RYAN AND I STOPPED AT A STARBUCKS THEN DROVE TO THE Annex. I got Ireland’s envelope from my car and spread the photos across my kitchen table. Ryan sat beside me, sipping his coffee in a way that grated on my nerves.

As I viewed the SEM hard copy, I explained what I was doing.

“When Jimmy Klapec’s body was still unidentified, I took samples from his femur and made thin sections for microscopic examination.”

“Why?” Ryan asked.

“To allow me greater precision in estimating age at death.”

“Then the kid was ID’ed by prints and that became irrelevant.”

“Yes.”

Ryan slurped his coffee.

“But on viewing the thin sections I noticed something wrong with some of the Haversian canals.”

“Point of order.” Ryan raised an index finger.

“Haversian canals are tiny tubes that run longitudinally down compact bone.”

“How tiny?” Slurp.

“Really tiny. Must you make that noise with your coffee?”

“It’s hot.”

“Blow across the top. Or wait.”

“What are these canals for?”

“Stuff goes through them.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Blood vessels, nerve cells, lymphatics. That’s not important. What’s important, or could be, is that some of the canals exhibit unusual patterning at their rims.”

“What kind of patterning?”

“Weird dark lines.”

“You’re really hot when you use that scientific jargon.”

I’d have rolled my eyes but they were glued to Ireland’s photos.

Seconds passed.

Slurp.

“Next time, could you choose a cold beverage?”

“It’s drinkable now. So what do these mysterious dark lines mean?” Ryan asked.

“With the light microscope at the ME office I could only crank the magnification to four hundred. That’s not enough to really see detail.”

“Enter Ireland’s big gorilla.”

“Mm.”

“We’re now viewing hard copy from her SEM analysis.” Aborted slurp.

“Mm.”

I’d singled out and was studying one photo. A white band at the bottom provided the following information:

Mag=1.00 KX 20µm EHT=4.00kV Signal A=SE2 Date: 16 Oct

image WD=6mm Photo No=18

“What’s that?” Ryan’s face was right beside mine.

“Femoral section 1C magnified a thousand times.”

“Looks like a moon crater circled by frozen waves.” Ryan pointed at a jagged crack shooting from the crater’s center. “That one of your weird dark lines?”

Without answering, I exchanged the photo for another. Femoral section 2D showed two fissures originating within the Haversian system.

One by one I studied every image.

Twelve of the twenty showed microfracturing.

“It’s not an artifact,” I said. “The cracks are real.”

“What caused them?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What do they mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lunch?” Ryan asked.

“But I intend to find out.”

“That’s my girl,” Ryan said.

My mind was already triaging possibilities. No evidence of a fungus. A disease process seemed unlikely. So did trauma, even repeated trauma to the femur.

I reexamined each image.

The cracks seemed to be originating deep within the canals and radiating outward. What could distribute strain so deep and so widespread within bone to cause such a phenomenon?

Pressure?

Ryan placed a sandwich in front of me. Ham? Turkey breast? I took a bite, chewed, swallowed. My mind was spinning too fast to notice.

Vascular pressure? Lymphatic?

A phone rang somewhere in the same time zone.

“Shall I get that?” Ryan asked from far off.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

I heard Ryan’s voice. Didn’t listen to his words.

Pressure due to expansion?

Expansion of what?

Ryan said something. I looked up. He was beside me, palm pressed to the mouthpiece of the portable.

“What might expand and place stress deep within bone tissue?”

“Marrow?”

“I’m talking about inside the compact bone, not in the marrow cavity.”

“I don’t know. Water. Do you want to take this? The caller’s pretty insistent.”

“Who is it?”

“Woman named Stallings.”

Anger flashed from nerve ending to nerve ending.

My first reaction was to order Ryan to disconnect.

Then I changed my mind.

“I’ll take it,” I said, reaching for the portable.

Patting my head, Ryan stepped from the kitchen.

“Yes.” Practically hissed.

“Allison Stallings.”

“I know who you are. What I don’t know is how you have the audacity to phone my home?”

“I thought maybe we could talk.”

“You thought wrong.” My voice could have flash-frozen peas.

“I’m not trying to compromise your investigation, Dr. Brennan. Really, I’m not. I write true-crime books and I’m scouting an idea for my next project. It’s nothing more sinister than that.”

“Where do you get off crashing my crime scenes?”

“Your crime scenes?”

I was too furious to answer.

“Look, I have a police scanner. When I heard a call concerning a satanic altar, it caught my attention. Right now people are nuts for voodoo and witches. Then the body washed up at Lake Wylie and I thought the situation was worth pursuing.”

“You’re a paparazzo. You sell photos exploiting personal tragedy.”

“My books don’t make a lot of money. Occasionally I sell a picture. The income puts bread on the table.”

“Mutilated children always sell. Too bad you didn’t get a close-up of Klapec.”

“Come on, you can’t really fault me. This thing has all the elements. Satanic ritual. Male prostitution. Fundamentalist Southern politico. Now a murdered witch.”

“What do you want?” Through tightly clamped molars.

“I’m neither a cop nor a scientist. To keep my work accurate I must rely on those actually involved in the investigations—”

“No.”

“I know you shut me down last time we talked, but I was hoping I could persuade you to change your position.”

I did?

“What did I tell you?”

“Is this a test?” Chuckling.

“No.” Definitely not laughing.

She hesitated, perhaps confused, perhaps searching for the best spin.

“When I asked for your help, you said no and hung up. Then you called back and reamed me out for showing up at your crime scenes. Frankly, I found it a bit of an overreaction. When I dialed you an hour later, to see if you’d cooled off, you refused to pick up.”

“Did you phone the chief medical examiner in Chapel Hill?”

“Yes.” Wary. “Dr. Tyrell was less than cooperative.”

“What did you tell him concerning our conversation?”

Again, she hesitated, choosing her words.

“I may have implied that you were cooperating.”

The little snake had lied to Tyrell.

“How did you get this number?” I was squeezing the phone so hard it was making small popping noises.

“Takeela Freeman.”

“You tricked her, too.”

Stallings neither acknowledged nor denied the accusation.

“Did you imply to Takeela that I’d want her to help you?”

“The kid’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer.”

Anger made my voice sound high and stretched.

“Never call me again.”

When I turned Ryan was staring at me through the partially open swinging door.

“I heard a noise.”

The handheld lay on its convex back, wobbling like an upended turtle. Unconsciously, I’d slammed it to the table again.

“You’re hard on equipment,” Ryan said.

I didn’t answer.

Ryan’s mouth turned up at the corners. “But easy on the eyes.”

“Jesus, Ryan. Is that all you think about?”

“Incoming.” Hunching his shoulders, Ryan ducked from the room.

I sat a moment, wondering. Call Tyrell? Explain that Stallings had lied about our conversation?

Not now. Now, fired though I might be, Jimmy Klapec deserved my full attention. And his father.

And Asa Finney.

I spent another ten minutes puzzling over the SEM scans.

And came up empty.

Frustrated, I decided on a gambit that occasionally worked. When stumped, start over at the beginning.

Opening my briefcase, I pulled out the entire file on Jimmy Klapec.

First I reviewed the scene photos. The body was as I remembered it, flesh ghostly pale, shoulders to the earth, rump to the sky.

I viewed close-ups of the anus, the truncated neck, the carvings in the chest and belly. Nothing but fly eggs.

I shifted to the autopsy shots. Y incision. Organs. Empty chest cavity. Strange striated bruise on the back.

I noted the atypical decay pattern, with more aerobic decomposition than anaerobic putrefaction. As though the body was rotting from the outside in rather than the inside out.

Spreading my bone photos, I reexamined the cut mark in the fourth cervical vertebra. Concave bending. Fixed radius curvature sweeping from, not around, the breakaway point.

The fifth vertebra had one false start. I checked my notes: 0.09 inch in width.

Both neck bones exhibited polish on the cut surfaces. Neither showed entrance or exit chipping.

I slumped back in my chair. The entire exercise had triggered no epiphany with regard to cracking in Haversian canals.

Discouraged, I got up and paced the kitchen.

Why wasn’t Slidell calling back? Had further questioning of Klapec, senior verified or disproved his story? Had they found the gun in the Dumpster? Had they talked to Mrs. Klapec?

I felt genuine sorrow for Jimmy’s mother. First her son, now her husband. The future held no rainbows for Eva Klapec.

I paced some more. Why not? Nothing else was working.

Ryan chose that moment to test the waters.

“All clear?” he asked from the safety of the dining-room side of the door.

“Yes.”

“Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted.”

Ryan came into the kitchen, followed by Birdie.

“Got it all figured out?”

“No.”

“Chocolate.” Ryan turned to Birdie and repeated the pronouncement. “Chocolate.”

The cat raised a skeptical brow. If a cat can be said to do so.

Turning back to me, Ryan tapped a finger to one temple. “Brain food.”

“There may be a Dove bar in the freezer.”

“What’s a Dove bar?”

“Only the best ice cream treat on the planet.” Then I remembered. “That’s right. They’re not available in Canada.”

“Admittedly, we have some holes in our culture.” Ryan began rummaging in the freezer.

I recalled Tuesday’s morning-after mess in my sink. Maybe not, I thought.

“Yes!” Ryan slammed the door, turned, and flourished two bars. “Two frozen delights.”

I took one and began peeling the wrapper.

Frost cascaded onto my hand.

I stared at it, remembering Ryan’s flip answer.

Water.

Expansion.

Cracking.

Ping!

I flew to the phone.