Damon had been so careful about the body — the refused autopsy, the rushed cremation, the makeup, the whole elaborate plan to make the physical truth disappear.

He had thought of the body as the only evidence that mattered, because the body was the thing he could see and touch and burn.

But a modern life leaves a hundred other bodies behind it, made of paper and data, and those do not burn.

A payment moves and is recorded.

A debt exists in a ledger he did not control.

A policy names a beneficiary in a file at an insurance company.