"Using trowels and hand tools, they painstakingly sifted every bit of soil, sand, or muck. By dusk, they had recovered a femur, a long-leg bone, and a human rib cage entangled in the rotted tatters of a work shirt. They also unearthed torn strips from a heavy tarpaulin, the shreds of a leather belt in the loops of a pair of nearly disintegrated men's trousers, and--the prize package of the day--a partially intact billfold.
'Somebody took great pains to encase the body in a strong tarpaulin that was nonbiodegradable and made to last, like a roof tarp,' the chief medical examiner said, his shiny face alight with interest. 'The joke's on them. Had the body simply been dumped as it was, there would have been nothing left to find.'
'And we wouldn't be here,' Corso said glumly.
'Correct,' the chief said. 'Animals would have scattered the bones. Whatever splinters and fragments they left would have deteriorated in the sun and the climate. That billfold and its contents would have shriveled down to a small mass of indecipherable pulp. The remains would never have been found, much less identified. But, instead, whoever left him here wrapped him in a way that preserved enough for us to recover.' " --Excerpted from the Book
