Too broad. I tried subdividing.
Bad Guys. Harvey Pearce (dead). Jason Jack Wyatt (dead). Ricky Don Dorton (dead). Darryl Tyree (under arrest). Sonny Pounder (under arrest).
Victims.
That didn’t work. I was placing too many question marks after names. I bifurcated.
Definite Victims. Tamela Banks’s baby. The owner of the privy skull and hand bones. The headless skeleton from Lancaster County.
Possible Victims. Tamela Banks and her family. Wally Cagle. Murray Snow. Brian Aiker.
Did Tamela Banks and her family belong in this category? Had they really come to harm, or had they simply been spooked into going underground?
Did Tamela Banks’s baby belong out of this category? Was it possible the baby had died of natural causes? I knew from the bones that the baby had been full-term, but it could have been stillborn.
Was Cagle’s collapse real, or had his coma been induced in some way? Was Cagle’s unknown visitor at the university the same man with whom Looper had seen him at the coffee shop? Why hadn’t Looper taken his partner to the nearest hospital? Where was Cagle’s report on the Lancaster remains?
Had Murray Snow died of natural causes? Had the Lancaster County coroner been reopening the investigation of the headless, handless remains when he died? Why?
Did Dorton belong in this category? Dorton died of an overdose. Had it been self-administered? Had he been helped?
I was getting nowhere.
Grabbing pen and paper, I tried diagramming links. I drew a line from Dorton to Wyatt and wrote Melungeon over it. Then I extended the line to Pearce, and printed the word Cessna over all three names.
I connected Tyree to Pounder, marked the line Foote farm, extended the line to the words “privy skull,” then to the name Tamela Banks.
Connecting Tyree to the Dorton-Pearce-Wyatt line, I jotted cocaine.
I made a triangle linking Cagle, Snow, and the Lancaster remains, then hooked that to the Foote farm privy skull. Shooting an extender from that, I added nodes for the bear bones and bird feathers, shot a line up to J. J. Wyatt, added another, and wrote the names Brian Aiker and Charlotte Grant Cobb at its terminus.
I stared at my handiwork, a spiderweb of names and intersecting lines.
Was I trying to link unrelated events? Disparate people and places? The more I thought, the more frustrated I became with how little I knew.
Back to the laptop.
Possible Victims. Brian Aiker.
Neither the privy skull nor the Lancaster skeletal remains could be assigned to the missing FWS agent. Aiker had driven his car off a boat landing and drowned. I was deleting his name from the possible-victim category when a troubling thought stopped my hand. Why was Aiker found in the back of his vehicle?
A manageable question. Shoving back my chair, I went in pursuit of an answer.
Larabee was working in the stinky room. I knew the reason as soon as I entered.
Aiker’s skin was mottled olive and brown, and most of his flesh had been converted to grave wax. Exposure to the air was not improving him.
What remained of Aiker’s lungs lay sliced and splayed on a corkboard at the foot of the autopsy table. Other decaying organs rested in a hanging scale.
“How’s it going?” I asked, drawing shallow breaths.
“Extensive adipocere formation. Lungs are collapsed and putrefied. Liquid putrefaction in the airways.” Larabee sounded as frustrated as I felt. “What air spaces remain look diluted, but that may be due to air bubbles.”
I waited while Larabee squeezed Aiker’s stomach contents into a jar and handed the specimen to Joe Hawkins.
“Accidental drowning?”
“I’m not finding anything to suggest otherwise. Fingernails are broken, looks like the hands may have been abraded. The poor bastard must have struggled to get out of the car, probably tried to break a window.”
“Is there any way to determine absolutely that death was by drowning?”
“Pretty tough call after five years in the drink. Could test for diatoms, I suppose.”
“Diatoms?”
“Microorganisms found in plankton and freshwater and marine sediments. Been around since shortly after the big bang. Exist by the zillions. In fact, some soils are formed entirely of the little buggers. Ever hear of diatomaceous earth?”
“My sister uses DE to filter her pool.”
“Exactly. The stuff is mined commercially for use in abrasives and filtering aids.”
Larabee continued talking as he opened and inspected Aiker’s stomach.
“It’s really a kick to look at diatoms under magnification. They’re beautiful little silica shells in all sorts of shapes and configurations.”
“Remind me what diatoms have to do with drowning.”
“Theoretically, certain waters contain certain genera of diatoms. So, if you find diatoms in the organs, the victim has drowned. Some forensic pathologists even think you can tie a drowning victim to a specific body of water.”
“You sound skeptical.”
“Some of my colleagues hold a lot of stock in diatoms. I don’t.”
“Why?”
Larabee shrugged. “People swallow diatoms.”
“If we could find diatoms in the marrow cavity of a long bone, couldn’t we conclude they’d gotten there by cardiac action?”
Larabee thought about that.
“Yeah. We probably could.” He pointed a scalpel at me. “We’ll have a femur tested.”
“We should also send a sample of the lake water. If they find diatoms in the femur they can compare the profiles.”
“Good point.”
I waited while Larabee cut lengthwise along Aiker’s esophagus.
“Is it significant that he was found in the rear seat?”
“The weight of the engine would have pulled the front of the vehicle down, leaving the last bubble of air trapped against the roof in back. When victims can’t get car doors open, they crawl back and up to keep breathing as long as possible. Or sometimes the corpse just floats to the rear.”
I nodded.
“We’ll run a tox screen, of course. And crime scene’s processing the car and boat ramp. But I’m not finding anything suspicious.”
Aiker’s clothing and personal effects were drying on the counter. I walked over for a look.
It was like telescoping the agent’s last morning on earth into a few soggy, mud-coated items.
Jockeys. T. Blue-and-white-striped long sleeve shirt. Jeans. Athletic socks. Adidas cross trainers. Black Polarfleece hooded jacket.
Did Aiker put his socks on before his jeans? His pants before his shirt? I felt sadness for a life so suddenly ended.
Beside the clothing lay the contents of Aiker’s pockets.
Comb. Keys. Miniature Swiss army knife. Twenty-three dollars in folding money. Seventy-four cents in coins. Wallet-sized billfold with FWS badge and ID. Leather cardholder.
In addition to a North Carolina driver’s license, Hawkins had removed a long-distance calling card, a US Airways Frequent Flyer card, and Diners Club and Visa credit cards from the rectangular leather pouch.
Gloving my right hand, I ran a finger across the photo on the driver’s license. The steady, brown eyes and sandy hair were a long way from the grotesque distortion lying on Larabee’s table.
Leaning close, I studied the face, wondering what Aiker had been doing on a boat landing at Crowder’s Mountain. I picked up the license and flipped it.
Another card was adhering to the back. I peeled it off with my thumbnail. A Harris-Teeter supermarket VIC card. I laid the card on the counter and glanced back at the license.
And caught my breath.
“There’s something stuck to the back of this,” I said.
Both men turned to look at me. Digging forceps from a drawer, I peeled a limp, flat sheet from the back of the license.
“Looks like folded paper.”
Again using forceps, I teased free an edge and tugged
back a layer. One more tug, and the paper lay unfolded on the counter. Though blotchy and diluted, lettering was visible.
“It’s some sort of handwritten note,” I said, easing the paper onto a tray to carry it to the fluorescent magnifier. “Maybe an address or phone number. Or road directions.”
“Or a last will and testament,” said Hawkins.
Larabee and I looked at him.
“More likely a shopping list,” Larabee said.
“Guy could’ve scribbled something then shoved it in between his plastic thinking maybe it’d survive.” Hawkins sounded defensive. “Hell, that’s probably exactly what did happen. Paper was protected from the water because it was sealed between the cards.”
Hawkins had a point about the mode of preservation.
As I clicked on the tube light surrounding the lens, Hawkins and Larabee joined me. Together we viewed the writing under illumination and magnification.
o question. C o ins dirty.
ding to lumbia.
Be car
See you in tte day.
Even under ideal conditions, the scrawl would have been hard to decipher.
“The first part is probably ‘No question,’” Larabee said.
Hawkins and I agreed.
“Something to Columbia?” I suggested.
“Sending?”
“Lending?”
“Heading?”
“Landing?”
“Something’s dirty.” Hawkins.
“Clowns?”
“Collins?”
“Maybe that’s not a C. Maybe it’s an O or a Q.”
“Or a G.”
I positioned the magnifier closer to the paper. We leaned in and stared, each of us trying to make sense of the blotches and smears.
It was no good. Parts of the message were illegible.
“See you somewhere on some day,” I said.
“Good,” Hawkins and Larabee said.
“Charlotte?” I said.
“Possible,” Larabee said.
“How many places end in tte?”
“I’ll check an atlas,” Larabee said, straightening. “In the meantime, the Questioned Documents guys might be able to do something with this. Joe, call over to QD and ask if we should keep this thing wet or let it dry.”
Hawkins removed gloves and apron, washed his hands, and headed for the door. I clicked off the lamp.
As Larabee proceeded with his autopsy, I told him about Cagle’s coma, and about my discussion with Terry Woolsey. When I’d finished, he looked up at me over his mask.
“Think maybe you’re working with a lot of what-ifs, Tempe?”
“Maybe,” I said.
At the door I turned for one last comment.
“But what if I don’t?”
AND WHAT IF I’D MISSED SOMETHING?
Instead of furthering my frustration with more computerized exercise, I went to the cooler, pulled out the privy skull and hand bones, and did a full reanalysis.
The remains still whistled the same tune: thirty-something white boy.
But it wasn’t Brian Aiker.
Back to the laptop.
The privy skull and hand bones turned up at the Foote farm. Bear bones and macaw feathers turned up at the Foote farm. Coincidence?
The Lancaster skeleton turned up sans head and hands. Coincidence?
The Lancaster skeleton was found three years ago. Brian Aiker vanished five years ago. Coincidence?
Brian Aiker and Charlotte Grant Cobb disappeared around the same time. Coincidence?
Bear bones and feathers from endangered bird species. Missing FWS agents. Coincidence?
Think outside the box, Brennan.
I was prying off the lid when the phone rang.
“Yo.” Slidell.
“What’s up?”
“Pounder’s singing like a canary on crack.”
“I’m listening.”
“Tyree was serving coke for Dorton.”
“There’s a surprise.”
“Dorton got the blow from a South American connection, Harvey Pearce made pickups somewhere down east near Manteo, hauled the stuff up to Charlotte from the coast. From there it went to points north and west.”
“Tyree paid Pounder to use Mama Foote’s farm as a relay point,” I guessed.
“Bingo.”
“And Dorton’s cousin J.J. made his living in the family business.”
“Here’s the part you’re really going to like. Seems Pearce got talked into buying a bird from one of the South Americans some time back, sold the thing for a nice profit. Dorton got wind of it. Ever the entrepreneur, Mr. Strip Club and Drug Lord decided to branch out.”
“Let me guess. Ricky Don took advantage of little J.J.’s hunting skills.”
“Pearce also supplied product from the Low Country.”
Product. Rare and special animals being slaughtered for profit. What noble creatures we hominids are.
“Dorton hooked himself up with an Asian connection, became the king of gall.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Pounder didn’t have a name. Said he thought the mutt was Korean. Had some kind of inside line.”
“Inside line on what?”
“Dick-brain wasn’t sure. Don’t worry. We’ll nail the guy’s ass.”
“What’s Tyree saying?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“How does Tyree explain the calls between his cell phone and J. J. Wyatt’s?”
“Little ragnose says things ain’t always what they seem. I’m paraphrasing.”
I was almost afraid to ask the next question.
“What about Tamela Banks and her family?”
“Tyree claims to know zip.”
“What about the baby?”
“DOA.”
Slidell’s callousness curled the fingers of my free hand into a ball.
“We’re talking about a dead newborn, Detective.”
“Excuse me.” Singsong. “I missed my charm school class this week.”
“Call me when you know more.”
Slamming the receiver, I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Images skittered through my mind.
Eyes devoid of caring, irises swallowed by drug-dazed pupils.
Gideon Banks’s tortured face, Geneva hovering silent in a doorway.
Charred and fragmented baby bones.
I thought of my daughter.
Infant Katy in soft, footed pj’s. Toddler Katy in pink ruffled swimsuit, chubby feet splashing in a plastic pool. Young woman Katy in shorts and tank, long brown legs pushing a front porch swing.
Scenes of normalcy. Scenes in which Tamela’s baby would never have a part.
Needing something, but unsure what, I reached for the phone and dialed my daughter. Her roommate answered.
Lija thought Katy had gone to Myrtle Beach with Palmer Cousins, wasn’t sure because she’d been away herself.
Was Katy answering her cell phone?
No.
I hung up, feeling scared.
Wasn’t Katy working as a temporary receptionist at Pete’s firm? This was Tuesday.
Didn’t Cousins have a job to go to?
Cousins. What was it about the guy that made me uneasy?
Thinking about Cousins brought me back to Aiker.
Back to the box.
Paw your way out.
I began typing random ideas onto the screen.
Premise: The Lancaster remains and the privy remains were one person.
Deduction: That person is not Brian Aiker.
Deduction: That person is not Charlotte Grant Cobb. DNA testing confirmed that the Lancaster remains were male.
Slidell’s DOA comment had me angry and on edge. Was I being unfair to him? Maybe. Still, I kept losing my train of thought.
Or was it anxiety over my daughter?
It was Slidell. The man was a bigoted, homophobic cretin. I thought about his tactless treatment of Geneva and Gideon Banks. I thought about his i
nsensitive digs at Lawrence Looper and Wally Cagle. What was that metaphoric quagmire about sleeping in tents and buying undies? Or his pearl concerning gender roles? Oh, yeah. Nature throws the dice, you stick with the toss. Embryonic brilliance.
Outside the cube.
What appeared to be coke turned out to be goldenseal.
What appeared to be leprosy turned out to be sarcoidosis.
Another Slidellism: Things ain’t always what they seem. Or was that a Tyreeism?
Outside the four squares.
An idea. Improbable, but what the hell.
I went to my purse, pulled out the card I’d taken from under Cagle’s blotter, and dialed.
“South Carolina Law Enforcement Division,” a female voice answered.
I made my request.
“Hold, please.”
“DNA.” Another female voice.
I read the name from the card.
“He’s out this week.”
I thought for a moment.
“Ted Springer, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
I identified myself.
“Hold on.”
Seconds passed. A minute.
“Madam Anthropologist. What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Ted. Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Shoot.”
“Your section did a case for the Lancaster County coroner about three years ago, headless, handless skeleton.” Again, I read the name from the card, explained that the man wasn’t in. “Walter Cagle did the anthro.”
“Do you have a file number?”
“No.”
“Makes it tougher, but God bless computers, I can track it down. What do you need?”
“I wonder if you could take a look at the amelogenin profile in the case, see if anything looks odd.”
“How soon do you need this?”
I hesitated.
“I know,” Springer said. “Yesterday.”
“I’ll owe you,” I said.
“I’ll collect,” he said.
“Margie and the kids might not approve.”
“Point taken. Give me a few hours.”
I gave him my cell phone number.
Next I called Hershey Zamzow at his FWS office in Raleigh.
“I’m curious. Do you know the whereabouts of any of Charlotte Grant Cobb’s family?”
“Cobb grew up in Clover, South Carolina. Parents were still living there when Charlotte went missing. As I recall, they weren’t too cooperative.”