Page 56 of The Bone Code

“From the exhumed bones?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be damned. Has the reopened case been assigned to someone at SQ?”

“A guy named Trout.”

“I know Trout.” I sensed words left unsaid. Uncomplimentary ones. “Let me see what I can do.”

“Really?”

“I’m a genius, remember.”

“If I send the official report, can you run the profiles throughNDDB, CODIS, the DNA Gateway, whatever?” I was referring to the Canadian national DNA database and the U.S. and Interpol equivalents. And suchlike.

I waited out an interlude of impatient honking. Then, “Can do.”

“I’ll update our entries on NamUS and the Canadian sites for missing persons and unidentified remains,” I added.

“Don’t get your hopes up. We tried this in 2006.”

“We didn’t have DNA in 2006.”

“True.”

“Willoughby did share a couple of interesting things. The child is definitely female.”

“You knew that.”

“I strongly suspected that.”

“She did have that ring.”

“That’s hardly proof. DNA is. Also, the woman and the child are related.”

“Mother and daughter?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s something.”

“It is. Where are you?”

“Driving to Burlington.”

“Vermont?”

“As I told you, my dead guy’s wife is claiming her husband’s car crash was a workplace-related death. She says she’s owed two hundred thousand big ones.”

“The policy pays that much?”

“If she’s right about the circumstances.”

“Why did she wait four years to file?”

“That’s what the adjuster would like to know.”

Sudden guilty realization. I’d been so focused on my own concerns I’d shown no interest in Ryan’s.