All the way to High Ridge House I replayed the scene. Was I becoming paranoid, or had someone tried to run me down? Was the driver drunk? Blind? Stupid?
Should I report the incident? To Crowe? To McMahon?
Had the silhouette seemed familiar? I'd automatically thought “he,” but was it a man?
I decided to ask Ryan's opinion at dinner.
Back in Ruby's kitchen, I made tea and drank it slowly. By the time I'd climbed to Magnolia, my nerves had calmed and my hands were steady. I made a call to the university in Charlotte, not really expecting an answer. My assistant picked up on the first ring.
“What are you doing at the lab on Saturday?”
“Grading.”
“Right. I appreciate your dedication, Alex.”
“Grading exercises is part of my job. Where are you?”
“Bryson City.”
“I thought you were finished there. I mean, your job was finished. I mean . . .” She trailed off, unsure what to say.
Her embarrassment told me that news of my dismissal had reached the university.
“I'll explain when I get back.”
“You go, girl.” Lamely.
“Listen, can you grab the lab copy of my book?”
“Eighty-six or ninety-eight?”
I'd been the editor of a book on forensic techniques that had become a leading text in its field, largely due to the excellent work of the contributing authors I had managed to assemble, but including a couple of my own chapters as well. After twelve years it had been updated with a second, entirely new edition.
“The first one.”
“Hold on.”
In seconds she was back.
“What do you need?”
“There's a chapter on population differences in the calcaneus. Flip to that.”
“Got it.”
“What's the percentage of correct classification when comparing Mongoloid, black, and white foot bones?”
There was a long pause. I could picture her scanning the text, forehead creasing, glasses creeping down her nose.
“Just below eighty percent.”
“Not great.”
“But wait.” Another pause. “That's because the whites and blacks don't separate well. The Mongoloids could be distinguished with eighty-three to ninety-nine percent accuracy. That's not too bad.”
“O.K. Give me the list of measurements.”
I had a sinking feeling as I wrote them down.
“Now see if there's a table that gives the unstandardized canonical discriminant function coefficients for American Indians, blacks, and whites.” I would need these figures for comparison to coefficients I would derive from the unknown foot.
Pause.
“Table Four.”
“Will you fax that chapter to me?”
“Sure.”
I gave her Primrose Hobbs's name and the fax number at the incident morgue in Bryson City. Hanging up, I dug out the notes I'd taken on case number 397.
When I punched another number and asked for Primrose Hobbs a voice told me she was not there, but asked if I would like her number at the Riverbank Inn.
Primrose also answered on the first ring. This was my lucky day.
“Hey, sweetie pie, how you doin'?”
“I'm good, Primrose.”
“Don't you let these slanders get you down. God will do what God will do, and he knows it's all bunk.”
“I'm not.”
“One day we're going to sit down, play us some more bid whit, and laugh at all this.”
