Page 75 of Fire and Bones

DOA was a smoker. Fire sparked by a carelessly handled cigarette? Or did someone torch granny?

The comment struck me as callous. Thacker? Or one of her pathologists?

The second case was that of Harriet Stroby, a twenty-three-year-old American University student decapitated by an excursion train on a route used by the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. Stroby’s file also had a comment inserted by an unnamed reader.

DOA was a poetry major. Self-arranged on the tracks? Died elsewhere and placed there?

Neither case struck me as one needing a forensic anthropology consult. What was Thacker’s game?

Pushing from my desk, I hurried toward the chief ME’s office. Halfway there, the murmur of voices stopped me in my tracks.

I turned to retrace my steps back up the corridor.

One of the voices rose in pitch, overly loud and buzzing with self-importance. Male. Familiar.

The man’s mood was already a snarl of self-pity and resentment, but indignation now elbowed itself into the mix.

I froze.

Listened.

The wanker was sharing intel with the ME but not with me? And goddam Thacker. Why hadn’t she included me in the briefing?

Shoulders and spine ridiculously rigid, I reversed and proceeded the last few yards.

“—considering the possibility that it could have been a hit on one of the four.”

Burgos, who was holding a mug that said Have a Nice Day, stopped midsentence when I came through the door. His expression changed. Then changed again. Surprise. Uncertainty. Irritation. All in one blink of the pale little eyes.

“Tempe.” Thacker regarded me with a long, quizzical stare. “You’re back.”

“I am.”

Thacker’s lips drew into a smile whose longevity looked dicey at best.

“Sergeant Burgos and I were discussing the Foggy Bottom fire victims. Perhaps you’d like to join us?”

“I think that would be appropriate.” Chilly.

I took the chair beside Burgos.

Swiveling back to face Thacker, the arson investigator smacked the mug on the table between us with a hard-edged clunk.

Thacker said to me, “The sergeant is summarizing intel from the Metropolitan Police Department detective assigned to his team.” To Burgos, “Please continue.”

“As I was saying, if one of them was targeted, according to Deery—”

“Merle Deery is the MPD detective you met in the autopsy room,” Thacker interjected for my benefit.

“—according to Deery we got us a shit ton of motive. The vic from the basement—”

“Skylar Reese Hill.”

Burgos ignored me.

“—hotfooted it south to get away from a guy named Alvon Finrock. The happy couple was married less than a year, but the lady decided she wanted out. Finrock didn’t see it that way.”

“Finrock has been calling me nonstop for a week,” Thacker said. “The man is rude and abrasive.”

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