“Long-held cultural beliefs die hard.”
“Phrased like an anthropologist. Speaking of which, why are you interested in Spix’s macaws and black bears?”
I sorted through the events of the past week. What to share? What to hold back?
Tamela Banks and Darryl Tyree?
Possibly unrelated. Confidential.
Ricky Don Dorton and the Cessna crash?
Ditto.
Yesterday’s cyber threats?
Probably irrelevant.
I told Zamzow about the findings at the Foote farm, excluding only the part about Tamela Banks’s license. I also told him about the Lancaster County skeleton.
For a full thirty seconds I listened to nothing.
“Are you still there?” I asked, thinking we’d been disconnected.
“I’m here.”
I heard him swallow.
“You at the ME office?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be working awhile?”
“Yes.” Where the hell was this going?
“I’ll be there in three hours.”
22
ZAMZOW ARRIVED JUST PAST NOON. HE WAS A HEAVYSET MAN, probably in his forties, with thick, bristly hair cropped very short. His skin was pasty, his eyes the identical ginger of his hair and freckles, giving him a pale, monochromatic appearance, like someone who’d been born and lived his whole life in a cave.
Seating himself in the chair opposite my desk, Zamzow got straight to the point.
“This may be nothing, but I was going to be passing on my way to the Pee Dee Wildlife Refuge in Anson County this morning, so I thought I’d divert over to Charlotte and lay it on you in person.”
I said nothing, completely at a loss as to what was of such importance that Zamzow felt it needed a face-to- face.
“Five years back, two FWS agents disappeared. One worked out of my office, the other was in North Carolina on temporary assignment.”
“Tell me about them.” I felt a shiver of excitement ripple down my spine.
Zamzow drew a photo from a shirt pocket and laid it on my desk. In it, a young man leaned against a stone bridge. His arms were folded and he was smiling. On his shirt I could see the same badge and shoulder patch that Zamzow was wearing.
I flipped the picture.
“The agent’s name was Brian Aiker,” Zamzow said.
“Age?” I asked.
“Thirty-two. Aiker had been with us three years when he went missing. Nice fellow.”
“Height?”
“Tall guy. I’d say six-one, six-two.”
“He was white,” I said, flipping back to the front of the photo.
“Yeah.”
“And the visiting agent?”
“Charlotte Grant Cobb. Odd duck, but a good officer. Cobb was with the service more than ten years.”
“Do you have a picture?”
Zamzow shook his head. “Cobb didn’t like being photographed. But I can request her file if you think it’s warranted. The service has a photo ID of every agent.”
“Cobb is female?”
“Yeah. White, I’d say mid-thirties.”
“What was she working?”
