Bone Box by Faye Kellerman

Rina is just going for a walk.  Winter hasn't set in yet and she's taking colorful fall pictures.  She has lots of insects and animals.  Now she's doing trees.  When she steps in carefully to do a close up of an intriguing piece of tree bark, she steps on something that crunches.  She thinks it was a branch but she steps back and looks, it was a human finger bone.  Someone is buried by the tree...

William Morrow and Edelweiss gave me the opportunity  to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published February 28th.

Rina calls her husband and what's starts as one body in the woods escalates into more bodies.  It's determined they were buried there before the trail was put in.  Do they have a serial killer on their hands?

The pathologist can't do much with just bones.  They find an earring and a bit of hair.  Then they start looking at missing persons.  It doesn't take them long to find out that the people buried had a connection with the local colleges.  They were not all from the same school.  One was male in the process of becoming a woman.  The case almost spans ten years.  It appears someone at the college must be the killer but who?

Rina and Peter work together to solve this crime.  Rina works at the college so she's got an inside.  Peter is a seasoned police detective and has friends he can call on.  Tyler is a trainee working with Peter and he's got computer skills.  They make a mean team.  

The closer they get to the truth, the more Rina is in danger.  This one holds your attention and gets pretty tense before it's over.  Rina learns something about herself, too.  Ms. Kellerman never spares you any emotional trauma.  That's what gives her books flavor.