Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

I was on E Street, approaching the Mucha truck, when my mobile sounded.

Seeing the number, I groaned inwardly, but felt compelled to answer. After all, the woman was housing me until Thacker could secure a hotel room.

“Hey, Ivy. What’s up?”

“ Les oiseaux dans le ciel . You?”

“I just finished analyzing the subcellar remains,” I said, puzzled by her reference to birds in the sky. To impress me with her command of French?

“Any surprises?” she asked.

“There are always surprises.”

Careful, Brennan. The woman is a reporter.

Doyle didn’t press.

“I’ve been digging into the Foggy Bottom property. Did you find anything else down below that you might feel comfortable sharing?”

As a gesture I offered an insignificant detail. I told her about the glass shards.

“Awesome. The place has quite the colorful history. This is going to make a fantab story.”

Offering nothing further on her fantab scoop. Fair enough.

“I’ll be home by seven,” she went on. “Are you interested in dinner?”

“I don’t want to—”

“What shall I have Lan make?”

“I’m good with anything.”

“Any food allergies?”

Jesus. Was I going on a cruise?

“I don’t care for eel.”

“No eel it is. See you later.”

“Later.”

We disconnected.

The menu was staring right at me from the side of the truck. One small starter couldn’t hurt.

I went with a pork taco with mango salsa. A horchata to wash it down. What were the chances Lan would cook Mexican?

Lan went full-bore Thai.

Som Tam. Kaeng Lueang. Khao Pad. Khao Niao Mamuang.

Spicy green papaya salad. Yellow curry. Fried rice. Mango sticky rice. She explained each dish as it hit the table.

Despite my earlier snack at the Mucha truck, I did my share. More than my share.

Doyle and I exchanged small talk as we ate.

She asked how I’d come to be a forensic anthropologist. I outlined my post-Northwestern years in academia, my early focus on bioarchaeology, my unforeseen shift into the medico-legal world.

Out of courtesy, I queried her career path. She described the tortuous climb toward her current job at WTTG.

Following the completion of a degree in communications and journalism at Brown, Doyle said she’d taken jobs in Yuma, Arizona; Springfield, Missouri; and Sioux City, Iowa. After almost a decade in smaller cities, she’d been lured by an incredible offer to a station in Columbia, South Carolina. A midsized market.

While in Columbia, she’d been sent to cover the war in Afghanistan and had met Katy. Those reports had led to her shot at the big time: Washington, DC. The position wasn’t exactly what she’d envisioned for herself, but the US capital was a huge broadcast area and being there would put her close to breaking national stories.

At first, she’d covered traffic for the local CBS affiliate. After that, she’d worked as a field reporter and occasional fill-in anchor at the regional NBC station. Six long years, then a FOX producer took notice and offered her the position she now held.

As Doyle spoke, giving dates and durations at each location, I did that math thing you do in your head. Realized the woman was older than I’d estimated. Older than she looked.

Doyle’s dream was an anchor desk with a major network. And a nationally syndicated true crime series. For now, she was reading the news at four, seven, and eleven p.m., doing her podcast, and hoping to be discovered again.

Ivy Doyle was a poster child for the bright and attractive young women currently in demand by TV news departments. And definitely ambitious. Why, I wondered, had her career not progressed more quickly?

Eventually, inevitably, the conversation shifted to the Foggy Bottom fire.

When Doyle asked about the subcellar vic, I laid out the basics, essentially the same spiel I’d given Burgos.

“Impressive that you managed to lift prints.”

“I only got two partials. And that took some doing.”

“Thacker will have them run through IAFIS?”

Doyle used the acronym for the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a massive database used for the storage and analysis of fingerprint records. A latent print examiner once told me that the IAFIS software was so sophisticated it could search more than a billion prints in a single second.

“She will,” I said.

“Do you really think she could get a hit?”

“If the lady’s in the system.”

“What might get her in there?”

I shrugged. “Criminal record. Job application. Military service.” The last seemed unlikely, given the woman’s diminutive size.

“How early are the oldest records in the database?”

“I’m not sure. But cops started using prints back in the 1800s.”

Doyle thought about that, then asked,

“COD?” Cause of death?

“Undetermined.”

“Suspicious?”

“I doubt the woman stuffed herself into that sack.”

Cringe face. Then,

“PMI?” Doyle was certainly up on her forensic lingo. This one was an acronym for postmortem interval. I assumed her familiarity was due to her frequent coverage of crime stories.

“Hard to be exact. But given the state of the woman’s body and clothing, and the conditions in the subcellar, I’d say a minimum of five years.”

“Could it be much longer than that?”

“Absolutely. Why do you ask?”

Doyle waited a beat too long before answering. A revealing tell. Though willing to take, the reporter in her was hesitant to give.

“No reason.” Doyle flashed me the smile that melted the hearts of millions.

No reason, my ass.

“I found more info on the building.” Doyle shifted gears. “Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

Doyle rose and crossed to the Louis Vuitton purse she’d dropped onto the sideboard. I’d had a knockoff once, purchased from a street vendor in New York. The strap broke within a year. Hers was the real deal. As was the notebook she withdrew, pen clipped to its blue leather cover. Small white symbols identified both as Montblanc.

Lan reappeared as Doyle was returning to the table.

“Would you like coffee here or in the study, ma’am?”

We chose the study. Lan dipped her head ever so slightly and disappeared.

Minutes later we were settled in two Herman Miller Eames lounge chairs, our feet on the plush white leather ottomans. The Montblanc journal lay on Doyle’s upraised knees.

“The property has had surprisingly few owners over the years.” Splaying the pages open with the press of one palm.

“Unusual for such an old building.”

Lan tiptoed in and placed a steaming mug beside each of us. We took a moment to sip.

“Would you like something stronger?” Doyle asked.

You bet your ass, I thought.

“No thanks,” I said.

“We know that the house that burned down was designed by Hiram L. Pepper,” Doyle continued. “I confirmed that it was built in 1911.”

“The date on the plans.”

“The first title holder was a man named Ansel Dankworth. Dankworth owned a paper box factory on the northern edge of Georgetown.”

“Paper boxes must have been profitable.”

Doyle’s eyes rolled to meet mine. “Until the factory went up in flames in 1924. Six women died because the fire doors were locked to prevent employees from sneaking in late or slipping out to smoke. The media made a circus of Dankworth’s unsafe working conditions. He sold his Foggy Bottom home the following year.”

I’d seen photos of turn-of-the-century workshops and sweathouses. Felt sadness imagining the terror experienced by those trapped workers.

Doyle’s gaze dropped back to her notes.

It was almost ten. I’d slept poorly the previous night, awakened at dawn. Put in a long and difficult day at the morgue. Ingested at least ten pounds of Thai food. Despite the coffee, my brain was signaling its intent to clock out. Still, I tried to pay attention.

“The next owner was Caleb Sheridan. Sheridan owned three hardware stores. Lost them all when the market crashed in’29. Declared bankruptcy and sold the Foggy Bottom property in 1930.”

Focused on her notes, Doyle didn’t notice that I was fading.

“The third owner was a woman named Unique Swallow. Documents described Swallow as a spinster, her occupation as ‘business owner.’?”

Doyle looked up and flashed an apologetic look. “I could find nothing in the archives specifying the nature of Unique’s enterprise.”

I nodded, thinking of the more colorful possibilities. Had Miss Swallow supplied services of a personal nature?

“Not sure what happened to Unique, but in 1942 the house sold to an entity called W-C Commerce. W-C still owns the property today.”

“Is it a partnership or a sole proprietorship?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

“How?” Stifling a yawn.

“I have my sources.” Coy.

Though I was fighting the good fight, the exhaustion must have shown on my face.

Doyle closed the Montblanc with a definitive snap.

“Off with you now.” She stood. “I’ll have more tomorrow.”

“I really am intrigued.”

“Get some shut-eye.”

“Are you on-air tomorrow?”

Doyle nodded. “The news rests for no man. Or woman. As a matter of fact, it’s time I go to the station now.”

I’d just crawled under the covers when the dreaded, though not unexpected, phone call came.