Page 77 of The Bone Code

Herrin returned my call two hours later. The conversation made our last one seem downright effusive.

Sounding exhausted, Herrin apologized for not following through with Griesser. Explained that the samples had been collected but not sent. Same excuse. An explosion in the number of capno cases.

Herrin promised a FedEx shipment would go out by day’s end.

Lizzie’s email hit my in-box at five p.m. on Tuesday. According to her phenotype report, the woman and the child were both of western European ancestry, with pale skin, blue or green eyes, dark brown to black hair, and no freckles. All predictions were at confidence levels above ninety percent. No surprises there.

I dug out my facial approximations from 2006 and placed them beside my laptop. Then I opened Lizzie’s composite profiles.

The woman’s eyes were large, her nose long and narrow, her jaw tapering to a prominent chin. The child’s forehead was high, her eyes wide-set and slanted obliquely toward her temples.

Both sets of images shared those features. But beyond these vague similarities, I might have been viewing different women and children, those on my screen more realistic than those on the tabletop.

My old facial approximations had been based solely on bone. I’ve never been a fan of the technique. This comparison confirmed that skepticism. And explained why our sketches had produced no results back in 2006.

Lizzie’s reproductions had been generated by digitally combining the lab’s DNA predictions with detailed cranial photos and measurements that I’d provided.

I stared at the images. The faces were so vivid, so real. So young. I felt the old heartbreak rekindle anew.

Ignoring the black hole burning in my chest, I forwarded Lizzie’s attachment to Ryan. He could view the report while convalescing.

Ryan was released midmorning on Wednesday. The shaved patch of scalp was now covered with tape, and the shiners were morphing from purple to sickly yellow-green.

After driving Ryan home, I made grilled cheese sandwiches and served them with root beer, Ryan’s choice of beverage. The phone rang before I’d cleared the table.

Charbonneau and Claudel were in the lobby. They’d been busting ass trying to find the guy who’d run us down and wanted to do some follow-up with Ryan. Reluctantly, I buzzed them in.

As I made coffee, Claudel scanned the decor, a look of disdain wrinkling his parrot nose. Fortunately for him, he kept his critique to himself.

We all took our mugs to the dining-room table. When we’d settled, Charbonneau began the interview.

Ryan still remembered little about the attack. I filled in gaps in his timeline. It was just rehash. We’d been over these details.

Then Claudel switched gears, picking up on a thread from a hospital meeting from which I’d been absent.

“We spent yesterday in Ferdinand.”

“Where Rupert and Agnes Schultz lived.” I was playing catch-up. Apparently, Claudel and Charbonneau were talking to people involved in Ryan’s auto death case. Because Ryan was laid up? Unofficially, since the parties all lived in Vermont? Or because they suspected a connection to the attack?

Claudel ignored me. “The town is the size of my left nut.”

“Place must be pretty damn small,” I mumbled, irritated at being dismissed.

Claudel ignored that, too.

“Agnes wasn’t at any address you gave us and didn’t answer any number you provided.” Claudel was directing all his comments to Ryan. “We asked around, finally found this dimwit clerk at the Circle-K who thought maybe she might know the old lady. There’s one chick won’t be getting any invite to Mensa.”

“She directed us to a house,” Charbonneau jumped in.

Claudel mimicked, I assumed, the unfortunate clerk. “Down t’ end of Broadberry. The green one wif t’ white shutters needs painting.”

No one laughed.

“Turned out the house belonged to Agnes’s mother, Mary Gertrude. Lady must have been in her nineties,” Charbonneau said. “Mary Gertrude phoned Agnes, she came, they both had a big cry, then the two of them started pulling out albums to show us photos of Rupert.”

“Guy looked like a hemorrhoid gone bad.” Claudel’s smirk made me want to smack it from his face.

“It’s nice to know someone is grieving for Rupert,” I said, recalling the cavalier attitude of his coworkers.