rian Aiker.'

I felt a plunging sensation like you get just before screaming downward toward terra firma on a roller coaster. One of my toothpick towers was collapsing.

'Are you sure?'

'Body was found in Aiker's car. Lots of ID on the body. A perfect match on the dentals.'

'But the skull, the Lancaster bones…,' I sputtered.

'Not your boy. You already knew the skull wasn't his. Turns out the bones aren't either.'

'How? Where?' I was too taken aback to ask meaningful questions.

'Hauled his car out of a small lake at Crowder's Mountain State Park.'

'What was Aiker doing at Crowder's Mountain?'

'Not paying attention at the wheel.'

'It took five years to find him?'

'Apparently it's not a popular lake.'

'Why now?'

'The region's experiencing drought conditions, water levels are down. Kid slid down the embankment or fell off the jetty or some damn thing. Car was a couple yards off a boat landing, roof twenty inches below the surface.'

It happens all the time. A couple leaves a restaurant, vanishes. Two years later their Acura is found at the bottom of their neighborhood pond. Grandpa drops the kids off, heads home. Next Christmas the old man's Honda is spotted in a culvert under the highway. Mama releases the brake and steers the family SUV into a reservoir, boys and all. Four months later a propeller hits metal, and vehicle and victims are hauled from the muck.

Thousands drive, golf, pedal, or walk by accident scenes every year. No one spots anything. Then someone does.

'Windows were up, car was sealed well enough to keep the crabs and fish out,' Larabee continued. 'Aiker doesn't look that bad, considering how long he was in the drink.'

'Where?'

Larabee misunderstood my question.

'Backseat.'

'Was the body sent to Chapel Hill?'

Larabee shook his head.

'They've got two pathologists on vacation and one out sick. Chief asked if I'd mind doing the post here.'

I nodded absently, my mind on bones that were not Brian Aiker's. Larabee picked up on my mood.

'Guess that leaves you sucking wind with the privy skull and the Lancaster bones.'

'Yeah.'

'Ever get that report you were waiting for?'

'No.'

Larabee waited while I sorted through my thoughts. He was still waiting when his phone rang. After hesitating a moment, he reached for it.

I withdrew to my office for more sorting. The process did not go well. I tried adding coffee. No improvement.

Opening my laptop, I tried organizing in cyber bytes what I'd learned in the last eleven days.

Category: Places. Foote farm. Airplane crash site. Lancaster County, South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina. Crowder's Mountain State Park.

Weren't the Lancaster remains also found in a state park? I made a note.

Category: People. Tamela Banks. Harvey Pearce. Jason Jack Wyatt. Ricky Don Dorton. Darryl Tyree. Sonny Pounder. Wally Cagle. Lawrence Looper. Murray Snow. James Park. Brian Aiker.

Too broad. I tried subdividing.

Bad Guys. Harvey Pearce (dead). Jason Jack Wyatt (dead). Ricky Don Dorton (dead). Darryl Tyree (under arrest). Sonny Pounder (under arrest).

Victims.

That didn't work. I was placing too many question marks after names. I bifurcated.

Definite Victims. Tamela Banks's baby. The owner of the privy skull and hand bones. The headless skeleton from Lancaster County.

Possible Victims. Tamela Banks and her family. Wally Cagle. Murray Snow. Brian Aiker.

Did Tamela Banks and her family belong in this category? Had they really come to harm, or had they simply been spooked into going underground?

Did Tamela Banks's baby belong out of this category? Was it possible the baby had died of natural causes? I knew from the bones that the baby had been full-term, but it could have been stillborn.

Was Cagle's collapse real, or had his coma been induced in some way? Was Cagle's unknown visitor at the university the same man with whom Looper had seen him at the coffee shop? Why hadn't Looper taken his partner to the nearest hospital? Where was Cagle's report on the Lancaster remains?

Had Murray Snow died of natural causes? Had the Lancaster County coroner been reopening the investigation of the headless, handless remains when he died? Why?

Did Dorton belong in this category? Dorton died of an overdose. Had it been self-administered? Had he been helped?

I was getting nowhere.

Grabbing pen and paper, I tried diagramming links. I drew a line from Dorton to Wyatt and wrote Melungeon over it. Then I extended the line to Pearce, and printed the word Cessna over all three names.

I connected Tyree to Pounder, marked the line Foote farm, extended the line to the words 'privy skull,' then to the name Tamela Banks.

Connecting Tyree to the Dorton-Pearce-Wyatt line, I jotted cocaine.

I made a triangle linking Cagle, Snow, and the Lancaster remains, then hooked that to the Foote farm privy skull. Shooting an extender from that, I added nodes for the bear bones and bird feathers, shot a line up to J. J. Wyatt, added another, and wrote the names Brian Aiker and Charlotte Grant Cobb at its terminus.

I stared at my handiwork, a spiderweb of names and intersecting lines.

Was I trying to link unrelated events? Disparate people and places? The more I thought, the more frustrated I became with how little I knew.

Back to the laptop.

Possible Victims. Brian Aiker.

Neither the privy skull nor the Lancaster skeletal remains could be assigned to the missing FWS agent. Aiker had driven his car off a boat landing and drowned. I was deleting his name from the possible-victim category when a troubling thought stopped my hand. Why was Aiker found in the back of his vehicle?

A manageable question. Shoving back my chair, I went in pursuit of an answer.

Larabee was working in the stinky room. I knew the reason as soon as I entered.

Aiker's skin was mottled olive and brown, and most of his flesh had been converted to grave wax. Exposure to the air was not improving him.

What remained of Aiker's lungs lay sliced and splayed on a corkboard at the foot of the autopsy table. Other decaying organs rested in a hanging scale.

'How's it going?' I asked, drawing shallow breaths.

'Extensive adipocere formation. Lungs are collapsed and putrefied. Liquid putrefaction in the airways.' Larabee sounded as frustrated as I felt. 'What air spaces remain look diluted, but that may be due to air bubbles.'

I waited while Larabee squeezed Aiker's stomach contents into a jar and handed the specimen to Joe Hawkins.

'Accidental drowning?'

'I'm not finding anything to suggest otherwise. Fingernails are broken, looks like the hands may have been abraded. The poor bastard must have struggled to get out of the car, probably tried to break a window.'

'Is there any way to determine absolutely that death was by drowning?'

'Pretty tough call after five years in the drink. Could test for diatoms, I suppose.'

'Diatoms?'

'Microorganisms found in plankton and freshwater and marine sediments. Been around since shortly after the big bang. Exist by the zillions. In fact, some soils are formed entirely of the little buggers. Ever hear of diatomaceous earth?'

'My sister uses DE to filter her pool.'

'Exactly. The stuff is mined commercially for use in abrasives and filtering aids.'

Larabee continued talking as he opened and inspected Aiker's stomach.

'It's really a kick to look at diatoms under magnification. They're beautiful little silica shells in all sorts of shapes and configurations.'

'Remind me what diatoms have to do with drowning.'

'Theoretically, certain waters contain certain genera of diatoms. So, if you find diatoms in the organs, the victim has drowned. Some forensic pathologists even think you can tie a drowning victim to a specific body of water.'

'You sound skeptical.'

'Some of my colleagues hold a lot of stock in diatoms. I don't.'

'Why?'

Larabee shrugged. 'People swallow diatoms.'

'If we could find diatoms in the marrow cavity of a long bone, couldn't we conclude they'd gotten there by cardiac action?'

Larabee thought about that.

'Yeah. We probably could.' He pointed a scalpel at me. 'We'll have a femur tested.'

'We should also send a sample of the lake water. If they find diatoms in the femur they can compare the profiles.'

'Good point.'

I waited while Larabee cut lengthwise along Aiker's esophagus.

'Is it significant that he was found in the rear seat?'

'The weight of the engine would have pulled the front of the vehicle down, leaving the last bubble of air trapped against the roof in back. When victims can't get car doors open, they crawl back and up to keep breathing as long as possible. Or sometimes the corpse just floats to the rear.'

I nodded.

'We'll run a tox screen, of course. And crime scene's processing the car and boat ramp. But I'm not finding anything suspicious.'

Aiker's clothing and personal effects were drying on the counter. I walked over for a look.

It was like telescoping the agent's last morning on earth into a few soggy, mud-coated items.

Jockeys. T. Blue-and-white-striped long sleeve shirt. Jeans. Athletic socks. Adidas cross trainers. Black Polarfleece hooded jacket.

Did Aiker put his socks on before his jeans? His pants before his shirt? I felt sadness for a life so suddenly ended.

Beside the clothing lay the contents of Aiker's pockets.

Comb. Keys. Miniature Swiss army knife. Twenty-three dollars in folding money. Seventy-four cents in coins. Wallet-sized billfold with FWS badge and ID. Leather cardholder.

In addition to a North Carolina driver's license, Hawkins had removed a long-distance calling card, a US Airways Frequent Flyer card, and Diners Club and Visa credit cards from the rectangular leather pouch.

Gloving my right hand, I ran a finger across the photo on the driver's license. The steady, brown eyes and sandy hair were a long way from the grotesque distortion lying on Larabee's table.

Leaning close, I studied the face, wondering what Aiker had been doing on a boat landing at Crowder's Mountain. I picked up the license and flipped it.

Another card was adhering to the back. I peeled it off with my thumbnail. A Harris-Teeter supermarket VIC card. I laid the card on the counter and glanced back at the license.

And caught my breath.

'There's something stuck to the back of this,' I said.

Both men turned to look at me. Digging forceps from a drawer, I peeled a limp, flat sheet from the back of the license.

'Looks like folded paper.'

Again using forceps, I teased free an edge and tugged back a layer. One more tug, and the paper lay unfolded on the counter. Though blotchy and diluted, lettering was visible.

'It's some sort of handwritten note,' I said, easing the paper onto a tray to carry it to the fluorescent magnifier. 'Maybe an address or phone number. Or road directions.'

'Or a last will and testament,' said Hawkins.

Larabee and I looked at him.

'More likely a shopping list,' Larabee said.

'Guy could've scribbled something then shoved it in between his plastic thinking maybe it'd survive.' Hawkins sounded defensive. 'Hell, that's probably exactly what did happen. Paper was protected from the water because it was sealed between the cards.'

Hawkins had a point about the mode of preservation.

As I clicked on the tube light surrounding the lens, Hawkins and Larabee joined me. Together we viewed the writing under illumination and magnification.

o question. C o ins dirty

ding to lumbia.

Be car

See you in tte day.

Even under ideal conditions, the scrawl would have been hard to decipher.

'The first part is probably "No question,"' Larabee said.

Hawkins and I agreed.

'Something to Columbia?' I suggested.

'Sending?'

'Lending?'

'Heading?'

'Landing?'

'Something's dirty.' Hawkins.

'Clowns?'

'Collins?'

'Maybe that's not a C. Maybe it's an O or a Q.'

'Or a G.'

I positioned the magnifier closer to the paper. We leaned in and stared, each of us trying to make sense of the blotches and smears.

It was no good. Parts of the message were illegible.

'See you somewhere on some day,' I said.

'Good,' Hawkins and Larabee said.

'Charlotte?' I said.

'Possible,' Larabee said.

'How many places end in tte?'

'I'll check an atlas,' Larabee said, straightening. 'In the meantime, the Questioned Documents guys might be able to do something with this. Joe, call over to QD and ask if we should keep this thing wet or let it dry.'

Hawkins removed gloves and apron, washed his hands, and headed for the door. I clicked off the lamp.

As Larabee proceeded with his autopsy, I told him about Cagle's coma, and about my discussion with Terry Woolsey. When I'd finished, he looked up at me over his mask.

'Think maybe you're working with a lot of what-ifs, Tempe?'

'Maybe,' I said.

At the door I turned for one last comment.

'But what if I don't?'