AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A HOLY CARD, A MASS-PRODUCED devotional used by the Catholic faithful. My sister, Harry, and I used to collect them as kids. A bit smaller than a driver’s license, each card depicts a saint or biblical scene and provides a suitable prayer. The good ones promise indulgence, time off the purgatory sentence you’ve got to serve for screwing up on Earth.

It wasn’t. When removed from its plastic wrapping, the image that emerged was actually a portrait, the kind that shows up in school yearbooks.

The subject was shown from the waist up, tree-leaning, face turned toward the lens. She wore a brown long-sleeved sweater that allowed a peek of stomach. One hand pressed the tree, the other thumb-hooked a belt loop on a faded pair of jeans.

The girl’s hair was center parted, swept back and flipped up behind her ears. It was black. Her eyes were dark chocolate, her skin nutmeg. She looked about seventeen.

I felt a constriction in my chest.

A black teenaged girl.

My eyes jumped to the gurney. Dear God, could this be her skull? If so, how had it ended up in that basement? Had this girl been murdered?

I looked back at the portrait.

The girl’s head was subtly tipped, her shoulders lightly raised. Her lip corners rose in an impish grin. She looked happy, bursting with self-assurance and the promise of life. Why was her photo buried in a cauldron?

Could Arlo Welton be right? Had he uncovered an altar used for satanic ritual? For human sacrifice? I’d read news stories, knew that, though rare, such atrocities did take place.

The phone shrilled, sparing further contemplation of the dreadful possibilities.

“Weren’t we the early bird today.” As usual, Mrs. Flowers sounded a yard north of chirpy.

“I have a lot to go through.”

“The media is in a dither over this basement thing.”

“Yes.”

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Well, I guess they don’t really have hooks anymore. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

I looked at the wall clock. Twelve forty.

“They’ll move on once something new die-verts their attention. Thought I’d let you know. There’s a detective steaming your way.”

“Slidell?”

“Yes, ma’am. Partner’s with him.”

“Warning heeded.”

I was hanging up when the autopsy room door swung in. Slidell entered, followed by a gangling skeleton toting an Italian leather briefcase.

Skinny Slidell and Eddie Rinaldi have been partners since the eighties, to the puzzlement of all, since the two appear to be polar opposites.

Rinaldi is six feet four and carries a little over 160. Slidell is five-ten and carries a whole lot more, most of it south of where his waist should be. Rinaldi’s features are sharp. Slidell’s are fleshy and loose, the bags under his eyes the size of empanadas.

Why the Skinny handle? It’s a cop thing.

But the differences aren’t limited to physique. Slidell is messy. Rinaldi is neat. Slidell inhales junk food. Rinaldi eats tofu. Slidell is Elvis, Sam Cooke, and the Coasters. Rinaldi is Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Slidell’s clothes are blue-light special. Rinaldi’s are designer or custom-made.

Somehow the two stick. Go figure.

Slidell removed knockoff Ray-Bans and hung them by one bow in his jacket pocket. Today it was polyester, a plaid probably named for some golf course in Scotland.

“How’s it hangin’, doc?” Slidell sees himself as Charlotte’s very own Dirty Harry. Hollywood cop lingo is part of the schtick.

“Interesting morning.” I nodded at Rinaldi. “Detective.”

Rinaldi flicked a wave, attention fixed on the cauldrons and skulls.

That was Rinaldi. All focus. No jokes or banter. No complaining or bragging. No sharing of personal problems or victories. On duty, he was perennially polite, reserved, and unflappable.

Off duty? No one really knew much. Born in West Virginia, Rinaldi had attended college briefly, then come to Charlotte sometime in the seventies. He’d married, his wife had died shortly thereafter of cancer. I’d heard talk of a child, but had never witnessed the man mention a son or daughter. Rinaldi lived alone in a small brick house in a sedate, well-groomed neighborhood called Beverly Woods.

Other than his height, lofty taste in music, and penchant for expensive clothing, Rinaldi had no physical traits or personality quirks that other cops poked fun at. To my knowledge, he’d never been the butt of jokes concerning screwups or embarrassing incidents. Perhaps that’s why he’d never been tagged with a nickname.

Bottom line: Rinaldi was not the guy I’d invite to my margarita party, but, if threatened, he was the one I’d want covering my back.

Slidell raised and waggled splayed fingers. “Some cretin’s idea of a Halloween freak show, eh?”

“Maybe not.”

The waggling stopped.

I summarized the biological profile that I’d constructed from the skull.

“But the stuff’s older than dirt, right?”

“I estimate the girl’s been dead no less than five, no more than fifty years. My gut goes with the front end of that range.”

Slidell blew air through his lips. His breath smelled of tobacco.

“Cause of death?”

“The skull shows no signs of illness or injury.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s the jaw?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Calm, Brennan.

“I found this in the large cauldron. About four inches down in the fill.”

I placed the school picture on the gurney. The men stepped forward to view it.

“Anything else?” Slidell’s eyes remained on the photo.

“Hunk of brain.”

Rinaldi’s brows floated up. “Human?”

“I hope not.”

Rinaldi and Slidell looked from the photo to the skull to the photo and back.

Rinaldi spoke first. “Think it’s the same young lady?”

“There’s nothing in the cranial or facial architecture to exclude the possibility. Age, sex, and race fit.”

“Can you do a photo superimposition?”

“Not much point without the lower jaw.”

“I suppose that also holds true for a facial approximation.”

I nodded. “The image would be too speculative, might distract rather than help with an ID.”

“Sonovabitch.” Slidell’s head wagged from side to side.

“We’ll start checking MP’s.” Rinaldi was referring to missing persons files.

“Go back ten years. If nothing pops, we can expand the time frame.”

“Not much sense sending her through NCIC.”

NCIC is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, a computerized index of criminal records, fugitives, stolen properties, and missing and unidentified persons. By comparing details entered by law enforcement, the system is able to match corpses found in one location with individuals reported missing in others.

But the database is huge. With only age, sex, and race as identifiers, and a time frame of up to fifty years, the list generated would look like a phone book.

“No,” I agreed. “Not without more.”

I told the detectives about the insects and the chicken.

Rinaldi grasped the implication. “The cellar is still being used.”

“Based on the condition of the chicken, I’d say within the last few months. Perhaps more recently than that.”

“You saying some witch doctor took a kid underground and cut off her head?”

“I am not.” Cool. “Though I’d guess that’s exactly what happened to the chicken.”

“So this wing-nut plumber is right?”

“I’m suggesting there is a possibility—”

“Witch doctors? Human sacrifice?” Rolling his eyes, Slidell do-do-do-do’ed the Twilight Zone theme.

Though relatively few, there are people on this planet with a talent for irking me, for provoking me to blurt things I wouldn’t otherwise say. Slidell is one of those special souls. I hate losing control, vow each time it won’t happen again. Repeatedly, with Slidell, that vow is shattered.

It happened now.

“Tell that to Mark Kilroy.” The comment flew out before I had time to consider.

There was a moment of silence. Then Rinaldi pointed one long, bony finger.

“Kid from Brownsville, Texas. Disappeared in Matamoros, Mexico, back in eighty-nine.”

“Kilroy was sodomized, tortured, then killed by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his followers. Investigators found his brain floating in a cauldron.”

Slidell’s eyes snapped down. “What the hell?”

“Kilroy’s organs were harvested for ritual use.”

“You saying that’s what we got here?”

Already, I regretted seeding Slidell’s imagination with mention of the Kilroy case.

“I have to finish with the cauldrons. And hear what the crime lab comes up with.”

Slidell scooped up and passed the class photo to his partner.

“Based on clothing and hair, the image doesn’t look that old,” Rinaldi said. “We could broadcast it, see if someone recognizes her.”

“Let’s wait on that,” Slidell said. “We start flashing the mug of every kid we can’t find, eventually Mr. and Mrs. Public tune out.”

“I agree. We don’t even know that she’s missing.”

“Can’t be too many studios shooting bubble gummers in this burg.” Slidell pocketed the photo. “We’ll start by working those.”

I nodded. “Might not be from this burg. What did you learn about the Greenleaf property?”

Rinaldi pulled a small leather-bound notepad from the inside breast pocket of a jacket jarringly different from that of his partner. Navy, double-breasted, very high-end.

A manicured finger flipped a few pages.

“The property changed hands rarely after purchase by a family named Horne in the postwar years, and only among relatives. We’re talking World War Two, here.” Rinaldi looked up from his notes. “We can check older records should circumstances warrant.”

I nodded.

“Roscoe Washington Horne owned the house from 1947 until 1972; Lydia Louise Tillman Horne until 1994; Wanda Belle Sarasota Horne until her death eighteen months ago.”

“Ye old family plantation,” Slidell snorted.

Rinaldi continued from his notes.

“Upon Wanda’s death, the property went to a grandnephew, Kenneth Alois Roseboro.”

“Did Roseboro live in the house?”

“I’m looking into that. Roseboro sold to Polly and Ross Whitner. Both are transplanted New Yorkers. She’s a teacher. He’s an account manager with Bank of America. Transfer of title took place on September twentieth of this year. The Whitners are currently living in a rental apartment on Scaleybark. It appears that major renovations to the Greenleaf house are planned.” Rinaldi closed and tucked away the tablet.

There was a moment of silence. Slidell broke it.

“We made the papers.”

“I saw the article. Is Stallings a regular at the Observer?”

“Not one we know of,” Rinaldi said.

Slidell’s faux Ray-Bans slid into place.

“Shoulda shot that little gal on sight.”

Lunch consisted of a granola bar bolted down with a Diet Coke. After eating, I found Larabee in the main autopsy room cutting on the Dumpster corpse.

I filled him in on my progress and on my conversation with Slidell and Rinaldi. He listened, elbows flexed, bloody hands held away from his body.

I described the brain. He promised to take a look later that day. I was back with the cauldrons by two.

I’d been sifting for twenty minutes when my cell phone sounded. The caller ID showed Katy’s work number.

Degloving one hand, I clicked on.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Where are you?”

“The ME office.”

“What?”

Lowering my mask, I repeated what I’d said.

“Is it really Satanists?”

“You saw the paper.”

“Nice pic.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“My guess is fraternity prank. This town’s waaay too proper for devil worship. Satanism means eccentricity. Exotica. Nonconformity. That sound like stodgy old Charlotte to you?”

“What’s up?” I asked, recognizing the sound of discontent.

Katy had, this year, completed a bachelor of arts degree in psychology, an accomplishment six long years in the making. In the end, graduation hadn’t been spurred by academic passion, but by threats of parental termination of funding. It was one of the rare issues on which Pete and I had agreed. Six is a wrap, kiddo.

The reason Katy lingered so long an undergrad? Not lack of intelligence. Through five majors, she maintained a grade point average of 3.8.

Nope. It wasn’t due to a shortage of brainpower. My daughter is bright and imaginative. The problem is she’s restless as hell.

“I’m thinking of quitting,” Katy said.

“Uh-huh.”

“This job is dull.”

“You chose to work for the public defender’s office.”

“I thought I’d get to do—” Expelled air. “I don’t know. Interesting stuff. Like you do.”

“I’m sifting dirt.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sifting dirt is tedious.”

“What dirt?”

“From the cauldrons.”

“Beats sifting papers.”

“Depends on the papers.”

“Finding much?”

“A few things.” No way I’d mention the photo or the brain.

“How many cauldrons?”

“Two.”

“How far along are you?”

“I’m still on the first.”

“If you’re striking out, switch cauldrons.”

Typical Katy. If bored, move on.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Jesus, you’re rigid. Why the hell not?”

“Protocol.”

“Switching back and forth won’t change what’s inside.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

“How’s Billy?” I asked.

“A peckerhead.”

OK.

“Buy you dinner?” I asked.

“Where?”

“Volare at seven.”

“Can I order the sole?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there. Assuming I haven’t died of boredom.”

I resumed screening.

Snails. Rocks. Puparial cases. Roaches. A dermestid beetle or two. A millipede. That was exciting.

By three I was yawning and my thoughts were wandering.

My eye fell on the other cauldron.

I’d already shot stills and labeled evidence bags. New ground would perk me up, I told myself. Sharpen my observational skills.

Lame.

Why the hell not?

Better.

After cleaning both the trowel and the screen, I inserted my blade.

And immediately hit pay dirt.