Page 11 of Cold, Cold Bones

“Who’s the newbie?”

“Henry. A real piece of work.”

Three beeps, then I was listening to dead air.

“Skinny’s up to form,” Katy said.

“You heard that?”

“You were holding the phone away from your ear. Do you really think your neighbor is capable of this?”

“Not really.”

“You got a laptop?” Katy asked.

“Does a duck have a bill?” I replied.

“Only when it dines out.”

“Bada-bing. We’re on the same page, right? We run the GPS, see what pops.”

As Katy set water to boil, I booted my Mac Air and entered the eyeball coordinates into Google Earth. The globe had just stopped whirling and zooming in when she crossed to peer over my shoulder.

We both stared at the screen.

“What the hell?” Katy voiced our mutual astonishment.

3

MONDAY, JANUARY31

“That was fast.” The kid looked about ten minutes out of high school. His hair was blond and badly cut, his cheeks mottled with alarmingly inflamed zits. The Belmont Abbey College campus cop uniform hung like an older brother’s hand-me-down on his thin frame. A big one.

“I’m sorry?” I phrased it as a question.

“Y’all are here about the privy, yeah?” Even filtered through the blue cone covering his nose and mouth, the kid’s voice was unexpectedly resonant.

Random thought. At first, I found masking outside the autopsy room quite bizarre. Now I slap on my N95 and hardly notice that others are similarly garbed.

Slidell drew air to speak. The paper rectangle riding his lips sucked into a deep concavity.

Taking pity on the kid, I jumped in. “The thing in the privy?” I said, again raising my voice to indicate a question.

“You’re cops, right?” Looking from Slidell to me and back. “I mean. We just got the call.”

“What call?”

“To check out an old privy behind MV.”

“Who called?”

“Someone at MV, I guess.”

“What’s MV?”

“MiraVia.”

“Which is?”