her car into a massive oak near the town of Frog Pond in Stanly County. When she regains consciousness, she spots something in the branches that she later insists was "a sign from Satan."

Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who works for both the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner (MCME) in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a medico-legal lab in Montreal, Quebec, is dispatched to investigate by her boss, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Samantha Nguyen. Tempe lives in a small structure called the Annex on the historic Sharon Hall estate in Charlotte's Myers Park neighborhood with her cat, Birdie. Her partner, Andrew Ryan, a retired detective turned private investigator, lives in Montreal; her daughter Katy lives nearby and runs a foundation and shelter for homeless veterans. Tempe's great-niece, Molly-Ruth "Ruthie" Howard, a temperamental 17-year-old, is visiting Charlotte for the summer.

At the scene, Tempe recovers a nonhuman skull roughly the size of a cocker spaniel's, wrapped in fabric, its eyelids stitched wide, eye sockets filled with tinfoil, surface coated in glitter, and feathers inserted into each ear opening. Reviewing the MCME's files, she finds earlier specimens treated identically: a rat, squirrel, rabbit, and skunk, each missing at least one body part. Erskine "Skinny" Slidell, a retired Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD homicide detective frequently brought back for casework, notes that the skulls have been increasing in size, suggesting the perpetrator is escalating. Tempe observes that something is missing from each set of remains, indicating the doer keeps trophies.

Tempe recruits Ralph Balodis, a reclusive retired veterinarian, to help identify the animal species. When a headless animal corpse is found near Camp Thunderbird, Balodis identifies it as a Boykin Spaniel and traces a microchip to the dog's owner, Crawford Joye, a divorce attorney in Charlotte. Tempe finds a bullet lodged in the dog's neck. Joye, devastated by the loss of his dog Bear, names a former adversary, Jerome Sunday, who had threatened him after a contentious divorce proceeding. At Park Road Park, where Bear disappeared, Slidell discovers a fragment of a discontinued dog chew toy that matches objects visible in earlier scene photos. A pet store clerk recalls the buyer: a man of average height, possibly blond, with an unsettling gaze.

Tempe consults her close friend Dr. Adina Kumar, a psychologist, about the doer's trajectory. Kumar describes a case study of a man who escalated from torturing animals to murdering humans and warns that people may die if the perpetrator is not stopped. She raises the possibility of a sexual component, prompting Slidell to focus on registered sex offenders. He clears one suspect with an alibi but finds another, Hugh Norwitz, whose home contains provocatively posed taxidermy. At a taxidermy conference, attendees describe Norwitz as capable of cruelty and independently mention another name: Ozmand "Ozzie" Key.

The case takes a sharp turn when bones collected by a birder from Stevens Creek Nature Preserve reach the MCME. Tempe discovers human remains mixed with animal bones: fragments from a single Caucasian female aged approximately 35 to 50. The remains bear the doer's signature treatment, including feathers, glitter, and a missing hand. Nguyen identifies the woman as Eleanor Godric, whose body was stolen from a cemetery. The doer has escalated to human remains.

A fresh corpse soon appears in Cordelia Park, discovered by Sister Mary Adelbert, an elderly nun. A man hangs upside down from a tree, nailed with railroad spikes, his left hand severed, eyelids stitched, and the letters "PE" carved into his forehead. A dog's body hangs beside him, bearing the same letters. Sister Adelbert describes the person she saw leaving: a man of moderate height in a blue-and-black shirt and lime-green sneakers, departing in a dark car partially blocked from view by an Amazon delivery truck. A second fresh corpse with the same signature is found at McDowell Nature Preserve. Katy identifies the victim as Quaashi Brown, a man experiencing homelessness who visited her shelter. During Brown's autopsy, Nguyen discovers a thumb drive containing a video labeled "Evil" and footage of Tempe's home, including her bedroom, proving an intruder has been inside. Then Balodis, the veterinarian Tempe recruited, is found murdered at a Girl Scout campground, his body bearing the same treatment. Balodis's death makes the investigation intensely personal.

Throughout these events, Ruthie has been spending time with graduate students from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). Their apparent leader, Lester Meloy, is pursuing a thesis on Dante's Inferno and society's perceptions of evil. Tempe notices a tattoo on his neck reading "LIVE" and observes a black Honda Accord that appears to follow Ruthie after a dinner together. Tempe grows uneasy but cannot pinpoint why.

Before her abduction, Tempe suffers a hard fall on the Sharon Hall driveway after feeling a sudden impact to her back, an incident she initially dismisses. Soon after, while searching the estate grounds for Birdie, who has gone missing, she feels a sting in her arm and loses consciousness. She awakens blindfolded, bound, and lying in shallow water in one of Charlotte's underground storm tunnels. Her captor speaks in shifting voices and references a conversation about phobias, noting that enclosed spaces are Ruthie's worst fear while losing loved ones is Tempe's. He asks whether the "experiment" is evil enough and reveals he uses hidden cameras to record bystanders' reactions at his display sites. He drops an object and leaves. Tempe finds a pocketknife, saws through her ropes, and escapes.

Slidell arrests Meloy and Danielle Hall, an engineering graduate student who befriended Ruthie. Ryan arrives from Montreal but is soon recalled for another case. Then Katy vanishes from her town house, and Tempe receives an anonymous call from a mechanically altered voice confirming Katy is being held and saying "Pure evil." The phone signal leads to a house in the Marlwood neighborhood. Slidell finds Katy tied up in the basement, alive. The basement contains the doer's workshop: severed animal paws and human hands strung on ropes, taxidermy supplies, and clothing matching an Amazon delivery uniform. Tempe recognizes the scent of a taxidermy deodorizer as the same smell she noted on her captor's boots in the tunnels. She realizes an Amazon truck was present at multiple key moments: on the driveway when she fell, blocking the nun's view at Cordelia Park, and outside this house now.

The driver, Turner Long, attempts to flee when his truck fails to start and is tackled by Slidell. Long, from Mobile, Alabama, is a former psychology graduate student expelled after one semester and a convicted purse snatcher. He confesses to the animal displays and the abductions of Tempe and Katy but denies involvement in the murders. His motive traces to a trivial slight: Tempe had admonished him for carelessly dropping a package on a neighbor's porch. He gained entry to her home during a later delivery, planted surveillance devices, and used the intelligence to learn personal details he weaponized against her. The displays were experiments designed to record human reactions to horror, and the letters "PE" stand for "Pure Evil."

Meloy and Hall are released, both innocent. The black Honda belongs to a neighbor's grandson. Ruthie, who had gone to the mountains with friends without leaving a note, is safe. In a final scene at a mountain inn, Tempe reflects on Kumar's definition of evil and concludes that Long meets every criterion. Long remains in lockup while Slidell builds the murder case. When Ryan asks if Tempe will continue her work, she affirms she will, "as long as my powers hold out."