MY NEW RESOLVE TOOK ME BACK TO MUSC. WHY? LACK OF A better idea.

Finding a morgue attendant, I explained who I was and that I was acting on behalf of the coroner. I requested CCC-2006020277 and CCC-2006020285. When the gurneys arrived, I extracted the sixth cervical vertebrae from Cruikshank and from the Dewees skeleton, and carried both to the scope. A quick check confirmed that the fracture patterning was the same on each neck bone. OK. I was dead certain.

Cause?

Connection between the two cases?

As before, I gave the questions some thought. Then I moved on to the dirt that Topher had collected from the Dewees grave. Why? Lack of a better idea.

Placing a rectangular stainless steel pan in the sink with a screen positioned above, I retrieved one of three black plastic garbage bags lying at the foot of the Dewees gurney. Disengaging the bag's wire twister, I poured a layer of dirt and gently shook the screen.

The sandy soil filtered through the mesh, leaving behind pebbles, snail shells, bits of sand dollar, starfish, mollusk, and crab. After checking the debris with a magnifying glass, I dumped it and poured more dirt.

Same rocks and shards of marine life.

I was on my second bag when a minuscule sliver caught my eye.

The thing was embedded in a broken snail shell, and so small I almost missed it.

A filament of some sort? A thread?

Using forceps, I extracted the snail and placed it in my gloved palm. The creature's shell was less than three centimeters long, brown and coiled, but rounder and more squat than those I was used to seeing on the beach.

I returned to the gurney and checked Topher's label. The bag I'd chosen held dirt from directly around the bones.

Moving to a side counter, I carefully tweezed the filament free from the shell, centered it on a slide, and covered it with a tiny glass plate. Then I placed the slide under the microscope, and leaned into the eyepiece.

The object appeared as a blurry curved line. Some knob fiddling brought it into focus.

The thing was an eyelash. A black eyelash.

I was thinking about that when my cell phone sounded. The caller ID showed an eight-four-three area code.

Not Ryan.

Disappointed, I stripped off a glove and took the call.

"Tempe Brennan."

"Gullet here. Got us a Dell Latitude laptop PC and a Pentax Optio 5.5 digital camera."

"It was all an unfortunate misunderstanding."

"It was. Parrot senior was most apologetic. Parrot junior looked like he'd had better mornings."

"What now?"

"Camera's empty. Either Cruikshank left nothing on it, or Junior wiped it clean to cover his rear. The computer is password protected. We played with it some. Got nowhere."

"May I take a crack?"

There was a pause before Gullet spoke again.

"You got experience with these things?"

"I do." Said with more conviction than I actually felt. I'd always used passwords on my PC, but wasn't actually a Sherlock at cracking security codes. Fact was, I'd never hacked into a computer.

I listened to several more seconds of dead air. Then, "Can't hurt. Miz Rousseau trusts you, and my deputies have got other things filling their dance cards today."

"I'm at the morgue."

"Be by in an hour."

The remaining soil produced nothing of interest. I was retying the last bag when the sheriff arrived.

Gullet placed a plastic-wrapped bundle on a side counter. Then he folded his shades and hung them by a bow from his breast pocket. For a moment, his gaze lingered on the two gurneys at my back.

"Miz Rousseau here?" he asked.

"She had something elsewhere that needed her attention," I said. "Have a look at this."

Gullet stepped to the scope. I inserted one fractured vertebra. Gullet observed it without comment. I switched to the other.

Gullet straightened and looked at me.

I explained that the first specimen had come from Cruikshank, the second from the unknown found on Dewees.

"Both cracked a neck bone." Gullet spoke with his flat, almost bored drawl.

"They did."

"How?"

"I don't know."

Inserting the eyelash slide, I indicated that he should take another look.

"What am I squinting at?"

"An eyelash."

Gullet peered through the eyepiece a few seconds longer, then again regarded me without expression.

"It came from the grave on Dewees," I said.

"Two billion people share this planet. That would make how many billion eyelashes?"

"This one came from eighteen inches below the ground surface, in dirt directly associated with the body."

Gullet's face didn't change.

"This eyelash is black," I said. "The man on Dewees had pale blond hair."

"Could it belong to one of your diggers?"

I shook my head no. "They're both too fair."

One bushy brow might have ascended a micromillimeter.

"Lashes good for DNA?"

"Mitochondrial," I said.

Gullet didn't react.

"A type of DNA that traces through maternal relatives." Oversimplified, but good enough.

Gullet nodded, walked to the counter, and withdrew an evidence transfer form from his bundle.

I joined him and signed my name and the date.

Gullet tore off and handed me my copy. Then he folded the form and shoved it into an inside jacket pocket. His eyes again wandered to the gurneys.

"You find anything tying these fellas together?"

"No."

"Except each managed to break his neck."

"Except that."

"If these boys are linked, we got us a double homicide. Hypothetically speaking, of course."

"Hypothetically speaking," I agreed.

"Serial?"

I shrugged "maybe." "Or the two might have known each other."

"Go on."

"Maybe they witnessed something that got them both killed."

Not a flicker in Gullet's face.

"Maybe they were involved in something."

"Such as?"

"Drugs. Counterfeiting. The Lindbergh kidnapping."

"Hypothetically speaking."

"Hypothetically speaking."

"My chief deputy of special ops nailed that building."

My face showed something. Confusion.

"Cruikshank's CD. The photos. My staffer says that brick building's a free clinic over on Nassau."

"Who runs it?" I asked, at last making the leap.

"GMC."

"Herron and his flock. Jesus! Could it be the one where Helene Flynn worked?"

"Now I understand your boyfriend's got an interest in those boys, but a law degree doesn't make him a cop in my town. If we're looking at murder, and I'm not yet saying we are, I don't want some wingtipped cowboy spooking potential suspects."

It seemed pointless to mention that Pete wasn't my boyfriend. Or that he owned not a single wingtip.

Gullet pointed a warning finger. "You keep that boy reined in. Things go sideways, I'm the one takes the heat."

"Will you check out the clinic?" I asked.

"Not much to justify that at the moment."

Gullet tapped the PC. "You come up with the password, you call. Otherwise we shoot this thing up to SLED." South Carolina Law Enforcement.

"Won't that mean queuing up for a long wait?" I asked.

Gullet repositioned his Ray-Bans. "You take your shot, ma'am."

When the sheriff had gone, I phoned Emma. She told me to leave the eyelash and snail and she'd have Lee Ann Miller pick them up and send them to the state crime lab.

After photographing the vertebral fractures, I bagged and delivered the lash and shell, and told the tech I was through for the day. The clock said two. I headed home.

On the way, I phoned Pete's BlackBerry. No answer. Big surprise.

I was so pumped about getting into Cruikshank's hard drive, I didn't stop for lunch. At "Sea for Miles" I took Boyd out to the road for a quick health break, threw together a ham and cheese sandwich, then settled at the kitchen table.

The laptop booted through the Windows opening sequence to a blue screen. There, a cursor blinked, awaiting clearance to load personal settings.

I started with commonly used passwords: 123123. 123456. 1A2B3C. Password. Open.

No go.

Cruikshank's initials? Birthday?

I got up and retrieved the AFIS printout that Emma had given me.

Noble Carter Cruikshank.

I tried NCC, CCN, and varying combinations of the man's initials, with and without his date of birth, forward and backward. I inverted each name, then rearranged groupings of letters. Then I substituted digits for letters and letters for digits.

The cursor didn't budge.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department.

I tried every combination using CMPD in differing positions with the name and DOB.

Nope.

Shannon. I didn't have Shannon's middle or last name. When had they married? No idea. The beach photo was dated July 1976. I tried more combinations.

The cursor wouldn't buy it.

Baseball. I got the box and pulled the trophy. June 24, 1983.

DOB. Date of league championship. Combined. Scrambled. Inverted.

No sale.

I played with Cruikshank's address and every date on the AFIS sheet.

By four thirty I'd run out of ideas.

"I don't have enough personal information," I said to the empty kitchen.

Boyd shot to his feet.

"Still mad about the stingy walk?"

Boyd's mouth opened and his tongue drooped over one purple gum.

"You chows are a forgiving breed."

The chow cocked his head and tipped his ears forward.

"Let's switch to the files."

Shutting down the laptop, I moved to the den. Boyd padded along.

Cruikshank's file carton was still on the window seat. I took it to the coffee table and sat on the couch.

Boyd hopped up beside me. Our eyes met. Boyd dropped back to the floor.

The box held about forty manila folders, each with a handwritten date and name. Some files were fat, others thin. I ran through the tabs.

The files were organized chronologically. I could tell from the dates there were times Cruikshank was working multiple cases. There were also gaps, presumably his periods of heavy drinking.

I pulled the oldest file.

Murdock, Deborah Anne. August 2000. C.

Deborah Murdock's folder held the following:

Shorthand notes similar to those in Helene Flynn's file.

Canceled checks drawn on the joint account of Deborah and Jason Murdock. The last was written December 4, 2000.

Photos of a couple entering or exiting a restaurant, bar, or motel.

Letters addressed to Jason Murdock in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and signed by Noble Cruikshank. The letters spanned the period from September to November 2000.

I was getting the drift. I read only one letter.

Yep. Deborah was the woman in the pics. The man wasn't Jason.

I moved on.

Lang, Henry. December 2000. C.

Same deal. Notes, checks, photos, reports. Cruikshank spent six months on this one. Here it was hubby who was stepping out.

Next folder.

Todman, Kyle. February 2001. C.

This case involved an antiques dealer who suspected his partner of ripping him off. It took Cruikshank a month to nail the swindler.

I pulled file after file. The stories had a sad sameness to them. Cheating spouses. Missing parents. Runaway teens. Few had happy endings. What is it they say? If you acknowledge your suspicion, it's probably true.

I looked at the clock. Six fifteen. I wondered what Pete was doing.

I wondered what Ryan was doing.

I checked my cell. No messages. The battery was fine.

Of course it was.

Back to the files.

Ethridge, Parker. March 2002.

This was one of the fattest jackets in the carton.

Parker Ethridge, age fifty-eight, lived by himself. In March 2002 Parker's son went to collect him for a long-planned fishing trip. Ethridge wasn't home and was never seen again. Cruikshank spent over a year investigating, but to no avail. Ethridge junior fired him in May 2003.

Franklin, Georgia. March 2004. C.

In November 2003, a nineteen-year-old coed disappeared from her dorm at the College of Charleston. Four months later, dissatisfied with police progress, Georgia's parents hired Cruikshank to find their daughter. He did. Living with a Buddhist jewelry maker in Asheville, North Carolina.

Poe, Harmon. April 2004. Unemployed male. Last seen at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. Reported missing by a friend.

Friguglietti, Sylvia. May 2004. C. Elderly female. Wandered from an assisted living center. Found floating in the harbor near Patriot's Point.

Again, I checked my watch and my cell.

Seven fifty-two. No calls.

Discouraged, I rolled my shoulders and stretched my arms overhead. Boyd opened sleepy lids.

"It wasn't a complete waste of time," I said.

Boyd rolled his eyes up at me.

"I've learned that C on a tab means the case was closed."

Boyd looked unconvinced. I didn't care. I was getting somewhere.

Dropping my arms, I picked up where I'd left off.

Snype, Daniel. August 2004. Disappeared while visiting Charleston from Savannah, Georgia. Return bus ticket unused. Reported missing by granddaughter, Tiffany Snype.

Walton, Julia. September 2004. C. Runaway housewife found living with her boyfriend in Tampa, Florida.

Some of the most recent files contained only newspaper clippings and a few shorthand notes. No checks. No photos. No reports.

I read several clippings. Each described a missing person.

"Were these cases Cruikshank was hired to investigate?"

Boyd had no answer to that.

"Or was he looking at MPs for some other reason?"

Or that.

Opening the last file, I read another clipping.

A name caught my interest.