ELEVEN
JANE SQUINTED INTO THE MICROSCOPE’S EYEPIECE, TRYING TO MAKE out some distinguishing feature, but what she saw through the lens looked scarcely different from all the other hairs that she’d seen over the years. She moved aside to let Tam have a peek.
“What you’re seeing on that slide is a guard hair,” said Erin. “Guard hairs function as an animal’s outer coat.”
“And that’s different from fur?” asked Tam.
“Yes, it is. Fur is from the inner coat, and it provides insulation. Humans don’t have fur.”
“So if this is a hair, what does it come from?”
“It might be easier,” said Erin, “to tell you what it doesn’t come from. The pigmentation is consistent throughout the shaft length, so we know it’s an animal whose hair has the same color from root to tip. There are no coronal scales, which eliminates rodents and bats.”
Tam looked up from the microscope. “What are coronal scales?”
“Scales are structures that make up the cuticle-the outside of the hair, like the scales of a fish. The patterns in which the scales line up are characteristic of certain animal families.”
“And you said that coronal scales are on rodents.”
She nodded. “This hair lacks spinous scales as well, which tells us it didn’t come from a cat, a mink, or a seal.”
“Are we going down the whole list of animal species?” asked Jane.
“To some extent, this is a process of elimination.”
“And so far you’ve eliminated rats, bats, and cats.”
“Correct.”
“Great,” muttered Jane. “We can cross Batman and Catwoman off our list of suspects.”
Sighing, Erin pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Detective Rizzoli, I’m just explaining how difficult it is to identify an animal hair using only light microscopy. These morphologic clues help me eliminate some animal groups, but this specimen isn’t like anything I’ve encountered in this lab.”
“What else can you eliminate?” asked Tam.
“If it were deer or caribou, the root would be wineglass-shaped, and the hair would be coarser. So it’s not in the deer family. The color argues against raccoon or beaver, and it’s too coarse for rabbit or chinchilla. If I were to go by the shape of the root, the diameter, and the scale pattern, I’d say it’s most similar to human hair.”
“Then why couldn’t it be human?” asked Jane.
“Take another look in the microscope.”
Jane bent down to peer into the eyepiece. “What am I supposed to focus on?”
“Notice how it’s fairly straight, not kinked like a sexual hair from the pubic or underarm regions.”
“Making this a head hair?”
“That’s what I thought at first. That this was a human head hair. Now focus on the medulla, the central core of the strand. It’s like a channel running down the length of the hair. There’s something very strange about this specimen.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“The medullary index. It’s the ratio between the diameter of the medulla and the diameter of the hair. I’ve looked at countless human specimens and I’ve never seen a medulla this wide in a head hair. In humans, the normal index is less than a third. This is more than half the diameter of the strand. It’s not just a channel, it’s a huge, honking pipe.”
Jane straightened and looked at Erin. “Could it be some kind of medical condition? A genetic abnormality?”
“None that I know of.”
“Then what is this hair?” asked Tam.
Erin took a deep breath, as though trying to find the right words. “In almost every other way, this looks human. But it’s not.”
Jane’s startled laugh cut through the silence. “What are we talking about here? Sasquatch?”
“I’m guessing it’s some sort of nonhuman primate. A species I can’t identify with microscopy. There are no epithelial cells attached, so the only DNA we can look at would be mitochondrial.”
“It would take forever to get those results,” said Tam.
“So there’s one more test I’m thinking about,” said Erin. “I found a scientific article out of India, about electrophoretic analysis of hair keratin. They have a huge problem with the illegal fur trade, and they use this test to identify the furs of exotic species.”
“Which labs can run that test?”
“There are several wildlife labs in the US I can contact. It may turn out to be the quickest way to identify the species.” Erin looked at the microscope. “One way or another, I’m going to find out what this hairy creature is.”
RETIRED DETECTIVE HANK BUCKHOLZ looked like a man who’d fought a long, hard war with devil alcohol and had finally surrendered to the inevitable. Jane found him in his usual spot, sitting at the bar in J. P. Doyle’s, staring into a glass of scotch. It wasn’t even five PM yet, but by the looks of him Buckholz had already gotten a good head start for the evening, and when he stood up to greet her, she noticed his unsteady handshake and watery eyes. But eight years of retirement could not break old habits, and he still dressed like a detective, in a blazer and oxford shirt, even if that shirt was frayed around the collar.
It was still early for the usual crowd at Doyle’s, a favorite hangout for Boston PD cops. With one wave, Buckholz was able to catch the bartender’s attention. “Her drink’s on me,” he announced, pointing to Jane. “What would you like, Detective?”
“I’m good, thanks,” said Jane.
“Come on. Don’t make an old cop drink alone.”
She nodded to the bartender. “Sam Adams lager.”
“And a refill for me,” added Buckholz.
“You want to move to a table, Hank?” asked Jane.
“Naw, I like it right here. This is my stool. Always has been. Besides,” he added, glancing around at the nearly empty room, “who’s here to listen in? This is such an old case, no one’s paying attention anymore. Except for maybe the family.”
“And you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to let go, you know? All these years later, the ones I never closed, they still keep me up at night. The Charlotte Dion case especially, because it ticked me off when her father hired a PI to follow up on it. Implication being I’m a lousy cop.” He grunted and took a gulp of scotch. “All that money he wasted, just to prove that I didn’t miss anything.”
“So the PI never got anywhere, either?”
“Nope. That girl just plain vanished. No witnesses, no evidence except her backpack, left in the alley. Nineteen years ago, we didn’t have nearly as many surveillance cameras around to catch anything. Whoever snatched her did it quick and clean. Had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It was a school field trip. She went to this fancy boarding school, the Bolton Academy, out past Framingham. Thirty kids came into the city on a private bus to walk the Freedom Trail. Their stop at Faneuil Hall was a last- minute decision. Teacher told me the kids got hungry, so that’s where they went for lunch. I’m thinking the perp spotted Charlotte and just moved in.” He shook his head. “Talk about a high-profile snatch. Patrick Dion’s a venture capitalist and he was in London when it happened. Flew home on his own private jet. Considering who he was, and his net worth, I expected there’d be a ransom demand. But it never came. Charlotte just dropped off the face of the earth. No clues, no body. Nothing.”
