As I moved to the last board, Slidell rejoined me.

“Did Ryan fill you in on Anique Pomerleau?” I asked. A decade had passed, and still I could barely say the name.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Before we started setting up in here, he gave a yodel to the home folk. I don’t par-lay-voo, but it sounded like he had some ’splaining to do.”

I wondered how that had gone.

“He says he learned dick about Pomerleau. But I’m guessing he blew fire up some Canadian arses about needing to fix that.”

For a moment I concentrated on my breathing. My pulse. Then I looked at the photo.

It was a mug shot, taken years before the horror in Montreal. Pomerleau’s face was softer, an embryonic version of the one forever etched in my brain. I recognized the heavy brows slashing across the deep-set eyes. The pinched nose, the full lips, the jarringly square chin.

“She was, what, sixteen?” Slidell asked.

“Fifteen. A store owner in Mascouche nabbed her for shoplifting in 1990. Insisted on pressing charges. This was the only picture we had back in ’04.”

“Ryan couldn’t dig up something less vintage?”

“Pomerleau’s parents lost all their belongings in a fire in ’92. By then she was out of the house, raising hell in Montreal.”

“Five-finger discounting?”

“And some petty stuff I don’t remember.”

“So her prints are on file?”

I nodded.

“Fifteen? Mom and Dad didn’t drag her back to the old homestead?”

“They were in their forties when Anique was born. By the time she bagged school to hit the big city, they were exhausted and tired of dealing with her crap.”

Slidell pooched out his lips and rubbed the back of his neck. “So she enters the States sometime between ’04, when you and Ryan bust her in Montreal, and ’07, when she leaves DNA on the Gower kid.” He squinted as he did some math. “She’s thirty-nine now, surely using an alias. And I’m guessing she’s street-savvy?”

“Pomerleau is vicious and delusional but smart as hell.”

“And her only surviving pic’s got more than two decades on it. No wonder she’s managed to fly under the radar.”

Sudden thought. I shifted to Leal’s board. On it was a black-andwhite printout of a child’s face showing a reasonable though lifeless resemblance to the school portrait on top. I guessed the image had been generated by software such as SketchCop, FACES, or Identi-Kit, in which interchangeable templates of features were selected based on an individual’s memory of an actual face. I assumed Slidell’s eyewitness from Morningside had given the input.

“Who did the composite?” I asked.

“We get ’em done through an FBI liaison.”

“Could he do an age progression on Pomerleau’s mug shot?” As I said it, I was surprised none had been done before. Or had I missed that? I made a note to check.

Slidell smiled. I think. “Not bad, Doc.”

“Rodas says Gower was wearing a house key on a chain around her neck.” Ryan spoke from across the room. “They never found it.”

Slidell and I crossed to him. “What about Estrada?” I asked.

“There’s no mention in the file.” Ryan gestured at the papers fanned out before him. “Hull knew nothing about missing effects. Said she’d check in to it.”

I met Ryan’s eyes. He gave me a straight look, then went back to reading interviews.

“I’ll call over about that sketch.” Slidell turned and chugged from the room.

I dropped into a chair. Trolled through the Estrada file until I found what I wanted.

Estrada’s autopsy report consisted of a single page of text and four pages of scanned color photos. It was signed by Perry L. Bullsbridge, MD.

Slidell was right. Considering a child had been murdered, Bulls-bridge had done a piss-poor job of documenting the postmortem. Considering anyone had been murdered.

I read the section on physical descriptors and condition of the body. The brief remarks on health, hygiene, and nutrition. The one-sentence statement regarding absence of trauma.

I skimmed the organ weights. I was scanning the list of items submitted as evidence when an entry jumped out at me.

“They pulled two hairs from Estrada’s trachea.”

“And?” Ryan didn’t look up.

“Larabee pulled two hairs from Leal’s trachea.”

“He thought they were probably hers.”

“He said it was odd to find hair so far down the throat.”

Ryan’s eyes met mine. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t. “Coincidence?”

“You don’t believe in coincidence.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

That night Ryan came over to my place and we got carryout sushi from Baku. We ate in the kitchen, under Birdie’s steadfast gaze. Every few minutes Ryan would slip the cat raw fish. I’d scold them both. The cycle would repeat.

We were clearing the table when Slidell phoned. By reflex, I checked the time. Nine-forty and he was still working. Impressive. His update was not.

The possible Leal witness from the convenience store whom he’d interviewed a week earlier had provided car descriptors and two digits from the license. The pairing had generated over twelve hundred possibilities. Someone was making calls.

Leal’s ring was neither listed on the CSS inventory nor in the property room. It appeared in none of the photos.

The IT guys had yet to recover any of the browser history deleted from Leal’s laptop. They were still trying.

The FBI’s sketch artist had agreed to age-progress Pomerleau’s mug shot. When he could.

Hot damn. We were on fire.

“I plan to visit my mother tomorrow,” I said to Ryan, rinsing rice and soy sauce from a plate.

“I’ll hang here, go through the rest of the files, and push harder on tracking Pomerleau.”

“Sounds good.”

“Shouldn’t you give Daisy a heads-up?”

“Like she won’t be there?” Turning off the tap.

“She is a known flight risk.”

“Funny.”

Actually, it was. Sort of.

I took my mobile to the study and settled on the couch. Ryan’s backpack now hung from the arm of the desk chair. His phone charger jutted from a socket. Inexplicably, seeing his belongings amid mine calmed me. And filled me with sadness.

I was glad Ryan had agreed to relocate to my guest room. It was nice having him under my roof. A friend now, nothing more. Still, I was glad he was here.

I dialed. The first ring was cut short.

“I am so glad you phoned.” Mama’s voice had the intensity of a pit bull signaling a break-in. “I was about to phone you.”

“Mama—”

“I wanted to be sure.”

“I’m coming to see you tomorrow.”

“I was hitting a lot of dead ends. ‘Daisy,’ I said to myself, ‘the devil’s in the details. Focus on the details.’ ”

When Mama’s round the bend, her listening skills are not at their best.

“I’ll be there by noon.”

“Are you hearing me, Tempe?”

“Yes, Mama.” I knew that trying to interrupt would only crank her up further.

“I’ve learned something dreadful.”

I felt a tickle of unease. “Dreadful?”

“Another little girl is going to die.”

CHAPTER 13

“DATES, TEMPE. DATES.” Almost breathless. “I was out of ideas so I ran a matrix on the dates.”

“What dates?”

“Some you gave me, most I found through online news reports.”

“I’m not following you, Mama.”

“The dates the children were taken. I don’t have all of them, of course. But I have enough.”

“What children?” I kept my voice even.

“The ones in Montreal. And the later ones. Do you have something to write with?” Dramatic stage whisper. “It’s unsafe to transmit this information electronically.”

I relocated to the desk and got pen and paper. Then I pressed a button and set the phone down.

“What was that? Am I on speaker?”

“It’s okay, Mama.”

“Are you alone?”