Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

The ginger brows floated to the ginger hairline. In a moment of boredom, I’d switched my ringtone to Jelly Roll singing “Need a Favor.”

“Sorry,” I said, recognizing the number. “This has to do with the subcellar vic.”

“Take it,” she said.

“Brennan,” I answered.

“Waylon Colt here.” Then, in case I didn’t recall his name, “At NYP Corp.”

“Thanks for getting back to me, Mr. Colt.”

Doyle made a “who-the-hell” face at me.

“Do you mind if I put you on speaker, Mr. Colt?”

“I sure as sugar don’t.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your bag’s a good un’,” Colt said. “But it took some digging to track her down.”

Which was my cue to say how much I appreciated his help.

“I really appreciate your help, sir.”

I mouthed “burlap bag” to Doyle. She shook her head, not understanding.

“Yes, ma’am. Your Swifty Spud’s a dandy. Can’t say as I minded looking her up.”

“I’m glad you found the burlap bag of interest.”

I enunciated clearly for Doyle’s sake. She raised a thumb to show she got my meaning.

“I’ll cut right to the chase, seeing as that’s what you said you was after. That bag was made by KAT, Inc. of Patterson, New Jersey. She was produced as a limited run for only five years.”

I waited for Colt to expand. He didn’t.

“And those five years were?” I prompted.

Colt made a chuttery noise that might have been a chuckle.

“Your bag is a war baby. Born between 1940 and 1945.”

“That’s very helpful, Mr. Colt. Thank you so much.”

“You’re most welcome, ma’am. You ever want to sell that lovely lady, you give me a ring.”

“Will do.”

“Blessed day,” and Colt disconnected.

Doyle and I looked at each other.

“Doesn’t help much, does it?” she asked.

“I know the subcellar vic died after 1940. At a time when the house belonged either to Unique Swallow or to W-C Commerce.”

“Now you’re getting somewhere.”

Teasing. But the dig struck a nerve.

“You could just let it go.” Doyle reached for her mug. Grimaced at the contents and set it back down.

“You’re right. I could.” Hearing the lack of conviction in my own voice. “The Foggy Bottom vics aren’t my problem.”

“True. Thacker will deal with the four DOAs from the fire. If it was arson, as Burgos claims, those deaths are homicides. Deery will investigate that.”

Doyle glanced at her watch.

“Yikes! Gotta go!”

Shooting to her feet, she added,

“Thacker constantly struggles with budgetary issues. Will she really give a rat’s ass about a woman dead maybe eighty years?”

I had no answer to that.

“DC’s homicide rate has increased by more than twenty-five percent over the last few years. Deery’s caseload is undoubtedly mammoth. Will he?”

I had to agree. It was unlikely resources would be spent on such an old case.

“I know you want to head home. But think about hanging long enough to check out these articles.” Doyle indicated the satchel holding her three hundred printouts. “Or you’re welcome to make your own copies. I’m not doing that again.”

After Doyle left, I sat a moment, thinking about her question. Questions.

Would Thacker care about the lady in the sack? Would Deery?

Was her death even a murder?

Why not let it go?

An hour later, I wasn’t loading my rollaboard into my car. I wasn’t motoring south imagining the Virginia of days gone by.

I was in an autopsy room at the Consolidated Forensic Lab, standing over a body bag containing the nameless subcellar vic. Her shriveled flesh looked almost colorless under the harsh fluorescents, her bones the pallid gray of molted snakeskin.

The burlap sack lay folded to the left of the corpse. The long, skinny braid was coiled inside a plastic container, dark and murky like a creature seen through frosted glass.

I stared at the cranial and mandibular trauma, searching for any detail I might have missed, one bleak scenario after another looping through my brain. A crash? An accident? An argument? A push?

Why the makeshift burlap shroud?

I imagined a man looming over the tiny woman. Raising an object, maybe a fist, in anger. The bone-shattering blows. The woman falling to her knees. The killer maneuvering her lifeless body into the sack. Dragging the sack downstairs to the basement, then to the subcellar, her battered head thumping against each riser.

I wondered what the woman’s life had been like. The clothing in which she’d died suggested one different from that of Unique Swallow or her ladies of the night.

Was she married to a kind man with a friendly small-town face? To a tool who overdrank and mistreated her?

Did she have kids? Want kids?

Did she have a harassing ex? A beau who sent her roses after every date?

The woman had been roughly Katy’s age when she’d died, her life barely begun when it was violently taken from her. What direction might it have gone had she been allowed to live it?

Stop! This is getting you nowhere.

I zipped the body bag, then informed the tech—surprisingly, Jamar was not on duty—that I was finished. After stripping off my gloves, I stepped from the gurney and left, heading toward the administrative side of the floor.

The receptionist tried to stop me, firmly but politely. Thacker’s office door was open, and I could see her slick-haired head bent over her desk.

Smiling, firmly but politely, I blew past the gatekeeper.

Thacker looked up at the sound of my footsteps.

“Tempe. What a surprise.” Tone implying time would tell if that surprise was a pleasant one. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m wondering if you’ve had any feedback on the prints I lifted from case number 25-02106.”

Thacker looked blank.

“The DOA from the Foggy Bottom subcellar.”

“Of course. I was about to call you.”

Of course.

“I’m sorry to report there were no hits.”

“Where did you have them run?”

“Everywhere.”

I opened my mouth to query specifics, decided against it.

“Though disappointing, it’s not surprising,” Thacker said. “A petite gal like that? Unlikely she had a criminal record or served in the military.”

“Bonnie Parker stood only four feet eleven,” I countered, referencing the legendary bank robber. Where the hell did I pull that gem from?

“Uh-huh. Have you established PMI?”

I told Thacker what I’d learned from Waylon Colt.

“So the woman could have died any time in the last eight decades?” Thacker kept her face and voice carefully neutral.

I described the head trauma, matching the ME’s neutral with my own.

Thacker leaned back in her overly complex chair, fingers steepled below her chin. When I’d finished, she said nothing.

“Does DC have a statute of limitations on murder?” I asked.

“No.”

“I want to follow up on this.”

“On what? People get knocked down or fall down all the time.”

“Isn’t identifying the victim the first step in any homicide investigation?” Realizing my mistake, “In any death investigation?”

“No dentals, no prints. Extremely vague time of death.” Face blank. “What are you proposing?”

I was able to read Thacker now. Knew that behind the blank look her mind was already searching for a path toward additional free expertise.

“What do you know about forensic genetic genealogy?” I asked.

“It’s pricey as hell.”

“And?”

“The cops in Colorado used it to nail the Golden State Killer.”

“In California, actually.”

“Isn’t Golden a town in Colorado?” Thacker asked.

“Yes, but the killer preyed on victims across California.” I was growing impatient. “Do you know how genetic genealogy works?”

“I do. But something tells me I’m about to learn more.”

“Condensed version. An investigator collects a biological sample—blood, semen, hair, skin. That sample contains DNA that can be read through genetic sequencing.”

“ Might contain DNA.”

I acknowledge Thacker’s point with the lift of one hand. “Are you familiar with how that sequencing is done?”

“I am,” Thacker said. “And I know that once a genetic profile is created, that sequence is added to a public database of DNA sequences on a website like GEDmatch.”

“A database containing genetic profiles uploaded by consumers who’ve purchased DNA tests.”

Thacker had decided to keep playing along. “Yes, kits sold by companies like 23andMe or Ancestry. Why do people do that?”

Though probably a rhetorical question, I answered anyway.

“Maybe they’re curious about possible genetic predisposition to disease. Maybe they want to find relatives in Zimbabwe. Their motives aren’t the point. As you know, cops and coroners do it because they’re interested in whether an unknown body or perp, an unsub, is related to other people in the database.”

“Sure. Potential relatives are determined by the number of shared genetic variants. But how often does a user actually find a close relative?”

“Rarely,” I conceded. “Unless the user comes from a family whose members are all bonkers about genealogy. Usually what they find are third cousins or further out. That’s where traditional genealogy comes into play.”

Thacker nodded. “Tracking down records like birth, death, and marriage certificates, census data, obituaries, social media, etcetera. That data is then combined with the DNA data to build a family tree of individuals who might be related to the ‘unsub,’ as you term him or her. Then investigators use conventional methods like physical descriptions, eyewitness statements, timelines, to narrow the field. I don’t live in a cave, Tempe.”

“I never thought you did.”

“You’d like me to try to ID your subcellar vic using forensic genetic genealogy?”

“Yes.”

“No can do.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s loop back to my opening line.”

It took me a moment.

“It’s expensive?” I said.

“Far too expensive, given my budget. Do you know how many bodies I have in my coolers right now?”

“I don’t.”

“So many that I can’t justify burning funds on a case having such a low probability of success.”

“I’ll pay for it.” Before thinking it through, the words left my mouth. Why not? I’d made the same offer a few years earlier in a Montreal case.

Thacker looked at me with the long-suffering patience of a painted Madonna.

“You’ll pay for it?”

“I won’t bill for any of the work I’ve done for you. Everything will be pro bono , reports and all.”

Thacker’s eyes roved my face, razor sharp, before flicking away. A grin teased one corner of her lips.

“Would you sweeten the deal by agreeing to review a file or two?”

Really? The woman was haggling over price?

“No problem,” I said.

We eyed each other a long moment across the wide desk. Then,

“May I ask one question?”

“Sure,” I said. Sure that I wouldn’t like it.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why such an emotional commitment to this case?”

I hadn’t a good answer.