“I PUNCH IT UP, A VOICE TELLS ME I’VE REACHED COMMISSIONER Lingo’s office.”

“Why would Rinaldi have Lingo’s number?”

“Good question.”

I reread Rinaldi’s last entry.

VG, solicitation 9/28-9/29.

“VG could be Vince. Maybe Rinaldi learned the kid’s last name, and the fact that he was busted for solicitation.”

“Right around the time we’re guessing Klapec disappeared.”

“Why did Rinaldi think that was worth noting?”

Slidell shrugged. “Can’t hurt to pull arrest records for those dates. If nothing else, it might give us Vince’s last name. Kid’s in the wind, by the way. No one’s seen him since Saturday.”

“Where does he live?”

“His buddies ain’t busting their balls to share, but they think he was mostly sleeping on the streets.”

“Do you plan to pay Lingo a visit?”

“Later. Right now I’m retracing Eddie’s steps, seeing what I can score on this dipshit Vince.”

“Strictly regarding Klapec,” I said.

“Strictly.”

“Anything new on Asa Finney?”

“Unless I find a smoking howitzer in the guy’s shorts, he sees a judge on the bones rap, posts bond, and they kick him tomorrow.”

“What’s your take on him?”

Slidell snorted. “Could have been a stud except for the head-on with zits.”

I ignored the unkind remark. Finney couldn’t help the condition of his skin. “But a killer?”

“Finney’s a witch. Witch camp’s a spit from the Klapec scene. Neighbors report a lot of drumming and rattling the night before the kid’s body turns up. One says he saw a Ford Focus leaving the area long after the party was over.”

I remembered the car in the Pineville driveway.

“Finney drives a Focus,” I said.

“Don’t take a genius to connect the dots.” Again, the tensing of the jaw. “I’m thinking Finney’s wizard pals maybe also capped Eddie.”

“Why?”

“He was learning too much.”

As I started to reply Slidell shot upright in his chair.

“Rick Nelson.” A beefy finger jabbed the air in my direction. “Except for the zits, Finney’s a dead ringer for Rick Nelson. Think about it. The hair. The come-fuck-me smile. Sonovabitch.”

“You’re suggesting Finney is the violent john described by Vince?”

Slidell stood and circled to my side of the desk. The finger flipped the pages of Rinaldi’s notes.

RN-PIT. CTK. TV.

“Eddie was saying Rick Nelson with pits. Zit pits. That’s just what he’d say. I’ll be goddamned.”

“Maybe.” I was unconvinced.

“What? It describes Finney to a T. Maybe that’ll give us enough to hold the little prick on Klapec.”

“I’d still run the Akron angle.” I truncated Slidell’s objection. “See if Finney booked a flight or has ties there.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

We fell silent, staring at Rinaldi’s enigmatic code.

After several seconds, I sensed a shift in Slidell’s attention, felt his eyes crawl my face. I didn’t look up. Didn’t want to pursue the conversation I suspected was coming.

Instead of commenting, Slidell yanked a spiral from his pocket, scribbled, then tore out and laid the page on my desk.

“My girlfriend used to catch a lot of these bugs. You feel like it, you call her.”

I heard footsteps. Then my office was still.

Again, shame scorched my face. Larabee knew. Slidell knew. Who else had seen through my pathetic flu story?

I was reading Slidell’s scrawl when the ME stuck his head in the door.

“Get in here quick—” Seeing my look, he stopped. “What?”

“Slidell has a girlfriend.”

“No way.”

“Verlene Something with a W.” The name was spelled Wryznyk.

“I’ll be damned.” Larabee remembered his purpose in coming. “Lingo’s foaming at the mouth again.”

“God almighty!”

I followed Larabee into the lounge. Every station was carrying coverage of the Rinaldi shooting. The TV was tuned to one of them.

Lingo was holding forth outside a cemetery. Police barricades were going up on the street around him.

“—no longer sacred? When lawbreakers butcher those who risk their lives to keep our city safe? Those brave officers who protect our homes and keep our children from harm? I’ll tell you what it is. It is the beginning of the end for decent society.

“I am standing at the entrance to Sharon Memorial Park. Detective Edward Rinaldi will be buried here tomorrow. He was fifty-six, a policeman for thirty-eight years, a beloved member of this community, a God-fearing man. Detective Rinaldi is not alone.”

Lingo read from a list in his hand.

“Officer Sean Clark, thirty-four. Officer Jeffrey Shelton, thirty-five. Officer John Burnette, twenty-five. Officer Andy Nobles, twenty-six.”

Lingo’s eyes rolled up.

“I name but a few of the fallen.” The porcine face creased in concern. “Does the fault lie solely with the evildoers?” Solemn head shake. “I think not. The fault lies with a system of laws designed to protect the guilty. With libertine scientists who undermine the efforts of our brothers and sisters in uniform.”

I felt my innards curdle.

“Many of you witnessed the assault on my person last Friday. Dr. Temperance Brennan, employed by your university, by your medical examiner, institutions funded by your tax dollars. Dr. Brennan has seen the carnage. She knows of the battle raging on our streets. Does she work to convict those like Asa Finney? Those who have chosen the serpent’s path? Quite the opposite. She makes excuses for these criminals. Defends their pagan practices.”

Lingo drilled the camera with a look of heart-stopping sincerity.

“It is time for change. As your elected representative, I intend to see that change brought about.”

There was an aerial shot of the scene, then the program cut to an anchorwoman. Above her left shoulder, a street map diagrammed the course of the next day’s funeral procession.

“Services will begin with eleven o’clock mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church. The cavalcade will then proceed along Park, Woodlawn, Wend-over, Providence, and Sharon Amity. Those streets will be closed to traffic until midafternoon.

“Since Sunday, members of law enforcement have been arriving from all over the country. Those unable to attend mass or to march in the procession will gather at the cemetery. Thousands are expected to turn out along the route to bid final farewell to Detective Rinaldi. Motorists are encouraged—”

Larabee snapped off the set.

“Who votes for freaking lunatics like Lingo?”

We both knew the answer.

“You did the autopsy?” I asked, steeling my voice, avoiding eye contact.

“Monday.”

“Any surprises?”

“One through-and-through gunshot wound at the T-12 level. Two XTP’s lodged in the thorax. I removed one from the right lung, the other from the heart.”

Larabee didn’t have to explain. I knew the bullet. Extreme Terminal Performance. A nasty little slug designed to expand for maximal organ damage.

Grabbing a Diet Coke, I returned to my office. The phone was blinking.

Both messages had been left by UNCC colleagues. Marion Ireland was returning my call concerning use of the scanning electron microscope. Jennifer Roberts simply asked again that I phone her.

I gulped more Coke. It was definitely helping to settle my stomach. But the headache was still off the Richter, and my enthusiasm for human interaction was low.

My booze-battered cortex offered a list of excuses. The conscience guys countered each one.

Scanning electron microscopy is now irrelevant.

Not your thinking on Friday.

Klapec’s been ID’ed. Histological age estimation is now superfluous.

Why the shadowing in the Haversian systems?

The cortical guys had no hypothesis.

Do it, Brennan.

Could be pointless.

Can’t know until you try.

Score a win in the conscience column.

After another Coke hit, I dialed. Ireland answered on the first ring. I asked about her weekend, sat out the answer, then explained my puzzlement concerning the irregularities in the thin sections I’d made from Jimmy Klapec’s femur.

“At a magnification of one hundred, everything looks dandy. When I crank it to four hundred, I pick up odd discolorations in some of the Haversian canals. I don’t know what they are.”

“Fungal? Pathological? Taphonomic?”

“That’s what I’d like to clarify.”

“It will take a while to prepare your specimens. I’ll have to etch them with nitric acid, place them in a vacuum dessicator, then dust them with gold palladium.”

“I can drop them off anytime.”

“If all goes well, they should be ready by late afternoon tomorrow.”

That would work. Rinaldi’s funeral was at eleven.

“I’ll be there within the hour.”

Allowing no time for a second cerebral spat, I dialed Roberts. She, too, was right by her phone.

“Dr. Roberts.”

“It’s Tempe.”

“Thanks so much for calling me back. I’m sorry I bothered you on a holiday weekend. I should have known you’d be out.”

“It’s no bother.” I was out, no question. Just not in the sense she meant.

“I understand you’re not feeling well today?”

“Just a flu. I’m much better now.”

“Hang on.”

I heard the receiver tap a desktop, footsteps, then a closing door. I pictured Jennifer crossing the office two down from mine. Identical desk, credenza, filing cabinets, and shelves, hers filled with volumes on animism, henotheism, totemism, and dozens of ism’s of which I was ignorant.

“Sorry.” She spoke softly. “There are students in the hallway.”

“I think they camp out there to avoid paying rent.”

She laughed nervously. “You may be right.” I heard slow inhalation, release. “OK. This is difficult.”

Please, God. Not a personal problem. Not today.

“I read in the Observer that you’re investigating the altar discovered last Monday on Greenleaf Avenue.”

“Yes.” That surprised me.

“Human bones were among the objects recovered.”

“Yes.” I had no idea where this was going.

“Last Thursday, a headless body was found at Lake Wylie—”

“Jennifer, I can’t discuss—”

“Please. Bear with me.”

I let her go on.

“The victim was identified as a teenaged boy named Jimmy Klapec. His body was marked with satanic symbology. Earlier, I haven’t the date, another headless boy was pulled from the Catawba River. I don’t know if that corpse was similarly mutilated.”

Obviously she’d heard, or been told of, Boyce Lingo’s tirade. I didn’t confirm or deny the information.

“The police have arrested a young man named Asa Finney. He’s been charged with possession of human remains and is a suspect in the Klapec homicide.”

“Yes.” All that had been reported in news coverage. I didn’t mention that Slidell also suspected Finney of involvement in Rinaldi’s murder.

“They’ve arrested the wrong man,” Roberts said.

“The police are conducting a full investigation.”

“Asa Finney is a Wiccan, not a Satanist. Can you appreciate the enormous difference?”

“I have a rudimentary understanding,” I said.

“The public does not. Asa is a self-proclaimed witch, it’s true. Have you seen his Web site?”

I admitted that I had not.

“Go there. Read his postings. You will find the musings of a kind and gentle soul.”

“I will.”

“There is a Wiccan camp at Lake Wylie. Though I don’t know the exact location, I know that Jimmy Klapec’s body was found at Lake Wylie. That will not put Asa Finney in a good light.”

I didn’t mention the books by Anton LaVey, the resemblance to Rick Nelson, or the Ford Focus seen in the area the night of Klapec’s murder.

“In today’s climate of religious extremism, there are those who condemn beliefs they don’t understand. Responsible, intelligent Christians who would rather see people dead than following what they consider pagan practices. Their numbers are few, but these fanatics exist.”

I heard a voice in the background. Jennifer asked me to hold on. There was muffled conversation, but I could make out no words.

“Sorry. Where was I? Yes. County Commissioner Lingo has twice mentioned Asa Finney by name, fingering him as a disciple of the devil, an example of all that is wrong in today’s world. Given the atmosphere of anger created by Saturday’s police shooting, I fear for Asa’s ability to get a fair hearing.”

“He has excellent counsel.” I didn’t mention names.

“Charles Hunt is a public defender.”

“Charles Hunt is very good.” In more ways than one. I didn’t mention that, either.

Jennifer lowered her voice further, as though fearing her words might carry through the door.

“Asa Finney stole bones from a crypt when he was seventeen. It was a juvenile prank, stupid and thoughtless. That’s a far cry from murder.”

How did she know that? I didn’t ask.

“The police are doing a thorough investigation,” I said.

“Are they? Asa Finney is a loner. They will find no one to vouch for him. Will Asa be sacrificed on the altar of Boyce Lingo’s ambition?”

I couldn’t figure Jennifer’s interest in Finney. Did her zeal grow from a commitment to the principles of her discipline? Or was it born of something more personal?

“I’m unclear what it is you want me to do.”

“Nullify Lingo’s poison. Make a public statement. You’re a forensic specialist. People will listen to you.”

“I’m sorry, Jennifer. I can’t do that.”

“Then talk to Lingo. Reason with him.”

“Why are you so concerned about Asa Finney?”

“He is innocent.”

“How can you know that?”

There was a moment of dead air, then, “We are members of the same coven.”

“You are Wiccan?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. I’d known Jennifer eight years and hadn’t a clue.

“Yes.”

I heard an indrawn breath then silence. I waited.

“Come to Full Moon tonight. We are having an esbat ritual. Meet us. Learn our philosophy.”

My battered brain cells were screaming for sleep. I started to decline.

“You will see. Ours is a joyous religion born of kinship with nature. Wiccans celebrate life, we do not take it.”

The conscience guys piped a voice through the pain in my head.

While Slidell was drowning his grief in work, you were drowning yours in booze.

“When?”

“Seven P.M.”

Barring horrendous traffic, I could make it to the university and get home in time for a power nap before leaving for Full Moon.

I reached for my tablet.

“I’ll need directions.”