THE SKULL WAS NESTLED IN ONE CORNER, WITH THE REST OF the skeleton packed above and around it. Every element was dappled yellow and brown. Nothing special. Exposure to sunlight bleaches bone. Contact with soil and vegetation darkens it.

It wasn’t the state of the remains that shocked us.

It was the object wedged behind an infolded flap of cardboard rimming the inside of the box.

“Is that a dog tag?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That shouldn’t be in there.”

“You think not?” Sarcasm not directed at me.

After wiggling the tag free, Danny whipped off his glasses, scrunched his eyes, and brought the small metal rectangle to his nose.

“Can you make out a name?” I asked.

“No.” He thumbnail-scratched one side, flipped the tag, scratched the other.

“There’s a thick accretion covering both surfaces. Let’s try some water.”

At the sink, Danny scrubbed the tag with a hard-bristle brush, then repeated the glasses-squinty-eye thing.

“If the raised lettering is abraded or squashed, usually I can dig out and read the indentation on the back. But this gunk’s like cement. Let’s give it a whirl in the sonicator.”

Sonicators are used to clean jewelry, optical parts, coins, watches, dental, medical, electronic, and automotive equipment. The gizmos rely on ultrasound, usually in the 15–400 kHz range. No rocket science. Using liquid cleanser, you just shake the crap out of whatever is dirty.

Danny placed the tag in the stainless steel basket, added a vinegar-water solution, and closed the cover. Then he set the timer.

We were both staring at the thing, pointlessly, when a thought occurred to me.

“Who was the last person to examine this case?” I asked.

“Excellent question.”

Danny crossed to Red Sweater. He was explaining what he wanted when my BlackBerry pinged an incoming text.

Katy.

Invasion!

Ants? A marching army?

Home shortly, I texted back.

Fast.

What?

This blows.

Great. A new crisis.

Problem?

Unbelievable.???? I was clueless as to the basis of Katy’s current discontent.

Vacation over, she replied.???? I repeated.

A minute passed with no response.

What the hell?

I called Katy’s cell.

Got voice mail.

Terrific. She’d turned off or was ignoring her phone.

I was clipping the BlackBerry onto my belt when Danny returned, his expression troubled.

“Dimitriadus,” he said. “Back in nineteen ninety-eight.”

“Could Dimitriadus have missed seeing the tag?”

“It might have been jammed way up under the lip of the box. When the cardboard loosened with age, it could have slid into view.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Danny removed the tag from the sonicator and returned to the sink for another go with the brush.

Seconds passed. A full minute.

Scrub.

Glasses off.

Squint.

Glasses on.

Scrub.

Repeat.

Agitated by Katy’s texting, I almost snatched the tag from his hand.

At last, the glasses came off and the myopic eyes narrowed.

“Holy shit.”

Danny rarely used profanity.

“What?” I asked.

Danny read aloud.

“Let me see.” I shot out a hand.

Danny yielded the tag.

He was right. The stamped info was easier to discern as an indentation.

I reversed the letters and digits in my mind.

John Charles Lowery

477 38 5923

A pos Bapt

Did Baptists commonly have A positive blood?

Inane, but that’s the first question that formed in my mind.

“That’s a Social Security number, right?”

Danny nodded. “The military made the switch from service numbers sometime in the sixties.”

“This can’t be our John Lowery.” I knew as I said it that I was wrong. But what were the chances?

“Let’s check.”

We hurried to Danny’s office.

Pulled Spider’s file.

The SS number belonged to John Charles Lowery from Lumberton, North Carolina. Spider.

But Spider Lowery died in Quebec.

Forty years after crashing in Long Binh.

Sweet Mother Mary, could the situation possibly grow more confused?

“Shall we lay the guy out?” Danny’s voice held little enthusiasm.

My eyes flicked to my watch.

Five fifty.

I was anxious to get home to Katy. And I wanted to learn whether Ryan had found an alternate source of DNA for Spider.

“Let’s do it first thing tomorrow.”

“It’s a date.”

“You’re on, big guy.” I mimicked Danny’s earlier wink. “But we both keep our clothes on.”

I called out, explored.

Katy was not in the house.

At the pool.

On the lanai.

I found no note explaining her whereabouts.

I strolled down to the beach.

No Katy.

I was changing to shorts when a door slammed.

The cadence of conversation drifted to my room. Voices, one male, one female, not my daughter.

Had Katy made friends?

“Katy?”

“She’s gone for a bike ride,” the male voice called out.

Boing!

Katy’s texts now made sense.

Had I asked her opinion?

I was half asleep, had acted on impulse.

Bonehead move, Brennan.

Had I given her a heads-up?

I’d had none myself.

Lame.

Slipping on sandals, I hurried downstairs.

Ryan’s shirt featured turquoise bananas and lavender palms. His board shorts were apricot and had Billabong scrawled across the bum. Add flip-flops, Maui Jims, a “Hang Loose” cap, and a two-day stubble. You get the picture. Miami Vice meets Hawaii Five-O.

Lily held a string-handled shopping bag in each hand. By joint effort, her miniskirt and tube top covered maybe twenty inches of her torso. Ninety-inch wedge sandals, Lolita shades, maraschino lips.

Oh, boy.

“Aloha, madame.” Ryan crushed me with a bear hug. “Comment ça va?”

“I’m good.” Freeing myself, I turned to Lily. “How was your flight?”

Lily shrugged one very bare shoulder.

“I hope it’s OK that we just showed up,” Ryan said.

“How did you find us?”

Ryan grinned and flashed his brows.

I knew his meaning. “You’re a detective. You detect.”

“Katy seemed a bit flustered at seeing us,” Ryan said.

“I may have forgotten to mention your arrival.”

Rolling mascara-laden eyes, Lily threw out one hip.

“Everything happened so last-minute, the judge granting permission, booking seats, racing to Dorval,” Ryan said. “In all the rush, I forgot to charge my cell. Damned if it didn’t die at the airport.”

“They do that,” Lily said.

“Did Katy get you settled?” I asked.

“She did. I’m down, Lily’s in the spare bedroom up. This place is killer, by the way.”

“Can I go?” Lily. Not whiny, but close.

Ryan looked an apology my way.

I glanced at my watch. Six thirty. “Katy should be back any minute.” Please, God. “How about we meet at seven thirty and head out for dinner?”

“My treat,” Ryan said.

“No way,” I said.

“I insist,” he said.

“Katy can hurt you,” I said. “I think she checks the right-hand column, then orders the highest-priced item on the menu.”

“That’s why God gave us credit cards.” Ryan smiled and tapped his back pocket.

The choice of restaurant involved stimulating dialogue. Lily wanted steak. Katy was avoiding red meat. Katy craved fish. Lily was over her quota on mercury. Katy suggested Thai. Too spicy. Lily proposed Indian. Katy wasn’t in the mood.

We compromised on Japanese.

During dinner, neither Katy nor Lily was overtly rude, but icicles could have formed on our table. Back at Lanikai, each went straight to her room.

Ryan and I shared a drink on the lanai, Perrier for me, Big Wave Golden Ale for him.

Ryan apologized for Lily’s insolence. She’d resisted making the trip. He’d insisted, gotten no support from Lutetia. He suspected a love interest, perhaps a man from Lily’s drug rehab group. Or, worse, from her past as a user.

I explained that Katy was still dejected over Coop’s death, but that she seemed to be on the mend.

We agreed that our daughters were champs at the use of the sugar-coated dig. And that my sisterhood-bonding therapy did not look promising.

I brought Ryan up to speed on developments at the CIL. The Mongoloid craniofacial traits of 2010-37. Spider Lowery’s Native American ancestry. Luis Alvarez, the maintenance specialist who went down with Spider in ’68. 1968-979, the decomposed body found near Long Binh eight months after the crash. Spider Lowery’s dog tag in 1968-979’s box.

Ryan filled me in on developments in Montreal. And Lumberton. Turned out my suggestion about Beasley, though a good one, was nonproductive. The sheriff was cooperative but, to date, had offered nothing of value.

Listening to Ryan describe his exchange with the sheriff triggered a Ping! moment. A comment of Plato’s during our scrapbook conversation.

“Ryan, listen. Spider’s mother died of kidney failure five years ago. It’s a long shot, but maybe the hospital where she was treated still has some samples on file, you know, a path slide or something. And Spider had a brother who was killed a couple years before that.”

“A long shot is better than no shot at all. I’ll call first thing tomorrow, ask Beasley to poke around.”

Ryan proposed taking Katy and Lily to Pearl Harbor the following day. I wished him luck.

At eleven, we too retired to our separate rooms.

Through my wall, I heard Lily talking on her cell.