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“I’ve shown you and your department every respect in this case,” Louis said.

“Respect? Don’t talk to me about respect,” Mobley said, his voice rising. “What about last March? You and Dan Wainwright butt-fucked me in front of the whole city. Shut me out of the biggest case this county ever had.”

Mobley went back behind his desk and sank into his chair. Louis resisted the urge to put his hands on his temples.

“Leaving you out wasn’t my call,” Louis said. “It was Dan’s.”

“They laughed at me, dammit.”

Louis knew he needed to say something else, but an apology wasn’t it. Mobley had blown it on the Paint It Black case. They had laughed.

Louis picked up the slide. “Maybe we can turn it around with this,” he said. “Let me have this typed again. Discreetly. I’ll take it to Vince myself.”

“I don’t know.”

Louis took a breath. He knew Mobley had no business letting a civilian take evidence, even from a closed case.

Okay. Start lying. You’re getting pretty damn good at it.

“Look,” Louis said, “if you don’t agree to this, Susan will eventually subpoena Sandusky for any copies he has.”

Mobley’s eyes jumped to Louis’s face. His expression took on a whole new look of frustration.

“It’s us against the lawyers, Lance.”

Mobley swung his chair slightly. “All right. But I get to see the results first. If that slide comes back O-positive, it goes back in the box and neither of us ever touched it. Agreed?”

Louis nodded. “What if it doesn’t?”

Mobley picked up the Clot Buster and bounced it lightly against his palm. “Maybe it still goes back in the box,” he said.

Louis sat on the bench outside Vince Carissimi’s office. He could hear Vince inside, talking to someone. Across the hall, through the glass door to the autopsy room, he could see a green bulk moving slowly around. It was Octavius, the diener, finishing up a cadaver. Louis leaned his head back against the cool tile.

He had called ahead, but the receptionist told him Vince was busy. Louis had come over to wait anyway. His eyes drifted up to the wall clock, then to the sign above the autopsy door.

Mortui vivos docent. “The dead teach the living.”

He reached back to the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the picture of Kitty. It was starting to get creased from all the handling and he ran his palm over it, trying to flatten it back in shape. Finally, he reached back again for his wallet, opened it, and carefully slipped the picture in between some bills.

He heard Vince’s door open and jumped to his feet, slipping the wallet back in his pocket.

A strange man came out, followed by Vince, who looked at Louis in surprise. “Hey, Louis, what gives?” he asked.

“Vince, I need your help,” Louis said, picking up a manila envelope from the bench.

“Gotta be quick, man, I am up to my ass in alligators today,” Vince said, starting down the hall with long strides.

Louis was at his side, holding out the envelope. “I got the sample.”

Vince stopped, frowning at the envelope.

“The missing vaginal semen sample,” Louis said.

Vince hesitated, then took the envelope. He dug inside and pulled out the slide, still in its twenty-year-old plastic evidence bag. Vince held it up to the florescent light.

“Can you type it?” Louis asked.

Vince sighed. “Won’t know ’til I get it under the scope.”

“Can I wait?”

Vince gave him a look, then glanced at his watch. “All right, come on.”

In the lab, Louis hovered in the background while Vince slipped the old slide under the microscope. He knew this was a long shot. What were the chances that anything could survive twenty years in some municipal storeroom? His fears were confirmed when Vince turned. He could read it in the M.E.’s face.

“It’s totally disintegrated,” Vince said. “Memoriae, Louis, nothing but a memory now.”

Louis let out a sigh and watched as Vince pulled out the slide and slipped it back in the plastic. He handed it to Louis.

“I’m sorry, man,” Vince said.

“I appreciate you trying, Vince.”

Vince cocked his head. “You okay?”

Louis nodded, looking at the slide in the plastic evidence bag.

“Look, I understand how this can be,” Vince said. “I had a little girl on my table once, an abuse case. I didn’t sleep for weeks until they finally put her stepfather behind bars. A case like the Kitty Jagger thing, it can get under your skin.”

Louis looked up at him. Maybe it was the way Vince had said her name, maybe it was just the look of compassion on Vince’s face. But something pulled inside Louis’s chest.

“I’ve got to get going,” Louis said. “Thanks again, Vince.”

Outside, Louis paused to slip on his sunglasses. His gaze drifted over to Page Field, where a small plane floated down to the runaway and rose again, the pilot practicing touch-and-goes.

Dead end. Like Vince said, there was nothing but memories of Kitty now, memories that the decades had rendered useless. Joyce Novick’s rose-colored reminiscences, Willard’s fading echoes, none of that could help him now.

Bob Ahnert. .

Louis watched the plane circling. But Bob Ahnert remembered clearly, remembered things he didn’t want to tell. Kitty was still talking to him. And he was still listening.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“I figured you’d be calling sooner or later,” Ahnert said.

“We need to talk,” Louis said.

There was a silence on the other end of the line. “All right,” Ahnert said. “I’m on duty. You’ll have to come out to the substation.” He gave directions and hung up without another word.

Louis was an hour’s drive into the wasteland of the Corkscrew Preserve before he saw the radio tower that Ahnert had told him to watch for. It led him to a sun-bleached cinderblock building set in the flat gray-green scrub land, land that looked untouched by the recent hard rains. There were no trees, nothing to give shelter from the sun. The only break in the monotonous landscape was the line of electrical towers marching like skeletons to the horizon.

Louis parked next to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department cruiser in front. As he got out of the Mustang, he saw Bob Ahnert emerge from the building.

Why was Ahnert wearing the standard green uniform? He was a detective, wasn’t he? Louis’s eyes dipped to the name tag on Ahnert’s shirt. SGT. AHNERT. Had the guy been busted in rank? Is that why he was sitting out in a substation in the middle of nowhere?

Ahnert removed his glasses, drew out a handkerchief and started to wipe them.

“You must want something pretty bad to drive all the way out here,” he said, putting his sunglasses back on and resting his hip against his cruiser.

“I know now what was missing from Kitty’s homicide file,” Louis said. “The second lab report. That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it?”

Ahnert drew a cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it. He didn’t have to cup a hand; there wasn’t one whiff of a breeze out here.

“Did you find it?” Ahnert asked.

“No.”

“So that’s why you’re here. You want me to tell you what it said,” Ahnert said.

“Yes.”

Ahnert drew on the cigar. Louis could see his reflection in Ahnert’s sunglasses.

“Is she talking to you yet?” Ahnert asked.

Louis stiffened slightly. “Yes,” he said.

For a moment, Ahnert didn’t move. Louis could hear the faint hum of the electrical lines above. He could feel the sun on his neck.

Ahnert took the cigar out of his mouth. “The semen inside her was blood type AB-negative,” he said.

“That proves Cade didn’t rape her,” Louis said.

“You’re not going to prove anything on my memory,” Ahnert said. “You’re going to have to find that report. Why haven’t you gone back to Duvall’s old defense records?”