toting an Italian leather briefcase.
Skinny Slidell and Eddie Rinaldi have been partners since the eighties, to the puzzlement of all, since the two appear to be polar opposites.
Rinaldi is six feet four and carries a little over 160. Slidell is five-ten and carries a whole lot more, most of it south of where his waist should be. Rinaldi’s features are sharp. Slidell’s are fleshy and loose, the bags under his eyes the size of empanadas.
Why the Skinny handle? It’s a cop thing.
But the differences aren’t limited to physique. Slidell is messy. Rinaldi is neat. Slidell inhales junk food. Rinaldi eats tofu. Slidell is Elvis, Sam Cooke, and the Coasters. Rinaldi is Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Slidell’s clothes are blue-light special. Rinaldi’s are designer or custom-made.
Somehow the two stick. Go figure.
Slidell removed knockoff Ray-Bans and hung them by one bow in his jacket pocket. Today it was polyester, a plaid probably named for some golf course in Scotland.
“How’s it hangin’, doc?” Slidell sees himself as Charlotte’s very own Dirty Harry. Hollywood cop lingo is part of the schtick.
“Interesting morning.” I nodded at Rinaldi. “Detective.”
Rinaldi flicked a wave, attention fixed on the cauldrons and skulls.
That was Rinaldi. All focus. No jokes or banter. No complaining or bragging. No sharing of personal problems or victories. On duty, he was perennially polite, reserved, and unflappable.
Off duty? No one really knew much. Born in West Virginia, Rinaldi had attended college briefly, then come to Charlotte sometime in the seventies. He’d married, his wife had died shortly thereafter of cancer. I’d heard talk of a child, but had never witnessed the man mention a son or daughter. Rinaldi lived alone in a small brick house in a sedate, well-groomed neighborhood called Beverly Woods.
Other than his height, lofty taste in music, and penchant for expensive clothing, Rinaldi had no physical traits or personality quirks that other cops poked fun at. To my knowledge, he’d never been the butt of jokes concerning screwups or embarrassing incidents. Perhaps that’s why he’d never been tagged with a nickname.
Bottom line: Rinaldi was not the guy I’d invite to my margarita party, but, if threatened, he was the one I’d want covering my back.
Slidell raised and waggled splayed fingers. “Some cretin’s idea of a Halloween freak show, eh?”
“Maybe not.”
The waggling stopped.
I summarized the biological profile that I’d constructed from the skull.
“But the stuff’s older than dirt, right?”
“I estimate the girl’s been dead no less than five, no more than fifty years. My gut goes with the front end of that range.”
Slidell blew air through his lips. His breath smelled of tobacco.
“Cause of death?”
“The skull shows no signs of illness or injury.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s the jaw?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I found this in the large cauldron. About four inches down in the fill.”
I placed the school picture on the gurney. The men stepped forward to view it.
“Anything else?” Slidell’s eyes remained on the photo.
“Hunk of brain.”
Rinaldi’s brows floated up. “Human?”
“I hope not.”
Rinaldi and Slidell looked from the photo to the skull to the photo and back.
Rinaldi spoke first. “Think it’s the same young lady?”
“There’s nothing in the cranial or facial architecture to exclude the possibility. Age, sex, and race fit.”
“Can you do a photo superimposition?”
“Not much point without the lower jaw.”
“I suppose that also holds true for a facial approximation.”
I nodded. “The image would be too speculative, might distract rather than help with an ID.”
“Sonovabitch.” Slidell’s head wagged from side to side.
“We’ll start checking MP’s.” Rinaldi was referring to missing persons files.
“Go back ten years. If nothing pops, we can expand the time frame.”
“Not much sense sending her through NCIC.”
NCIC is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, a computerized index of criminal records, fugitives, stolen properties, and missing and unidentified persons. By comparing details entered by law enforcement, the system is able to match corpses found in one location with individuals reported missing in others.
But the database is huge. With only age, sex, and race as identifiers, and a time frame of up to fifty years, the list generated would look like a phone book.
“No,” I agreed. “Not without more.”
I told the detectives about the insects and the chicken.
Rinaldi grasped the implication. “The cellar is still being used.”
“Based on the condition of the chicken, I’d say within the last few months. Perhaps more recently than that.”
“You saying some witch doctor took a kid underground and cut off her head?”
“I am not.” Cool. “Though I’d guess that’s exactly what happened to the chicken.”
“So this wing-nut plumber is right?”
“I’m suggesting there is a possibility-”
“Witch doctors? Human sacrifice?” Rolling his eyes, Slidell
Though relatively few, there are people on this planet with a talent for irking me, for provoking me to blurt things I wouldn’t otherwise say. Slidell is one of those special souls. I hate losing control, vow each time it won’t happen again. Repeatedly, with Slidell, that vow is shattered.
It happened now.
“Tell that to Mark Kilroy.” The comment flew out before I had time to consider.
There was a moment of silence. Then Rinaldi pointed one long, bony finger.
“Kid from Brownsville, Texas. Disappeared in Matamoros, Mexico, back in eighty-nine.”
“Kilroy was sodomized, tortured, then killed by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his followers. Investigators found his brain floating in a cauldron.”
Slidell’s eyes snapped down. “What the hell?”
“Kilroy’s organs were harvested for ritual use.”
“You saying that’s what we got here?”
Already, I regretted seeding Slidell’s imagination with mention of the Kilroy case.
“I have to finish with the cauldrons. And hear what the crime lab comes up with.”
Slidell scooped up and passed the class photo to his partner.
“Based on clothing and hair, the image doesn’t look that old,” Rinaldi said. “We could broadcast it, see if someone recognizes her.”
“Let’s wait on that,” Slidell said. “We start flashing the mug of every kid we can’t find, eventually Mr. and Mrs. Public tune out.”
“I agree. We don’t even know that she’s missing.”
“Can’t be too many studios shooting bubble gummers in this burg.” Slidell pocketed the photo. “We’ll start by working those.”
