Galiano didn’t speak until we were in the car.
“What’s with the upholstery-cleaning routine?”
“Did you see her chair?”
He fastened his seat belt and started the engine.
“Aubusson. Pricey.”
I held up the tape. “That Aubusson has a fur coat.” He turned to me, hand on the key.
“The Specters reported no pets.”
10
I SPENT THE REST OF SUNDAY EXAMINING SKELETONS FROM Chupan Ya. Elena and Mateo were also working, and updated me on developments in the Solola investigation. It took five minutes.
Carlos’s body had been released. His brother had flown in to accompany it to Buenos Aires for burial. Mateo was arranging a memorial service in Guatemala City.
Elena had been to the hospital on Friday. Molly remained comatose. The police had no leads.
That was it.
They also gave me news from Chupan Ya. Thursday night, Senora Ch’i’p’s son had become a grandfather for the fourth time. The old lady now had seven great-grandchildren. I hoped those new lives would bring joy into hers.
The lab was weekend quiet. No chatter. No radios. No microwave whirs and beeps.
No Ollie Nordstern pressing for a quote.
Nevertheless, I found it hard to concentrate. My feelings were like wheels inside wheels inside wheels. Loneliness for home, for Katy, for Ryan. Sadness for the dead lying in boxes around me. Worry for Molly. Guilt for my lack of backbone at the Paraiso.The guilt prevailed. Vowing to do more for the Chupan Ya victims than I had for the girl in the septic tank, I worked long after Elena and Mateo called it quits.
Burial fourteen was a female in her late teens, with multiple fractures of the jaw and right arm, and machete slashes to the back of the head. The mutants who had done this liked working up close and personal.
As I examined the delicate bones my thoughts swung again and again to the Paraiso victim. Two young women killed decades apart. Does anything ever change? My sadness felt like a palpable thing.
Burial fifteen was a five-year-old child. Tell me again about turning the other cheek.
Galiano called in the late afternoon. Hernandez had learned little from the parents of Patricia Eduardo and Claudia de la Alda. Senora Eduardo’s one recollection was that her daughter disliked a supervisor at the hospital, and Patricia and the supervisor had argued shortly before Patricia disappeared. She couldn’t recall the person’s name, gender, or position.
Senor De la Alda thought his daughter had begun losing weight shortly before she went missing. Senora De la Alda disagreed. The museum had called to inform them that they could no longer hold Claudia’s position for her. They would be hiring a permanent replacement.
By Monday I’d moved on to burial sixteen, a pubescent girl with second molars in eruption. I estimated her height at three foot nine. She’d been shot and decapitated by a machete blow.
At noon I drove to police headquarters and Galiano and I proceeded to the trace evidence section of the forensic lab. We entered to find a small, balding man hunched over a dissecting scope. When Galiano called out, the man swiveled to face us, hooking gold-rimmed glasses behind chimpanzee ears.
The chimp introduced himself as Fredi Minos, one of two specialists in hair and fiber analysis. Minos had been provided samples from the septic tank jeans, from the Gerardi and Eduardo homes, and from Mrs. Specter’s chair.
“It’s wookie, right?” Galiano.
Minos looked puzzled.
“Chewbacca?”
No glint.
“
“Oh yes. The American movie.”
In Minos’s defense, the joke sounded lame in Spanish.
“Never mind. What did you come up with?”
“Your unknown sample is cat hair.”
“How can you be sure?”
“That it’s hair, or that it’s cat?”
“That it’s cat,” I jumped in, seeing Galiano’s expression.
Minos rolled his chair to the right, and selected a slide case from a stack on the counter. Then he rolled back to the scope and slipped one specimen under the eyepiece. After adjusting focus, he got up, and indicated that I should sit.
“Take a look.”
