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Smith hung up, and I finished getting dressed in a white button-down and pale blue sweater-vest before picking up the phone, giving Elliot until six-fifty-one before rudely interrupting his sleep.

“Are you dying?” was the first thing he said to me.

“No. And neither is anyone else, as far as I know.”

“Then what thefuckdo you want?” He was even crankier than I was when awakened too early.

“Smith wants to come over and swab the window in your dad’s office so we can take the DNA sample to the FBI lab in Green Bay to run,” I told him, rushing through the explanation so that he wouldn’t just hang up on me.

I could almost hear him trying to process that many words. “Fine. But you’re bringing me something tasty for breakfast.”

“Define ‘tasty.’”

“Something with sausage. And some of that fancy coffee shit you drink.”

“We’ll be there at seven-thirty.”

“Do I have to shower?”

“No, but pants would be nice.”

“Fuck you, Val.”

“You, too, Bucky.”

He hung up on me. No big surprise there.

Taavi seemed to have woken up a bit more. “You’re going to the FBI office in Green Bay?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He ran a hand over his face. “Do you know how long you’ll be gone?”

“Not really,” I answered honestly. “Hopefully we’ll be back before dinner, but who knows.”

“This is good, though, right?”

“I think so,” I replied. “Smith said that the feds in Green Bay were interested in Gregory’s case, and they’re going to run DNA, which could lead us directly to at least one of the killers, if his profile is in the system. At the very least, it means that we have a little more push on the case, and hopefully that will also lead to progress on some of the others, too.” Like Tara Redsky, Mariah Bowan, Devon Swiftwater, Aaron Boushie, and Janice Butcher. Hopefully all of them.

“Good,” Taavi pronounced, then tilted his head up the way he did when he wanted a kiss. I bent carefully to give him one. “Take your meds,” he reminded me.

“I will.”

“And Val?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“I will. And I’ll be good and stay by the nice police detective.”

Taavi snorted. “Try not to let him get stabbed, either.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I went downstairs and broke the news to my mother, who proceeded to make up a recycled-paper plate of cookies for Smith that she covered with green plastic wrap and topped with a bow from the basket of them on the counter.

“Mom, why do you have bows on the counter?”