I couldn’t wait to phone Slidell.
There was no need. My cell rang as I was turning from campus onto University Boulevard. It was Slidell.
“Talked with the Lancaster County sheriff.”
“What did he have?”
“Mostly holes.”
“Meaning?”
Ryan reached out and reduced the volume of his Hawksley Workman and the Wolves CD to background.
“No one knows nothing much.”
That was not what I wanted to hear.
“The bones did go down to your buddy Cagle.”
“You contacted him?”
“Ever try getting an academic on the horn in August?”
“Did you try his home?”
“His home. His office. His lab. Thinking about setting up a seance with his dead granny.”
Slidell spoke to someone else, came back to me.
“Department secretary finally hooked me up with his top-secret, tell- you- and- I’ll- have- to- kill- you cell phone number. Guy sounded like he was wearing fuchsia tights.”
“And?”
“Walter”—Slidell gave the name a three-note trill—“was excavating on some island off Beaufort, South Carolina. Said he’d get hold of his grad student to read him the Lancaster report as soon as he finished digging up some dead Indian.”
“That was nice of him.”
“Yeah. I’m thinking of mailing him some chocolate chips.”
“Did you run the descriptors through NCIC?”
“Not sure about sex, not sure about time of death. No dentals, tattoos, prints, height, weight. I’d get a printout the length of Soldier Field.”
Slidell was right. Based on what we knew, a national database search of missing persons would be pointless. I changed tacks.
“Ryan and I just met with an ornithologist. Your feathers come from a bird that’s been extinct in the wild since 2000.”
“How’d they get into Pounder’s basement?”
“Good question.”
“Got a good answer?”
“These birds can go for a hundred thousand dollars.”
“You’re shitting me. Who’d pay a hundred grand for a bird?”
“People with more money than brains.”
“That legal?”
“Not if the bird is wild.”
“You’re thinking black market?”
“Could explain why the feathers were hidden with the coke.”
“Doesn’t Tweetie have to be chirping to bring the bucks?”
“It could have died in transport.”
“So the mope saves the feathers thinking they might be worth something.”
“And buries the carcass with the other animals he’s slaughtered.”
“The bear bones?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Thought you said they were garden-variety black bears.”
“I did.”
“That an endangered species?”
“No.”
A moment of empty air.
“Doesn’t hang,” Slidell said.
“Why so many bears?”
