In the privacy of my office, I described the pictures of Boyd, Katy, and myself. I acknowledged yesterday’s terror, today’s continuing uneasiness.
Rinaldi spoke first.
“You have no idea who this Grim Reaper is?”
I shook my head.
“What Ryan and I could make out from the AOL tracking information was that the messages were sent to my mailbox at UNCC through a couple of re-mailers, then forwarded from the university to my AOL address.”
“That last part your doing?”
“Yes. I have all my e-mail forwarded.” I shook my head. “You’ll never trace the original sender.”
“It can be done,” Rinaldi said. “But it isn’t easy.”
“The pictures began on Wednesday morning?” Slidell asked.
I nodded. “Probably taken with a digital camera.”
“So there’s no way to track prints through a film processing company.” Slidell.
“And the call was probably placed at a pay phone.” Rinaldi. “Would you like us to order surveillance for you?”
“Do you think that’s warranted?”
I had expected indifference, perhaps impatience. The sincerity of their responses was unsettling.
“We’ll step up patrols past your place.”
“Thank you.”
“How about your kid’s crib?” Slidell.
I saw Katy, relaxed and unaware on a front porch swing.
“Stepped up patrols would be good.”
“Done.”
When they’d gone I checked again with Mrs. Flowers. Still no fax from Cagle. She assured me she would deliver the report the second it finished printing.
Returning to my office, I tried to concentrate on a backlog of mail and paperwork. Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. I nearly knocked my soda to the floor snatching up the receiver.
It was Mrs. Flowers.
Cagle’s fax with the Lancaster skeletal report had not arrived, but Brian Aiker’s dental records had. Dr. Larabee had requested my presence in the main autopsy room.
When I arrived, the ME was arranging radiographs on two light boxes, each set consisting of twelve tiny films showing teeth in the upper and lower jaws. Joe Hawkins had taken one series on the privy skull and jaw. Brian Aiker’s dentist had provided the other.
One look was enough.
“Don’t think we’ll need a forensic dentist for this one,” Larabee said.
“Nope,” I agreed.
Brian Aiker’s X rays showed crowns and posts in two upper and two lower molars, clear evidence of root canal work.
The privy skull X rays showed none.
* * *
Wally Cagle’s report did not arrive on Friday. Nor did it come on Saturday. Or Sunday.
Twice each day I visited the MCME. Twice each day I called Cagle at his office, his home, and on his cell.
Never an answer.
Twice each day I checked my e-mail for the scanned images.
Bad news and good news.
No photos from Cagle.
No photos from the Grim Reaper.
I spent the weekend wondering about the Lancaster bones. If the skull and postcranial remains belonged to the same person, it wasn’t Brian Aiker. Who was it?
Did the privy skull really go with Cagle’s skeleton? I’d been so sure, but it was just instinct. I had no hard data. Could we actually have two unknowns?
What had happened to Brian Aiker? To Charlotte Grant Cobb?
I also pondered the whereabouts of Tamela Banks and her family. The Bankses were unsophisticated people. How could they simply disappear? Why would they do so?
On Saturday morning I made a quick visit to the Bankses’ home. The shades were still drawn. A pile of newspapers lay on the porch. No one answered my rings or knocking.
Ryan phoned daily, updating me on the condition of his sister and niece. Things were not sunny in Halifax.
I told Ryan about Ricky Don Dorton’s demise, about my discussions with Hershey Zamzow concerning bear poaching and the missing wildlife agents, and about Jansen’s goldenseal findings. He asked if I’d reported the Grim Reaper e-mails to Slidell or Rinaldi. I assured him that I had, and that they were increasing surveillance of my place and Lija’s town house.
Each time we disconnected, the annex felt oddly empty. Ryan was gone, his belongings, his smell, his laugh, his cooking. Though he’d only been in my home a short time, his presence had filled the place. I missed him. A lot. Much more than I ever would have imagined.
Otherwise, I puttered, as my mother would call it. Runs and walks with Boyd. Talks with Birdie. Hair conditioning. Eyebrow plucking. Plant watering. Always with an eye to my back. An ear to the air for strange noises.
Saturday Katy talked me into a late-night soiree at Amos’s to listen to a band named Weekend Excursion. The group was punchy, talented, and powerful enough to be picked up by instruments in deserts listening for signs of life in space. The crowd stood and listened, enthralled. At one point I screamed a question into Katy’s ear.
“Doesn’t anyone dance?”
“A few geeks might.”
The old ABBA song “Dancing Queen” ran through my head.
Times change.
After Amos’s, we had nightcaps one door over at a pub called the Gin Mill. Perrier and lime for me, a Grey Goose martini for Katy. Straight up. Dirty. With extra olives. My daughter was definitely a big girl now.
On Sunday we did manicure-pedicure mother-daughter bonding, then hit golf balls on the driving range at Carmel Country Club.
Katy had been a star on the Carmel swim team, semi-swimming her first lane rope-clinging freestyle at age four. She’d grown up on Carmel’s golf courses and tennis courts, hunted Easter eggs, and watched Fourth of July fireworks on its lawns.
Pete and I had feasted on Carmel buffets, danced under the twirling New Year’s Eve globes, drunk champagne, admired the ice sculptures. Many of our closest friendships had been formed at the club.
Though I remained legally married, entitling me to use of all facilities, it felt strange to be there, like revisiting a vaguely remembered place. The people I saw were like visions in a dream, familiar yet distant.
That evening Katy and I ordered pizza and watched Meet the Parents. I didn’t ask if there was significance to her movie selection. Nor did I query the weekend whereabouts of Palmer Cousins.
Monday morning I rose early and checked my e-mail.
Still no photos from Cagle or messages from the Grim Reaper.
After spinning Boyd around the block, I headed to the MCME, confident that the Cagle report would be on my desk.
No fax.
By nine-thirty I’d called Cagle four times at each of his numbers. The professor still didn’t answer.
When the phone rang at ten I nearly burst from my skin.
“Guess you heard.”
“Heard what?”
Slidell picked up on the disappointment in my voice.
“What? You were expecting a call from Sting?”
“I was hoping it was Wally Cagle.”
“You still waiting on that report?”
“Yes.” I twisted the spirals of the cord around my finger. “It’s odd. Cagle said he’d fax it on Thursday.”
“Walter?” Slidell drew the name into three syllables.
“That was four days ago.”
“Maybe the guy hurt himself pulling up his tights.”
“Have you considered a support group for homophobics?”
“Look, way I see it, men are men and women are women, and everyone should sleep in the tent he was born with. You start crossing lines, no one’s going to know where to buy their undies.”
I didn’t point out the number of metaphoric lines Slidell had just crossed.
“Cagle was also going to scan photos of the bones and send them by e-mail,” I said.
“Jesus in a fish market, everything’s e-mail these days. If you ask me, e-mail’s some kinda voodoo witchcraft.”
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I heard Slidell’s chair groan under the strain of his buttocks.
“If Aiker’s out, what about the other one?”
“Different tent.”
“What?”
“The other FWS agent was female.”
“Maybe you got it wrong with the bones.”
Not bad, Skinny.
“That’s possible for the privy remains, but not for the Lancaster skeleton.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cagle sent a bone sample for DNA testing. Amelogenin came back male.”
“Here we go again. The black arts.”
I let him listen to silence for a while.
“You still there?”
“Do you want me to explain amelogenin, or do you prefer to remain in the nineteenth century?”
“Keep it short.”
“You’ve heard of DNA?”
“I’m not a total cretin.”
Questionable.
“Amelogenin is actually a locus for tooth pulp.”
“Locus?”
“A place on the DNA molecule that codes for a specific trait.”
“What the hell’s tooth pulp got to do with sex?”
“Nothing. But in females, the left side of the gene contains a small deletion of nonessential DNA, and produces a shorter product when amplified by PCR.”
“So this pulp locus shows length variation between the sexes.”
“Exactly.” I was incredulous that Slidell had grasped this so quickly. “Do you understand sex chromosomes?”
“Girls got two X’s, boys got an X and a Y. That’s what I’m saying. Nature throws the dice, you stick with the toss.”
The metaphor thickened.
“When the amelogenin region is analyzed,” I went on, “a female, having two X chromosomes, will show one band. A male, having both an X and a Y chromosome, will show two bands, one the same size as the female and one slightly larger.”
“And Cagle’s bones came up male.”
“Yes.”
“And your skull is male.”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“My gut feeling is yes, but there’s nothing definitive about it.”
“Genderwise.”
“Genderwise.”
“But it’s not Aiker.”
“Not if we have the right dental records.”
“But the skeleton could be.”
“Not if it goes with the privy skull.”
“And you think it does.”
“It sounds like a fit. But I haven’t seen photos or the original bones.”
“Any reason Cagle might have changed his mind, started avoiding your calls?”
“He was very cooperative when we talked.”
Now the empty air was of Slidell’s choosing.
“You game for a little spin down to Columbia?”
“I’ll be waiting on the steps.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER LEAVING THE MCME, SLIDELL AND I were crossing into South Carolina. To either side of I-77 lay a border sprawl of low-end shops, restaurants, and entertainment emporia, a Carolina version of Nogales or Tijuana.
Paramount’s Carowinds. Outlet Market Place. Frugal MacDougal’s Discount Liquors. Heritage USA, abandoned now, but once a mecca for Jim and Tammy Faye’s PTL faithful intent on God, vacation, and bargain basement clothes. Opinions varied as to whether PTL had stood for Praise the Lord or Pass the Loot.
Rinaldi had opted for a trip to Sneedville, Tennessee, to do some digging on Ricky Don Dorton and Jason Jack Wyatt. Rinaldi also planned to run a background check on the pilot, Harvey Pearce, and was intent on a meaningful conversation with Sonny Pounder.
Jansen had headed back to Miami.
Slidell had spoken little since picking me up, preferring the sputter of his radio to the sound of my voice. I suspected his coolness derived from my homophobia crack.
OK by me, Skinny.
We were soon rolling between heavily wooded, kudzu-draped hills. Slidell alternated between drumming the steering wheel and patting his shirt pocket. I knew he needed nicotine, but I needed O2. Through a lot of sighing and throat clearing and drumming and patting, I refused to give the go-ahead to light up.
We passed the exits for Fort Mill and Rock Hill, later Highway 9 cutting east to Lancaster. I thought of Cagle’s headless skeleton, wondered what we would find at his lab.
I also thought of Andrew Ryan, of times we’d been rolling toward a crime scene or body dump together. Slidell or Ryan? Who would I rather be with? No contest there.
The University of South Carolina system has eight campuses, with the mothership parked squarely in the heart of the state capital. Perhaps the Palmetto State founders were xenophobic. Perhaps funds were limited. Perhaps they simply preferred to have their offspring educated in their own backyard.
Or perhaps they foresaw the bacchanalian rite of spring break at Myrtle Beach, and tried reaching across the centuries to discourage a very different type of hajj.
In Columbia, Slidell took Bull Street and turned left at the edge of campus. Failing to locate a spot in the visitor-metered parking area, he pulled into a faculty lot and cut the engine.
“Some egghead gets me ticketed, I’ll tell him to stick it up his PHD.” Slidell pocketed the keys. “You know what those letters stand for, don’t you, Doc?”
Though I indicated no interest, Slidell provided his definition.
“Piled higher and deeper.”
Exiting the Taurus was brutal. The sun was white-hot, the pavement rippling as we crossed Pendelton Street. Overhead, leaves hung motionless, like damp nappies on clotheslines on a windless day.
The USC anthropology facilities were located in a dishwater-blond building named Hamilton College. Built in 1943 to spur the war effort, Hamilton now looked like it could use some spurring of its own.
Slidell and I located the departmental office and presented ourselves to the secretary/receptionist. Dragging her eyes from a computer screen, the woman regarded us through Dame Edna glasses. She was in her fifties, with a mulberry mushroom on her forehead and hair piled higher than a Texas deb’s.
Slidell asked for Cagle.
The deb informed him that the professor was not in.
When had she last seen him?
A week ago Friday.
Had Cagle been on campus since?
Possible, though their paths hadn’t crossed. Cagle’s mailbox had been emptied the immediate past Friday. She hadn’t seen him then or since.
Slidell asked the location of Cagle’s office.
Third floor. Entrance was impossible without written permission.
Slidell asked the location of Cagle’s lab.
Second floor. The deb reiterated the point about written permission.
Slidell flashed his badge.
The deb studied Slidell’s shield, lipstick crawling into the wrinkles radiating from her tightly clamped lips. If she noticed the words “Charlotte-Mecklenburg,” she didn’t let on. She turned a shoulder, dialed a number, waited, disconnected, dialed again, waited again, hung up. Sighing theatrically, she rose, walked to a filing cabinet, opened the top drawer, unhooked one of several dozen keys, and checked its tag.
Keeping several steps ahead to minimize opportunity for conversation, our reluctant hostess led us to the second floor, down a tiled corridor, and around a corner to a wooden door with a frosted-glass window. The words HUMAN IDENTIFICATION LABORATORY were stenciled on the glass in bold, black letters.
“What exactly is it you need?” The deb ran a thumb back and forth across the small round key tag.
“Last Thursday Dr. Cagle promised he’d send me a case report and photos,” I said. “I haven’t received them. I can’t reach him by phone and it’s quite urgent.”
“Dr. Cagle’s been in the field all summer, only comes in on weekends. Y’all sure he intended to do it right away?”
“Absolutely.”
Two creases puckered the mulberry mushroom. “Man’s
usually very predictable and very reliable.”
The deb hunched her whole body when she turned the key, as though revelation of the wrist movement might constitute a security breach. Straightening, she swung the door inward, and pointed a lacquered nail at me.
“Don’t disturb any of Dr. Cagle’s things.” It came out “thangs.” “Some are official police evidence.” It came out “poe-lice.”
“We’ll be very careful,” I said.
“Check with me on your way out.”
Drilling us each with a look, the deb marched off down the corridor.
“Broad missed her calling in the SS,” Slidell said, moving past me through the open door.
Cagle’s lab was an earlier-era version of mine at UNCC. More solid, outfitted with oak and marble, not molded plastic and painted metal.
I did a quick scan.
Worktables. Sinks. Microscopes. Light boxes. Copy stand. Ventilator hood. Hanging skeleton. Refrigerator. Computer.
Slidell tipped his head toward a wall of floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets.
“What do you suppose that meatball keeps locked up in there?”
“Bones.”
“Jay-zus Kee-rist.”
While Slidell went through the unlocked cupboards above the work counters, I checked the room’s single desk. Its top was bare save for a blotter.
A file drawer on the left held forms of various types. Archaeological survey sheets. Burial inventories. Blank bone quizzes. Audiovisual requisitions.
The long middle drawer contained the usual assortment of pens, plastic-headed tacks, paper clips, rubber bands, stamps, and coins.
Nothing extraordinary.
Except that everything was organized into separate boxes, slots, and niches, each labeled and spotlessly clean. Inside the compartments, every item was aligned with geometric precision.
“Fastidious little wanker.” Slidell had come up behind me.
I checked the right two drawers. Stationery. Envelopes. Printer paper. Labels. Post-its.
Same ordinary supplies. Same anal tidiness.
“Your desk look like that?” Slidell asked.
“No.” I’d once found a dead goldfish in my desk drawer. Solved the mystery of its disappearance the previous spring.
“Mine sure don’t.”
Being familiar with Slidell’s car, I didn’t want to imagine the state of his desk.