have misunderstood her instructions. No Lily. I waited some more. An hour after she told me to be there, the little bitch comes strolling out. Laughing, not a care in the world. And get this. She’s with some loser mall crawler thinks he’s 50 Cent.”
“You took off and left her?”
My gaze met Ryan’s. I could hear shrill indignation buzzing through his handset.
“As far as I’m concerned, Miss Island Diva can spend the rest of her life shopping her little black ass off.”
“Katy!”
“
“Are you finished?”
Silence.
“Here’s what you will do.”
More silence.
“Are you listening?”
“Like I have a choice.”
I do not react well to histrionics. To me, drama queen displays are a waste of time and energy. My tone reinforced what my daughter already knew.
“Turn around. Go back to Ala Moana. Now.”
“Traffic is sick. It will take me forever.”
“You should have thought of that.”
“You’re down there, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You could pick her up.”
“Yes, I could.” Weighty pause. “Go back. Get Lily. Drive her to Lanikai.”
Ryan was laying parallel directives on his daughter.
“She won’t—”
“She’ll be there.” Sharp. “Ryan and I will be home at five thirty. At which time we will all have a nice little chat.”
I clicked off and looked at Ryan. He merely wagged his head.
Danny had 1968-979’s X-rays arranged beside the X-rays we’d just taken from Xander Lapasa’s file.
One glance told the story.
In both, a small white glob glowed in the first upper left molar. Though truncated on the postmortem film, the glob that remained in the molar was nearly identical to the top half of the glob on the antemortem film.
“Looks like Illinois,” I said.
“With everything south of Springfield broken off.” Danny pointed his pen at one of the bitewings. “And lookee here.”
I did.
An opaque line crossed the right mandibular ramus, near the junction of the vertical and horizontal parts of the jaw.
Danny shot out a hip. I bumped it with mine.
Dorky, I know. But we like doing it.
“What?” Ryan asked.
“When we examined 1968-979 we saw what we thought were old fractures. One in the shoulder and one in the jaw.” I tapped the jagged line. “That’s a healed break.”
“Nice,” Ryan said. “What about the dental work?”
“It’s a match,” I said. “One of the dentists will have to verify, of course, but 1968-979 is undoubtedly Alexander Lapasa.”
Hot damn. One down.
But other questions remained.
Was Lapasa on the Huey that crashed near Long Binh? If so, why?
Was Spider Lowery also aboard that chopper?
Why was Lapasa wearing Lowery’s dog tag?
Why was the tag boxed with 1968-979’s bones and not processed through proper channels?
If Lowery was on the Huey, how did he end up dead in Quebec?
If Lowery died in Quebec, as suggested by fingerprint evidence, who was 2010-37, the man I’d disinterred in
