Next, I handed her Laslo's report, waited while she read.
“So the DA was right.”
“Or I was right.”
“Oh?”
“How about this scenario? Jeremiah Mitchell died after leaving the Mighty High Tap last February. His body was stored in a freezer or refrigerator, removed, then placed outside later.”
“Why?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice.
I withdrew the notes I'd taken at the library, took a deep breath, and began.
“Henry Arlen Preston died here in 1943. Three days later a farmer named Tucker Adams disappeared. He was seventy-two. Adams's body was never found.”
“What does that have to d—”
I held up a hand.
“In 1949 a biology professor named Sheldon Brodie drowned in the Tuckasegee River. A day later Edna Farrell disappeared. She was around eighty. Her body was never found.”
Crowe picked up a pen, placed the tip on the blotter, and slid it end over end through her fingers.
“In 1959 Allen Birkby was killed in an automobile accident on Highway 19. Two days after the wreck Charlie Wayne Tramper disappeared. Tramper was seventy-four. His body was recovered, but it was badly mangled, the head missing. The ID was strictly circumstantial.”
I looked up at her.
“That's it?”
“What day did Jeremiah Mitchell disappear?”
Crowe dropped the pen, opened a drawer, and withdrew a file.
“February fifteenth.”
“Martin Patrick Veckhoff died in Charlotte on February twelfth.”
“Lots of people die in February. It's a lousy month.”
“The name ‘Veckhoff’ is on the list of H&F officers.”
“The investment group that owns that weird property near Running Goat Branch?”
I nodded.
“So is ‘Birkby.’”
She leaned back and rubbed the corner of one eye. I pulled out Laslo's find and set it in front of her.
“Laslo Sparkes found this in the dirt we collected near the wall at the Running Goat house.”
She studied but did not reach for the vial.
“It's a tooth fragment. I'm taking it to Charlotte for DNA testing to establish whether it goes with the foot.”
Her phone rang. She ignored it.
“You need to get a reference sample for Mitchell.”
She hesitated a moment. Then, “I can look into it.”
“Sheriff.”
The kiwi eyes met mine.
“This may be bigger than Jeremiah Mitchell.”
Three hours later Boyd and I were crossing Little Rock Road, heading north on I-85. The Charlotte skyline rose in the distance, like a stand of saguaro in the Sonoran Desert.
I pointed the highlights out to Boyd. The giant phallus of the Bank of America Corporate Center. The syringelike office building on The Square housing the Charlotte City Club, with its circular green cap of a roof and antenna sticking straight up from the center. The jukebox contour of One First Union Center.
“Look at that, boy. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
Boyd raised his ears but said nothing.
While Charlotte's neighborhoods may be small-town cozy, its downtown is a city of polished stone and tinted glass, and its attitude toward crime is au courant. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is housed in the Law Enforcement Center, an enormous concrete structure at Fourth and McDowell. The CMPD employs approximately 1,900 officers and 400 unsworn support personnel, and maintains its own crime laboratory, second only to that of the SBI. Not bad for a populace of less than 600,000.
Exiting the expressway, I cut across downtown and pulled into the visitors' lot at the LEC.
Officers entered and left the building, each uniformed in deep blue. Boyd growled softly as one crossed close to the car.
“See the emblem on the shoulder patch? It's a hornet's nest.”
Boyd made a yodel-like noise but kept his nose at the window.
“During the Revolutionary War, General Cornwallis encountered such pockets of intense resistance in Charlotte that he branded the area a hornet's nest.”
No comment.
“I have to go inside, Boyd. You can't.”
Disagreeing, Boyd stood.
I promised to be gone less than an hour, gave him my last emergency granola bar, cracked the windows, and left him.
I found Ron Gillman in his corner office on the fourth floor.
Ron was a tall, silver-haired man with a body that suggested basketball or tennis. The only blemish was a Lauren Hutton gap in his upper dentition.
He listened without interrupting as I told him my theory about Mitchell and the foot. When I'd finished, he held out a hand.
“Let's see it.”
He slipped on horn-rimmed glasses and studied the fragment, rolling the vial from side to side. Then he picked up the phone and spoke to someone in the DNA section.
“Things move faster if the request comes from here,” he said, replacing the receiver.
“Fast would be good,” I said.
“I've already checked on your bone sample. That's done, and the profile's gone into the database we set up for the crash victims. If we get results on this”—he indicated the vial—“we'll feed them in and search for a hit.”
“I can't tell you how much I appreciate this.”
He leaned back and placed his hands behind his head.
“You really put your finger in someone's eye, Dr. Brennan.”
“Guess I did.”
“Any thoughts as to whose?”
“Parker Davenport.”
“The lieutenant governor?”
“That's the one.”
“How did you rile Davenport?”
I turned palms up and shrugged.
“It's hard to help if you're not forthcoming.”
I stared at him, torn. I'd shared my theory with Lucy Crowe. But that was Swain County. This was home. Ron Gillman directed the second largest crime lab in the state. While the force was funded locally, money came to it via federal grants administered in Raleigh.
Like the ME. Like the university.
What the hell.
I gave him a condensed version of what I'd told Lucy Crowe.
“So you think the M. P. Veckhoff on your list is state senator Pat Veckhoff from Charlotte?”
I nodded.
“And that Pat Veckhoff and Parker Davenport are tied together in some way?”
Another nod.
“Davenport and Veckhoff. The lieutenant governor and a state senator. That's heavy.”
“Henry Preston was a judge.”
“What's the link?”
Before I could answer, a man appeared in the doorway, the name “Krueger” embroidered above the pocket of his lab coat. Gillman introduced Krueger as the technical leader of the DNA section. He, along with another analyst, examined all DNA evidence at the lab. I rose and we shook hands.
Gillman handed Krueger the vial and explained what I wanted.
“If there's something there, we'll get it,” he said, giving a thumbsup-gesture.
“How long?”
“We'll have to purify, amplify, document all along the way. I might be able to give you a verbal in four or five days.”
“That would be great.” Forty-eight hours would be great, I thought.
Krueger and I signed evidence transfer forms, and he disappeared with the specimen. I waited as Gillman took a call. When he hung up, I asked a question.
“Did you know Pat Veckhoff?”
“No.”
“Parker Davenport?”
“I've met him.”
“And?”
“He's popular. People vote for him.”
“And?”
“He's a royal pain in the ass.”
I produced the Tramper funeral photo.
“That's him. But it was a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
He handed back the picture.
“So what's your explanation for all this?”
“I don't have one.”
“But you will.”
“But I will.”
“Can I help?”
“There is something you can do for me.”
I found Boyd curled in granola crumbs, sound asleep. At the sound of the key, he shot to his feet and barked. Realizing this was not a sneak attack, he placed one forepaw on each front seat and wagged his hips. I slid behind the wheel, and he began removing makeup from the side of my face.