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the interior and exterior of the wooden chest without disturbing the bundles inside.
    Hoping to find transfer evidence from whoever placed them there, technicians swabbed the parts of the box that might have been handled, seeking fingerprints and possible DNA evidence. They also processed the shelf that held it and the wall behind it. Due to the intense heat buildup, they were forced to take frequent breaks.
    Finally, rubber-gloved techs carefully lifted the box, secured it inside a huge zippered pouch, and transported it to the medical examiner’s office. Photographers and technicians continued to process the space where the chest had been.
    â€œStay with it,” Burch told Nazario. “Let’s just hope they find a date on some a those newspapers they’re wrapped in and that it’s not recent.”
    Like a mourner following a hearse, Nazario trailed the morgue wagon to One Bob Hope Road, the Miami–Dade County medical examiner’s complex. An attendant logged in the wooden box and assigned a case number to the tiny known occupant.
    The detective watched them shoot more photographs, then followed the wooden box to the X-ray room.
    The old X-ray machine had recently been replaced by a new top-of the-line, computerized, digital scanning X-ray machine with excellent resolution and a twenty-one-inch display screen.
    The moment of truth, Nazario thought as the chief medical examiner hit the switch.
    Nazario held his breath as the outline of the box appeared on the screen. The image revealed the metal hinges on the lid, the broken lock, and inside, rows of tiny skulls, rib cages, femurs, and arm bones.
    â€œWe have multiple bodies here,” the chief medical examiner told his assistant. “We need six more case numbers, consecutive to the first, for a total of seven.”
    Nazario sighed.
    The process was painstaking.
    Each wrapped bundle yielded the image of a tiny human being.
    Technicians reexamined the lid of the makeshift coffin again, for fingerprints and DNA. The box’s interior was photographed again before the first bundle was removed. Still wrapped, the infant was x-rayed individually, then repositioned several times for X-rays from multiple angles.
    Lost children, Nazario thought, watching the procedure followed again and again, seven times over. Whose babies are you? How long did you stay alone down there in the dark? Who left you there?
    Laid out on two autopsy tables, each infant appeared to have been wrapped first in cloth, then in several layers of now-yellowed newspaper.
    â€œYou see a date on any of that newsprint?” Nazario asked.
    â€œI want to wait for a forensic anthropologist before unwrapping them all,” the chief said. “Dr. Helmut Newberger over at Florida International University said he’d be here first thing in the morning.”
    With tweezers, tongs, and careful gloved fingers, the stained wrappings were gently peeled away from the first bundle, revealing the tiny, shriveled, blackened face of the shrunken cadaver.
    â€œInfants dry out faster,” the chief explained. “That’s why an infant left in a hot parked car will die when an adult would not. The smaller the body, the more rapidly it dehydrates. Since these infants were wrapped in porous materials that allowed the escape of water vapor, they dehydrated and mummified.”
    â€œCan you determine race and sex?” Nazario asked.
    â€œThat may take a little time,” the chief said, delicately stripping away a four-inch-by-four-inch section of yellowed newspaper.
    â€œLet’s have a better look at this.” He placed the delicate scrap beneath a bright magnifying light.
    â€œWell,” the chief said. “No mistaking this.”
    The detective peered over his shoulder. A partial headline included the initials JFK in twenty-four-point type.
    â€œThat rules out the twenties,” the chief said grimly. “A paragraph on the reverse side mentions a n