10:04 A.M.
NEWSROOM OF THE
LAS PIERNAS NEWS EXPRESS
JOHN decided to go with the additional follow-up story about missing children, which kept me busy all morning.
When I called Jane Serre about her son, Luke, I found her not only sober but purposeful. Gerry the murder victim buried on the Sheffield Estate was a different man from Gerry the ex-husband who had once been believed to have robbed her of her child. She was determined to find both her son and Gerry’s killer. “That bastard not only took my child from me, he made me hate poor Gerry for no good reason. He killed Luke’s father.”
Neither of us mentioned our worst fears about what might have become of her son.
I started to call all the numbers I had gotten off Sheila Dolson’s notepad. The first seven were numbers of news producers or city rooms. If I reached a friend in the news business when I called them, I asked what they could tell me about her. The answer was the same everywhere: She was viewed as an obvious publicity-seeker whose credentials were out-of-state and therefore suspect. Local law enforcement claimed that she had no relationship with the Las Piernas Police Department or Sheriff’s Department. One or two news organizations had planned to check into her background with an eye toward possibly talking to her in the future, but now that there would be no future, those plans were canceled. Now, her murder was another matter, and what could I tell them about that?
Not much. Read the Express online and you could find out just about everything I knew about Sheila.
Ben Sheridan had called me before I left for work, angry that he had to learn about Sheila’s death when Vince and Reed had come by first thing in the morning-and asked him if he had read the Express yet. He calmed down and admitted that it would have been a little awkward for me to have phoned him at one o’clock in the morning. He further admitted that he might be reacting so strongly because while he was talking to the detectives, he had received a call from Anna. “She’s upset about the murder, upset about Sheila’s lies, and…I’m not really the person she wants to turn to for comfort in this particular matter,” he said.
After we hung up, I realized I needed to ask him some questions that I knew he wouldn’t answer without permission from the authorities he was working for, so I called the coroner’s office and asked for the county coroner, Carlos Hernandez. I wanted Carlos to give Ben permission to let me know if the teeth Sheila and Altair had supposedly found had anything to do with either Luke or Gerry Serre.
My husband had told me on more than one occasion that Carlos had a terrific sense of humor, but if Frank had seen that side of Carlos, I hadn’t. Carlos, in my experience, treated the press with formality and seriousness. After a few moments of solemn consideration of my request, he said, “If the homicide detectives in charge of the case have no objections, I have no objections.” He preferred to talk it over with Vince and Reed, and said that he’d ask Ben to call me, or would call me himself. As he ended the call, he said, “I’m sure you are in a great hurry, and I would hate for this office to appear to be too cautious.”
That made me start to believe Frank could be right about him.
Ben called less than thirty minutes later to say-with no small amount of exasperation-that he believed the teeth had belonged to two different children.
“Because?” I asked.
“They are the same tooth.”
“What do you mean?”
“Numbering systems probably won’t mean anything to you, will they?”
“Give me terms that will mean something to our readers.”
“What challenges you set before me!”
“Ben.” I said it in a warning tone.
“Both teeth are deciduous upper central incisors which seem to have been lost through exfoliation.”
“Ben.”
“All right-for a layperson-they are deciduous teeth. That means they are baby teeth or milk teeth. Lost through exfoliation-they fell out in the natural way anyone loses baby teeth, just before the permanent teeth appear. You have four central incisors-these are upper front teeth. A child’s upper front teeth.”
“Okay, so this is why Vince and Reed were joking around about the tooth fairy.”
“Yes. These teeth fall out and then the permanent teeth emerge. Except these two aren’t from the same child, because they are from exactly the same position in the mouth-left front teeth. They could not be from the same child, because every child has only one such tooth in his or her mouth.”
“Could one of them be from Luke Serre?”
“He disappeared two years ago, at the age of three. If he lost one of his front teeth then, it would most likely have occurred through trauma. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Some children lose their baby teeth by natural means as early as five-so if he is alive, it is possible, yes, that out of all the children on Earth, he is one of the two who once owned these teeth. But it seems unlikely to me that two years after he went missing, five-year- old Luke would take his tooth and another child’s tooth, then make a trek some distance behind the fences surrounding the Sheffield Estate, to the place where his father’s dismembered remains were buried, and leave those teeth in that place before hiking out again.”
“I see what you mean. Until recently, the only person who knew where the remains were buried was Gerry Serre’s killer, and the killer really would have no reason to take them there, either.”
“I agree. Not impossible, but unlikely.”
“Any chance of finding out who those teeth belonged to?”
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to run DNA on them or not. I strongly suspect Sheila got these teeth from a dentist.”
“Why would a dentist give them to her?”
“Training.”
“You mean for dogs?”
“Yes. Teeth are among the least objectionable materials to train with. Cadaver dog and search dog trainers often have a network of doctors, dentists, pathologists, and others who understand that the handlers need human biological materials for training purposes. It’s completely understandable, but not always done on a strictly legal basis, so most SAR dog owners would prefer not to talk to anyone about what’s in their freezers.”
“Remind me to be careful about what I defrost out of yours.”
He laughed. “You mean dinner at your place isn’t potluck tonight?”
“No, strictly our treat.”
N OT long after we hung up, the security desk downstairs contacted me. I had a visitor: Ben’s now ex- girlfriend, Anna
Stover.
CHAPTER 22
Tuesday, April 25
11:05 A.M.
HOME OF GRAYDON FLETCHER
GENIE wasn’t sure why the thought surprised her, but it did: Grandfather’s house was made for children. All the other times she had been here, she had been so happy to see her cousins and to play with them, she never noticed how different his house was from that of most grown-ups.
Now, as she walked with Carrie down a pathway through the children’s garden, she thought about all the ways in which Grandfather’s house was unlike any other she had ever visited, even big houses. Most of the houses she had visited belonged to other members of their family, and they were houses with big yards and any number of rooms given over to the children of the house-the Fletcher family believed strongly in home schooling, so if you
