Page 61 of The Bone Code
“Did you get a DNA sample?”
“Got a Coors can in a ziplock on the seat beside me.”
“Well done.”
“Serve and protect, baby.”
“Keep me—”
“Yeah. Yeah. Looped in.”
Though Ryan was just a few floors below me, our paths didn’t cross all day. I arrived in the lobby before he did. One look at his face, and I knew he’d struck out.
“No hits?” I asked as he exited the elevator.
Ryan shook his head.
“Not surprising for the child,” I said. “But I thought we might get lucky with the woman.”
“I guess she kept her nose clean.”
“And never enlisted in the military.”
“You’re taking it well,” Ryan said. “I thought you’d be gutted.”
I told him about Vislosky’s lead.
“No shit,” he said.
We both needed to expand our vocabularies.
Conversation stopped when we left the building. In the sharp, biting wind, breathing almost did. I kept my head bent, my mouth closed, hoping the tears wouldn’t freeze on my face.
Once in the Jeep, Ryan fiddled with the heater, which was often tetchy. I curled and uncurled my fingers, hoping to reintroduce circulation.
“You need heavier mittens,” Ryan said.
“I do.”
“It’s unusual to be this cold in October.”
“Hm.” How many times had I heard that?
“I looked up your paparazzo.” As Ryan pulled from the curb and slid into traffic.
“Sorry?” The quick segue left me in the dust.
“The glamour shot in Saturday’s paper.”
“It was hardly a glamour shot.”
“I gave a call over to theGazette. The journalist is a freelancer named Laura Bianchi. Word is she’s young and ambitious, monitors police frequencies looking for scoops.”
“That’s how she learned about the exhumation?”
“It was a quiet news cycle, so she figured digging up bodies was better than nothing. Snapped the pic, sold the piece to some wire service, theGazetteran it. End of story. Nothing creepy.”
“You didn’t see the woman’s hair.”
