“Police!” Rinaldi panted, gun aimed in a two-handed grip.

  The two men on the ground flailed like a pinned spider, cop on top, quarry beneath. Both were grunting, their backs dark with sweat. I could see gravel and fragments of cellophane and plastic in cornrows below the cop’s right shoulder.

  “Freeze!” the standing cop yelled.

  The thrashing ratcheted up.

  “Freeze, asshole!” the standing cop elaborated.

  Muffled protests. Appendages writhed on the pavement.

  “Now! Or I blow your junkie balls off!”

  Grabbing a wrist, the wrestling cop levered one of the prone man’s arms backward. Another protest, then the thrashing diminished. The wrestling cop reached to unhook cuffs from his belt.

  The cornrows jerked, and the body bucked wildly, catching the wrestling cop off guard. Rolling sideways, the man broke free, lurched to his feet, and reeled forward in a half-crouch.

  Without hesitating, Woolsey jackhammered into reverse, gunned backward, then forward, slamming the Chevrolet across the alley.

  Shutter fast, the wrestling cop was on his feet and across the alley. He and his partner hit the man at the same time, slamming him into the side of the Chevy.

  “Freeze, you fucking freak show!”

  The wrestling cop again cranked one of the man’s arms upward behind his back. I heard a thunk as the man’s head struck the car roof.

  Woolsey and I got out and looked at the man draped over her car. His wrists were cuffed and the standing cop’s gun was at his temple.

  Breathing hard, the wrestling cop kicked the man’s feet apart and frisked him. The search produced a Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic and two Ziploc baggies, one filled with white powder, the other with small white tablets.

  Tossing the Glock and drugs to his partner, the wrestling cop spun his collar. The standing cop caught the baggies and took a step back, keeping his gun barrel trained on the man’s chest.

  Darryl Tyree regarded us with all-pupil eyes. One lip was bleeding. The ghetto gold chains were knotted, and the cornrows looked like they’d mopped an arena.

  Slidell and Rinaldi holstered their guns and approached Tyree. Slidell was still breathing hard.

  Avoiding eye contact, Tyree shifted his weight, shifted back, then back again, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with his feet.

  Slidell and Rinaldi crossed their arms and regarded Tyree. Neither detective spoke. Neither moved.

  Tyree kept his eyes on the ground.

  Slidell dug out and tapped his Camels, extracted one with his lips, and offered the pack to Tyree.

  “Smoke?” Slidell’s face looked scalded, his eyes furious.

  Tyree gave a tight head shake, wiggling the tiny pigtails at his neckline.

  Slidell lit up, inhaled, placed hands on hips, and exhaled.

  “Rock and E-bombs. Planning a two-for-one sale?”

  “I don’ deal.” Mumbled.

  “I’m sorry, Darryl. I didn’t hear that.” Slidell turned to his partner. “You get that, Eddie?”

  Rinaldi wagged his head.

  “What’d you say, Darryl?”

  Tyree slid his eyes to Slidell, but what little sunlight entered the alley was at the detective’s back. Squinting, Tyree turned his face to one side.

  “Shit’s not mine.”

  “I got just one problem with that, Darryl. The product was traveling in your pants.”

  “I been set up.”

  “Now who would do a thing like that?”

  “I been around. Man makes enemies, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re a tough guy, Darryl.”

  “You got nothin’ on me. I’m jus’ goin’ ’bout my bidness.”

  “What business would that be?” Slidell.

  Tyree shrugged and kicked a heel at the gravel.

  Slidell took a drag, dropped the butt, and gave it a twist with the ball of one foot.

  “Who you serving for, Darryl?”

  Another shrug.

  “Know what I think, Darryl? I think you’re into some double-breasted dealing.”

  Tyree wagged his head on his long, goose neck.

  Slidell let loose a sigh, disappointed.

  “These questions too tough for you, Darryl?”

  Slidell turned to his partner. “What do you think, Eddie. Think maybe we’re going over Darryl’s head?”

  “Could try a different approach,” Rinaldi said. “Learned that in my interrogation workshop. Vary the approach.”

  Slidell nodded.

  “How’s this?” Slidell turned back to Tyree. “Why’d you do Tamela Banks and her little baby?”

  Tyree’s eyes showed the first hint of fear.

  “I didn’t do nothin’ to Tamela. We was together.”

  “Together?”

  “Axe anyone. Tamela and me, we was together. Why I gonna do her?”

  “That’s nice, isn’t it, Eddie. I mean, being together’s a great thing, don’t you think?”

  “All you need is love,” Rinaldi agreed.

  Slidell turned back to Tyree.

  “But you know, Darryl, sometimes a woman gets wandering eyes, know what I mean?” Slidell gave an exaggerated boys’ club wink. “My way of thinking, being together means being together. Sometimes a man’s gotta bring his gal back into line. Hell, we’ve all been down that road.”

  Tyree flopped his head to one side. “Beatin’ on a woman is messed up.”

  “Maybe one little slap? A punch to the kidneys?”

  “No, man. I ain’t into that shit.”

  “How about beating on a baby?”

  Tyree kicked out with one heel, his head flopped to the other side, and his eyes dropped to the ground.

  “Shi-i-t.”

  Slidell’s brows shot up in mock surprise.

  “We say something to offend you, Darryl?”

  Slidell turned to his partner.

  “Eddie, you think we offended Darryl? Or do you think Mr. Tough Guy’s got a secret he don’t want to share?”

  “We all have skeletons,” Rinaldi played along.

  “Yeah. But Darryl’s was a tiny one in a great big nasty woodstove.” Directed at Tyree.

  “I didn’t do nothin’ to Tamela.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “Baby jus’ dead.”

  “And the woodstove seemed like a touching memorial?”

  Another heel kick.

  “Man. Why you tryin’ to do me like this?”

  “We’re real sorry, Darryl. We realize this little setback might delay your making Eagle Scout.”

  Tyree shifted his feet.

  “Maybe I do a little bidness. That don’t mean I know nothin’ ’bout Tamela.”

  “A little business? We just nailed you with enough blow and E to send my three nephews through Harvard.”

  Slidell took two steps forward and put his face inches from Tyree’s.

  “You’re going down hard, Tyree.”

  Tyree tried to back up but the Chevy kept him trapped within breath range of Slidell.

  “Know how long baby killers last in the joint?”

  Tyree twisted his face as far to the side as his neck would allow.

  “I’d say about three months.” Over his shoulder to Rinaldi. “That sound about right to you, Eddie?”

  “Yeah. Maybe four if you’re tough.”

  “Like Darryl.”

  “Like Darryl.”

  I could take it no longer.

  “Please,” I said. “Do you know where Tamela is?”

  Tyree tipped his head and glanced over Slidell’s shoulder. For a moment his eyes fixed on mine. It was only a moment, but it was enough. I felt like I was looking into the dark, empty void of hell.

  Wordlessly, Tyree turned away.

  “Please,” I said to the side of his face. “It’s not too late to help yourself.”

  Snorting air through his nose, Tyree shifted his feet and gave a who-gives-a-shit shrug.

  A terrible thought kept recycling through my brain. Tamela and her family are dead. This man knows.

  This man knows a lot.

  As I watched Tyree being led off, a cold, sick feeling overcame me.

  * * *

  At the MCME, Tim Larabee’s office door was open. I suspected he’d been lying in wait for me. He called out as I passed.

  “Hear you’re bucking for a spot on NYPD Blue.”

  I stepped into his office.

  “Word is you wanted to do an orifice search on Tyree. Slidell had to restrain you.”

  “Slidell was in no shape to restrain anybody. I thought I’d have to do CPR on him.”

  “Tyree tell you anything useful?”

  “He’s innocent as Saint Bernardette.”

  “That the kid saw the Virgin at Lourdes?”

  I nodded.

  “Cute analogy.”

  “I was taught by nuns.”

  “Hard to break the habit.”

  Eye roll.

  “Now what?” Larabee asked.

  “Once they’ve completed intake, Rinaldi and Slidell are going to grill Tyree, play him off against Sonny Pounder. One or the other will roll over.”

  “My money’s on Pounder.”

  “Good bet. The question is, how much does Sonny know?”

  Larabee’s face got the look of a kid bursting with a secret.

  “Guess who’s in storage?”

  Larabee’s way of referring to a decedent’s sojourn to the morgue. Temporary storage.

  “Ricky Don Dorton.”

  “Old news.”

  “Osama bin Laden.”

  “Better than that.”

  I gave him a come-on gesture with my fingers.

  The name was the last I expected to hear.

  “BRIAN AIKER.”

  I felt a plunging sensation like you get just before screaming downward toward terra firma on a roller coaster. One of my toothpick towers was collapsing.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Body was found in Aiker’s car. Lots of ID on the body. A perfect match on the dentals.”

  “But the skull, the Lancaster bones . . .,” I sputtered.

  “Not your boy. You already knew the skull wasn’t his. Turns out the bones aren’t either.”

  “How? Where?” I was too taken aback to ask meaningful questions.

  “Hauled his car out of a small lake at Crowder’s Mountain State Park.”

  “What was Aiker doing at Crowder’s Mountain?”

  “Not paying attention at the wheel.”

  “It took five years to find him?”

  “Apparently it’s not a popular lake.”

  “Why now?”

  “The region’s experiencing drought conditions, water levels are down. Kid slid down the embankment or fell off the jetty or some damn thing. Car was a couple yards off a boat landing, roof twenty inches below the surface.”

  It happens all the time. A couple leaves a restaurant, vanishes. Two years later their Acura is found at the bottom of their neighborhood pond. Grandpa drops the kids off, heads home. Next Christmas the old man’s Honda is spotted in a culvert under the highway. Mama releases the brake and steers the family SUV into a reservoir, boys and all. Four months later a propeller hits metal, and vehicle and victims are hauled from the muck.

  Thousands drive, golf, pedal, or walk by accident scenes every year. No one spots anything. Then someone does.

  “Windows were up, car was sealed well enough to keep the crabs and fish out,” Larabee continued. “Aiker doesn’t look that bad, considering how long he was in the drink.”

  “Where?”

  Larabee misunderstood my question.

  “Backseat.”

  “Was the body sent to Chapel Hill?”

  Larabee shook his head.

  “They’ve got two pathologists on vacation and one out sick. Chief asked if I’d mind doing the post here.”

  I nodded absently, my mind on bones that were not Brian Aiker’s. Larabee picked up on my mood.

  “Guess that leaves you sucking wind with the privy skull and the Lancaster bones.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ever get that report you were waiting for?”

  “No.”

  Larabee waited while I sorted through my thoughts. He was still waiting when his phone rang. After hesitating a moment, he reached for it.

  I withdrew to my office for more sorting. The process did not go well. I tried adding coffee. No improvement.

  Opening my laptop, I tried organizing in cyber bytes what I’d learned in the last eleven days.

  Category: Places. Foote farm. Airplane crash site. Lancaster County, South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina. Crowder’s Mountain State Park.

  Weren’t the Lancaster remains also found in a state park? I made a note.

  Category: People. Tamela Banks. Harvey Pearce. Jason Jack Wyatt. Ricky Don Dorton. Darryl Tyree. Sonny Pounder. Wally Cagle. Lawrence Looper. Murray Snow. James Park. Brian Aiker.

  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.”