“She was a prostitute as well as a drunk?” I hoped Emma was unaware, if this were true.

“I don’t think so. If she was a true pro, she’d have a distinguished rap sheet, but she was never arrested again.”

“You’re saying you got nothing useful from the arrest report?”

“She was picked up on South Main back when the city was trying to clean up that area. Astrodome-goers didn’t appreciate their kids seeing women wearing postage-stamp skirts leaning into open car windows. Maybe her being there was bad luck.”

“Or she had a friend who was a prostitute?” I said.

“Or she was waiting for a bus. Or she was hanging around and looked the part, got caught in the net. The report is sketchy. Us cops are experts at sketchy. She made a deal for jail time served-a couple days-and that was it.”

“You don’t know who she was with when she was picked up?” I said.

“That would take some serious cross-checking of old records, use lots of my time for a questionable lead,” he said.

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Gosh, where do I go from here?”

DeShay reached into his jacket pocket and took out one of his business cards. “All is not lost, Abby girl. I did get two case numbers. Unidentified female homicide victims from 1997 who fit Christine O’Meara’s description.”

He held up the card and I snatched it, though I really wanted to throw my remaining pie in his face. “You always have to play around, don’t you?” Along with the case numbers, I read the name he’d written on the back of the card-Julie Rappaport. There were some numbers, too.

“I love to see you when you don’t get what you want,” DeShay said. “Great expression. You could do movies.”

“I will never so much as visit Hollywood,” I said. “Not after meeting some of the players. What do I do with these case numbers?”

“Julie works at the ME’s office, and you can talk to her about the unidentified corpses. But here’s the deal. White wants whatever you get as soon as you get it. I think he was secretly grateful you’d be going there instead of him. I’ve heard he and Benson switch off on morgue visits and it was Don’s turn. He hates that place.”

“I don’t blame him,” I said.

“Added to that, they landed a fresh case right when I was leaving Travis. They’ll be plenty busy today.”

“Julie Rappaport, huh? You’re sure she’ll talk to me, even though I’m not a cop?”

He nodded. “Yup. She’s waiting for your call. Nice little lady. Smart as hell.”

“You could go with me,” I said sweetly.

“I have a witness interview in about twenty minutes,” he said.

“I have to go back to that place alone?” I said.

“I got one word for you. Vicks.”

“What?”

He rubbed under his nose. “Right here. Vicks. Before you go in the building.”

“Ah. Gotcha,” I said.

I called Julie Rappaport right after I left DeShay and she told me to come to the ME’s office straightaway. Turned out Julie was a skeletal remains and cold-case expert, the HCME investigator who’d worked on Emma’s property when the bones were found. Not only was she the person who could help me learn whether Christine O’Meara was one of the unidentified corpses from 1997; she was working the baby case as well.

The receptionist behind the glass at the front desk remembered me from when I’d signed in earlier. Rappaport must have let her know I was coming, because she picked up the phone and made a call.

Julie came out and got me. Can’t say I recognized her from the other day, maybe because she wasn’t wearing fatigues. She was small-looked like a kid-and wore a black baseball cap with FORENSICS in white letters on the front and a denim jacket that had seen better days. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and brought out through the back of the cap. She smelled like bleach. I’d bet bleach was the chemical of choice in this place.

Once we were seated in her cubicle, I said, “I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to talk to me on such short notice.” I hadn’t had time to pick up Vicks, so I’d slathered Burt’s Bees raspberry lip balm under my nose. It wasn’t working. Even though this part of the building was shut off from the morgue, the smell of death hung in the air.

“No need to thank me,” she said. “I got excited when you called. Any chance I can put a cold case to rest is a great day for me. We get PIs in here on occasion, but none so highly recommended. DeShay thinks a lot of you.”

“That goes both ways. What have you got for me?”

“I pulled the tracking sheets on the two unidentifieds DeShay mentioned,” she said.

“What are tracking sheets?”

“They tell us what’s been done so far on a cold case to identify the remains, what avenues we’ve pursued, any subsequent evidence that was unearthed. In addition, since DNA from all unidentified bodies is entered into CODIS, we document when the DNA profile was done and submitted. What’s great is that today your client, Ms. Lopez, gave us DNA for the infant bones. But we can also match her DNA against these two cold cases, see if she’s related to either woman.”

I nodded. “You mentioned CODIS. That’s a police database, right?”

“Yes. Used all over the country. The Combined DNA Index System.”

“How long will it take to see if there’s a match to Emma in either case?”

“If this were a TV show, five minutes. In reality, cold cases aren’t a priority when you’ve got fresh homicides piling up.”

“Even the infant bones won’t be a priority?”

“Oh, yes. We’re already feeling the publicity heat on that one. The police need a positive ID to pursue leads, so we’ll run a mitochondrial DNA comparison against Emma Lopez pretty quickly. Fortunately, our facility is one of very few in the U.S. that does mitochondrial. I extracted the DNA from the baby’s femur myself, and we should have the results tomorrow.”

“I take it that’s a super-special DNA process?”

“That’s right. It works only through maternal lineage.”

“If the baby is Emma’s sister, would that hurry up the testing on the unidentified corpses?”

“Maybe, if there was enough pressure on us and on the police, but not necessarily. Every detective, constable, Texas Ranger or DEA agent wants their DNA case to be high priority. We can’t always do that. But wait.” She fingered the silver wolf pendant she wore. “We would have done facial reconstructions on both of the unidentifieds.” She looked down, scanned her tracking sheets. “Yes, we did. I don’t know how old Emma was when her mother disappeared. Does she remember her?”

“Oh, she remembers.”

“Good. Then she could look at the photos we took of those two reconstructed skulls. You have no idea how much I love a well-preserved skull. A good reconstructionist can work miracles-bring the dead to life. I see on the tracking sheet that one of the victims was murdered, shot in the back of the head, but we still had a decent specimen.”

I opened my bag and took out my photo of Christine O’Meara. “Can we compare the reconstruction to this photo of Emma’s mother?”

She smiled as wide as the skulls she loved so much and accepted the photo as if it were a holy artifact. “This is great. But I’ll have to dig around and find the original files-and that won’t happen until the end of the day, if I’m lucky.”

I glanced at the wall of filing cabinets across the aisle from Julie’s cubicle. “Looks like you have a slew of records.”

“We keep everything on the cold cases and save all unidentified remains. Most people are unaware that HPD has no cold-case squad. Those men and women on the force are amazing and do what they can to solve every case, but this is a huge city with a lot of homicides. Sometimes they have to let PIs like you help. I really thank you for coming.”

I hadn’t expected a thank-you. In fact, I was used to resistance during my investigations, especially from government or police people. But Julie wasn’t territorial or controlling or withholding. She seemed to want answers for those left behind as badly as I did.