Not a soul in sight. I glanced at the wall clock. 7:58.

Seriously? Only I had arrived on time?

Head pounding and slightly peeved, I dropped into a chair and placed my shoulder bag at my feet.

On the table were a laptop, a cardboard carton, and a plastic tub. Both containers bore numbers on their covers. The ones on the tub were in a format familiar to me: 090431070901. The file dated to April 30, 2009. A single call had come in at 7:09 A.M.

The numbering system on the carton was different. I assumed the case was from another jurisdiction.

A bit of background.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had roughly five hundred unsolved murders dating back to 1970. Recognizing that this was a lot of bodies and a lot of folks waiting for justice, in 2003 the CMPD established a cold case unit.

Honor Barrow, twenty years at the murder table, had run the CCU since its inception. The other full-timers included a police sergeant and an FBI agent. A volunteer review team composed of three retired FBI agents, a retired NYPD cop, a civilian academic, and a civilian engineer provided support in the form of pre-investigation triage and analysis. The cold case unit regulars gathered monthly.

As a forensic anthropologist, I work with the not so recently dead. No secret why I was sometimes invited to the dance. But I usually got a heads-up about why my presence was being requested. A query concerning a set of remains. A question about bones, trauma, or decomposition.

Not this time.

Impatient, and curious why I’d been summoned, I drew the tub to me and pried off the lid. Inside were hundreds of pages separated by dividers. I knew the headings on each of the tabs. Victimology. Summary of the Crime. Crime Scene Report. Evidence/Property Recovered/Analyzed. Medical Examiner’s Report. Witnesses. Related Investigation. Potential Suspects. Recommended Follow-up.

Lying across the files was a case review summary written by Claire Melani, a criminologist and colleague at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I flipped to the first section of her report. And felt my neck muscles tense.

Before I could read further, voices sounded in the hall. Moments later, Barrow appeared with a guy looking like something off the cover of a survivalist manual. Washed-out jeans. Faded army jacket over long-sleeved red tee. Dark hair curling from below a neon-orange cap.

I replaced the report in its tub. “Everyone stuck in traffic?”

“I didn’t invite the volunteer team.”

Though that surprised me, I said nothing.

Barrow noticed my gaze shift to the survivalist and introduced him. “Detective Rodas is down from Vermont.”

“Umparo. Umpie to my friends.” Self-deprecating smile. “Both of them.”

Rodas extended a hand. I took it. Umpie’s grip matched his appearance, rough and strong.

As Barrow and Rodas took seats, a familiar figure framed up in the doorway. Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, cop legend in his own mind.

Can’t say Slidell’s presence thrilled me. Since Skinny works homicide, and I work the morgue, we are often thrown together. Over the years our relationship has had more ups and downs than a polygraph chart. His manner is often grating, but the man clears cases.

Slidell stretched both hands in a “What gives?” gesture and drew in one wrist to look at his watch. Subtle.

“Glad you could pry yourself free from the computer porn.” Smiling, Barrow hooked a chair free from the table with one foot.

“That sister of yours does love a camera.” Cushions hoofed as Slidell deposited his substantial derrière.

Barrow partnered with Slidell back in the eighties and, unlike most, claimed to have enjoyed the experience. Probably their shared concept of witty repartee.

Barrow had just introduced Rodas and Slidell to each other when the door swung out. A man I didn’t recognize entered the room. He had a weak chin and a too-long nose and, standing ramrod, matched me in height. His polyester shirt, tie, and off-the-rack suit suggested midlevel management. His demeanor screamed cop. The four of us watched as polyester man took a place at the table.

“Agent Tinker is SBI.” Barrow’s reference to the State Bureau of Investigation conveyed zero warmth.

I’d heard of Beau Tinker. Intel had him as a narrow thinker with a mile-wide ego. And a player with the ladies.

“Don’t seem like such a long drive was warranted.” Slidell spoke without looking up from the fingers laced on his belly.

Tinker regarded Slidell with eyes as gray and bland as unpolished pewter. “I’m right up the road at the Harrisburg field office.”

Slidell’s jaw muscles bulged, but he said nothing.

Like everywhere else on the planet, North Carolina has its share of interagency rivalries. Sheriff’s, campus, airport, and port police versus local PD’s. The state versus the city boys. The feds versus the world.

Except for some offenses in which it’s required—such as drug trafficking, arson, gambling, and election fraud—SBI involvement in criminal investigations was usually at the request of local departments. The chill coming from Barrow and Slidell suggested no such invite had been issued.

Was Rodas the draw? If so, why the interest in Raleigh about a case from Vermont?

Slidell considers himself a hot property in the homicide squad. Too hot to gasbag around a table, as he’d once put it. I also wondered why he was here.

I remembered the file in the plastic tub.

I glanced over at Slidell. His gaze was up now, aimed at Tinker with the kind of expression normally reserved for pedophiles and mold.

Did the hostility go beyond turf issues? Did Slidell share history with Tinker? Or was Skinny just being Skinny?

Barrow’s voice cut into my thoughts. “I’m going to let Detective Rodas start off.”

Barrow leaned back and repositioned the neck chain holding his badge. He often reminded me of a large leathery turtle. Skin dark and crinkled as that on a shrunken head, eyes wide-set and bulgy above a pointed little nose.

Rodas opened the carton, withdrew a stack of reports, and slid one to each of us. “Sorry if my style’s less formal than yours.” His voice was deep and gruff, the kind you associate with white cheddar and the Green Mountain Boys. “I’ll give you the rundown, then take questions on anything that’s unclear.”

I started flipping through pages. Heard Tinker and Slidell doing the same.

“Between two-thirty and three P.M., on October 18, 2007, a twelve-year-old white female named Nellie Gower disappeared while riding her bicycle home from school. Six hours later, the bike was found on a rural two-lane a quarter mile from the Gower farm.”

A nuance in tone caused me to look up. Rodas’s Adam’s apple made a round-trip before he continued. “Nellie’s body was discovered eight days later at a granite quarry four miles outside town.”

I noted that Rodas was using the child’s name, not depersonalizing, as cops often do—the kid, the vic. It didn’t take Freud to recognize that Rodas was emotionally invested in the case.

“The ME found no signs of trauma or sexual assault. The child was fully clothed. Manner of death went down as homicide, cause as unknown. The scene yielded nothing. Ditto the body. No tire tracks, no trace, no blood or saliva, no forensics at all.

“The usual persons were interviewed—registered sex offenders, parents and relatives, friends, friends’ families, neighbors, babysitters, a Girl Scout leader, those working at the school, the church, the community center. Anyone with even the remotest link to the victim.”

Rodas dug spirals of bound three-by-fives from the tub and winged them around the table croupier-style. Went silent as each of us viewed the grim cards we’d been dealt.

The first several prints showed the quarry. A leaden sky overhung an expanse of rock and soil bereft of trees. On the left, a gravel road climbed from the foreground toward a ragged horizon.