ERSKINE “SKINNY” SLIDELL IS A DETECTIVE WITH THE CHARLOTTE-Mecklenburg PD Felony Investigative Bureau/Homicide Unit. The murder table.

I’ve worked with Slidell over the years. My opinion? The guy’s got the personality of a blocked nostril. But good instincts.

Slidell’s Brylcreemed head was turtling over the tunnel’s opening.

“Doc.” Slidell greeted me in his usual indolent way.

“Detective.”

“Tell me I can go home, knock back a Pabst, and root for my boys on SmackDown.”

“Not tonight.”

Slidell sighed in annoyance, then withdrew from sight.

Climbing upward, I recalled the last time our paths had crossed.

August. The detective was entering the Mecklenburg County Courthouse. I’d just testified and was heading out.

Slidell isn’t what you’d call a fast thinker on his feet. Or on the stand. Actually, that’s an understatement. Sharp defense attorneys make hamburger of Skinny. His nervousness had been apparent that morning, his eyes circled with dark rings suggesting a lot of tossing and turning.

Emerging from the ladder well, I noted that Slidell looked marginally better today. The same could not be said of his jacket. Green polyester with orange top stitching, the thing was garish, even in the subterranean gloom.

“Officer here says we got us a witch doctor.” Slidell lifted his chin in Gleason’s direction.

I described what I’d seen in the subcellar.

Slidell checked his watch. “How ’bout we toss this thing in the morning?”

“Got a date tonight, Skinny?”

Behind me, Gleason made a muffled sound in his throat.

“Like I said. Six-pack and Superstars.”

“Should have set your TiVo.”

Slidell looked at me as though I’d suggested he program the next shuttle mission.

“It’s like a VCR,” I explained, yanking off a glove.

“I’m surprised this hasn’t drawn attention.” Slidell was looking at the opening by my feet. He was referring to the media.

“Let’s keep it that way,” I said. “Use your cell phone to call CSS.”

I pulled off the torn glove. The heel of my thumb was red, swollen, and itchy as hell.

“Tell them we’ll need a generator and portable lights.” Both gloves went into my kit. “And something that can lift a cauldron of dirt.”

Head wagging, Slidell began punching his mobile.

Four hours later, I was pouring myself into my Mazda. Greenleaf was bathed in moonlight. I was bathed in sweat.

Emerging from the house, Slidell had spotted a woman shooting with a small digital camera through a kitchen window. After dispatching her, he’d chain-smoked two Camels, mumbled something about deeds and tax records, and gunned off in his Taurus.

The CSS techs had left in their truck. They’d deliver the dolls, statues, beads, tools, and other artifacts to the crime lab.

The morgue van had also come and gone. Joe Hawkins, the MCME death investigator on call that night, was transporting the skulls and chicken to the ME facility. Ditto the cauldrons. Though Larabee would be less than enthused about the mess, I preferred sifting the fill under controlled conditions.

As anticipated, the large cauldron had posed the greatest difficulty. Weighing approximately the same as the Statue of Liberty, its removal had required winching, a lot of muscle, and a lexicon of colorful words.

I pulled out and drove up Greenleaf. Ahead, Frazier Park was a black cutout in the urban landscape. A jungle gym rose from the shadows, a silvery cubist sculpture poised over the dark, serpentine smile of the Irwin Creek gulley.

Doubling back down Westbrook to Cedar, I skirted the edge of uptown and drove southeast toward my home turf, Myers Park. Built in the 1930s as Charlotte’s first streetcar burb, today the sector is overpriced, oversmug, and over-Republican. Though not particularly old, the hood is elegant and well-landscaped, Charlotte’s answer to Cleveland’s Shaker Heights and Miami’s Coral Gables. What the hell, we’re not Charleston.

Ten minutes after leaving Third Ward I was parked beside my patio. Locking the car, I headed into my townhouse.

Which requires some explanation.

I live on the grounds of Sharon Hall, a nineteenth-century manor-turned-condo-complex lying just off the Queens University campus. My little outbuilding is called the “Annex.” Annex to what? No one knows. The tiny two-story structure appears on none of the estate’s original plans. The hall is there. The coach house. The herb and formal gardens. No annex. Clearly an afterthought.

Speculation by friends, family, and guests ranges from smokehouse to hothouse to kiln. I am not fixated on identifying the original builder’s purpose. Barely twelve hundred square feet, the structure suits my needs. Bedroom and bath up. Kitchen, dining room, parlor, and study down. I took occupancy when my marriage to Pete imploded. A decade later, it still serves.

“Yo, Bird,” I called out to the empty kitchen.

No cat.

“Birdie, I’m home.”

The hum of the refrigerator. A series of soft bongs from Gran’s mantel clock.

I counted. Eleven.

My eyes snuck to the message indicator on my phone. Not a flicker.

Depositing my purse, I went straight to the shower.

As I exorcised cellar grime and odor with green tea body gel, rosemary mint shampoo, and water as hot as my skin could stand, my thoughts drifted to the perversely dark voice mail light, to the voice I was hoping to hear.

Bonjour, Tempe. I miss you. We should talk.

Pop-up image. Lanky build, sandy hair, Carolina blue eyes. Andrew Ryan, lieutenant-détective, Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec.

So there’s the Quebec thing. I work two jobs, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, one in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where I am forensic anthropologist for the Bureau du coroner. Ryan is a homicide detective with the provincial police. In other words, for murders in La Belle Province, I work the vics and Ryan detects.

Years back, when I began at the Montreal lab, Ryan had a reputation as the station-house stud. And I had a rule against office romance. Turned out the lieutenant-détective was lousy with rules. When hopes of salvaging my marriage finally hit the scrap heap, we began seeing each other socially. For a while, things went well. Very well.

My mind ran an X-rated slide show of memorable plays. Beaufort, South Carolina, the first deflected pass, me in cutoffs sans panties, aboard a forty-two-foot Chris-Craft at the Lady’s Island Marina. Charlotte, North Carolina, the first touchdown, me in a man-eater black dress and one of Victoria’s most secret thongs.

Recalling other sports moments, I felt a wee tummy flip. Yep, the guy was that good. And that good-looking.

Then Ryan blew a hole in my heart. The daughter he’d newly discovered but had never known, Lily, was rebellious, angry, addicted to heroin. Racked with guilt, Daddy had decided to reconnect with Mommy and launch a joint effort to save daughter.

And I was out like last year’s shade of lipstick. That was four months ago.

“Screw it.”

Face upturned to the spigot, I belted out a jumbled version of Gloria Gaynor.

“I will survive. I’ve got all my life to live—”

Suddenly, the water went cold. And I was starving. Totally engaged in processing the cellar, and nerve-fried by the underground context in which I was forced to work, I’d been oblivious to hunger. Until now.

Bird strolled in as I was toweling off.

“Sorry,” I said. “Night op. No choice.”

The cat looked skeptical. Or quizzical. Or bored.

“How about a hit of zoom-around-the-room?”

Bird sat and licked one forepaw, indicating forgiveness would not be hurried with a catnip bribe.

Pulling on a nightshirt and fuzzy pink socks, I returned to the kitchen.

Another character weakness. I hate errands. Dry cleaning. Car maintenance. Supermarket. I may construct lists, but follow-through is usually delayed until I’m back-against-the-wall. Consequently, my larder offered the following delicacies:

One frozen meat loaf entrée. One frozen chow mein entrée. Cans of tuna, peaches, tomato paste, and green beans. Mushroom, vegetable, and chicken noodle soup. Packages of dried macaroni and cheese and mushroom risotto.

Bird reappeared as the chow mein was leaving the microwave. Setting the tray on the counter, I got catnip from the pantry and placed it in his mouse.

The cat flopped to his side, clawed the toy with all fours, and sniffed. His character weakness? He likes to get high.

I ate standing at the sink while Bird jazzed his pheromonic receptors on the floor at my feet. Then Ozzy Osbourne and I hit the sack.

Though I was anxious to begin my analysis of the skull and cauldrons, Tuesdays I belonged to UNCC.

Much to Slidell’s annoyance.

As appeasement, I agreed to drop by the MCME at the butt crack of dawn. Skinny’s wording, not mine.

I spent an hour sampling from the chicken and the goat head, and double-checking the bugs I’d collected from the cellar. Fortunately, I’d taken time on-site to separate and label them.

Insects packaged and shipped to an entomologist in Hawaii, I rushed to campus to teach my morning seminar. In the afternoon I advised students. Legions of them, all concerned about upcoming midterms. Dusk was nothing but a memory when I finally slipped away.

Wednesday, I was again up with the sun. Rising at daybreak is not my style. I wasn’t enjoying it.

The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner is located at Tenth and College, on the cusp of uptown, in a building that started life as a Sears Garden Center. Which is exactly what it resembles, sans the pansies and philodendra. Squat and featureless, the one-story brick bunker is also home to several Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD satellite offices.

In tune with the original mall theme, landscaping consists of an acre of concrete. Bad news if you’re hoping for a shot at Southern Homes and Gardens. Good news if you’re trying to park your car.

Which I was, at 7:35 A.M.

Card-swiping myself through double glass doors, I entered an empty reception area. A purring silence told me I was first to arrive.

Weekdays, Eunice Flowers screens visitors through a plate-glass window above her desk, granting entrance to some, turning others away. She does scheduling, types and enters reports, and maintains hard-copy documents in gray metal cabinets lining the walls of her domain.

Regardless of the weather, Mrs. Flowers’s clothes remain pressed, her hair fixed with balanced precision. Though kind and generous, the woman inevitably makes me feel messy.

And her work space totally confounds me. No matter the chaos throughout the rest of the lab, her desktop is perpetually clean and clutter-free. All papers stay militarily squared, all bulletin board Post-its aligned and equi-spaced. I am incapable of such tidiness, and suspicious of those who are.

I knew the gatekeeper would arrive in fifteen minutes. Precisely. Mrs. Flowers had clocked in at 7:50 for more than two decades, would continue to do so until she retired. Or her toes pointed north.

Turning right, I walked past a row of death investigator cubicles to a large whiteboard on the back wall. While penning that day’s date in the square beside my name, I checked those beside the names of the three pathologists.

Dr. Germaine Hartigan was away for a week of vacation. Dr. Ken Siu had blocked off three days for court testimony.

Bummer for Larabee. He was on his own this week.

I looked at the intake log. Overnight, two cases had been entered in black Magic Marker.

A burned body had been found in a Dumpster behind a Winn-Dixie supermarket. MCME 522-08.

A jawless human skull had been found in a cellar. MCME 523-08.

My office is in back, near those of the pathologists. The square footage is such that the room probably qualifies by code as a closet.

Unlocking the door, I slid behind my desk and placed my purse in a drawer. Then I pulled a form from plastic mini-shelving topping a filing cabinet at my back, filled in the case number, and wrote a brief description of the remains and the circumstances surrounding their discovery. Worksheet ready, I hurried to the locker room.

The MCME facility has a pair of autopsy suites, each with a single table. The smaller of the two has special ventilation for combating odor.

The stinky room. For decomps and floaters. My kinds of cases.

After laying out cameras, calipers, a screen, picks, and a small trowel, I crossed to the morgue. The stainless steel door whooshed open, enveloping me in the smell of refrigerated flesh. I flicked on the light.

And said a prayer of thanks to Joe Hawkins. Metaphorically.

On Tuesday, I’d been too grumpy because of the butt-crack hour to notice. The dilemma struck me as I was changing into scrubs. If the cauldrons were on the floor, how would I move them?

No problem. Hawkins had left both on the gurney he’d employed to transport them from Greenleaf. Gathering the cardboard box containing the skulls and the chicken, I toed the brake release, turned, and rump-pushed the door. It flew open.

Hands caught me as I sailed into a full-out pratfall. Recovering, I turned.

Tim Larabee resembles a wrangler who’s spent far too much time in the desert. A marathon junkie, daily training has grizzled his body, fried his skin, and hollowed his already lean cheeks.

Larabee’s eyes were apologetic. Eyes set way too deep. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

“My fault. I was leading with my ass.”

“Let me help you.”

As we maneuvered the gurney out of the cooler and into the autopsy room, I told him about the cellar.

“Voodoo?”

I shrugged. Who knows?

“Guess you won’t be X-raying the fill.” Larabee slapped one iron cauldron.

“Flying blind,” I agreed, pulling on gloves. “But I’ll have Joe shoot the skulls as soon as he gets here.”

Larabee indicated the box. “Quick look-see?”

I opened the flaps. Each skull was as I’d left it, encased in a labeled ziplock. No need to check the bag. The stench told me it still contained the chicken.

While the ME gloved, I removed the human skull and centered it on a cork ring balancer on the autopsy table.

“Mandible?”

I shook my head no.

Larabee ran a fingertip over the forehead and crown. “Looks like wax,” he said.

I nodded in agreement.

Larabee touched the stain haloing the borders of the overlying goo. “Blood?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Human?”

“I’ll take a sample for testing.”

Larabee gestured with an upturned palm. I knew what he wanted.

“This is only preliminary,” I warned.

“Understood.”

I took the cranium in my hands, palate and foramen magnum pointing up.

“I’ll wait for the X-rays, of course, but it looks like the third molars were just erupting, and there’s minimal wear on the others. The basilar suture has recently fused.” I referred to the junction between the sphenoid and occipital bones at the skull base. “That configuration suggests an age in the mid to late teens.”

I rotated the skull.

“The back of the head is smooth, with no bump for the attachment of neck muscles.” I pointed to a triangular lump projecting downward below the right ear opening. “The mastoids are small. And see how this raised ridge dies out at the end of the cheekbone?”

“Doesn’t continue backward above the auditory meatus.”

I nodded. “Those features all suggest female.”

“The brow ridges aren’t much to write home about.”

“No. But at this age that’s not definitive.”

“What about race?”

“Tough one. The nasal opening isn’t all that wide, but the nasal bones meet low on the bridge, like a Quonset hut. The inferior nasal border and spine are damaged, so it’s hard to evaluate shape in that region.” I turned the skull sideways. “The lower face projects forward.” I looked down onto the crown. “Cranial shape is long but not excessively narrow.”

I replaced the skull on its ring.

“I’ll run measurements through Fordisc 3.0, but my gut feeling is Negroid.”

“African-American.”

“Or African. Caribbean. South American. Central—”

“A black teenaged girl.”

“That’s only preliminary.”

“Yeah, yeah. PMI?”

“That’ll take some work.”

“A hundred years? Fifty? Ten? One?”

“Yes,” I said. “I FedEx’ed the bugs yesterday.”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“It was in and out early,” I said.

“Now what?” Larabee asked.

“Now I sift through two cauldrons of dirt.”

The door opened and Joe Hawkins stuck his head through the gap.

“You see what I left in the coffee room yesterday?”

Larabee and I shook our heads no.

“I was at the university all day,” I said.

“I was in Chapel Hill,” Larabee said.

“Just as well. You ain’t gonna like it.”