I smiled and put my hand on her shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do to help…”

“Just talking to you helps.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s what friends are for. Now, what’s the latest on your warehouse fire?”

She smiled. “I brought that big fat liar in for questioning and spent hours just grilling him. The forensic shrink gave me some good tips on how to handle him. I Mirandized him first, he declined counsel, and another investigator and I went after him. We videotaped the whole thing from start to finish so nobody could say we didn’t do it right. Finally, the squatty-bodied little runt caved. He admitted the whole thing. He knew the type of accelerant used and everything.”

“Excellent!”

“Yeah.” She grinned, then her grin began to fade a bit. “Tommy was furious, though. He and Mike were sure the other guy was the one. I knew that my suspect was trying to make him look guilty. Anyway, I didn’t do it to make Tommy look bad. I discussed it with both of them before I went forward. I offered to let them participate, but they blew me off.”

“Well, then, let the chips fall where they may, Leo. My son and his partner are big boys. They made that decision and it turned out not to be a very good one. That’s not your fault. Nice work on your part. You stopped a pyromaniac and killer, and kept an innocent man from being falsely accused.”

“Yeah.” She grinned again now. “Not bad for a day’s work.”

I had started work on the CILHI bust. I had to document everything I was doing. That meant stopping frequently to photograph the progress, as well as keeping copious notes, all of which would be turned over to CILHI upon completion of the project.

Dr. Carroway had given me the gender, race and approximate age of the deceased. I could assume nothing about the victim before I began my reconstruct. I pulled the tissue-depth data from one of my charts and carefully measured and cut markers for each part of the face. This was the most painstaking part of the process for me. I worked on it for the bulk of the afternoon, but the fatigue from the trip to Hawaii caught up with me and I turned off the lights and closed the door to my studio at 4:00 p.m. I never close the door to my studio-or any other room in the house-but somehow it seemed like the thing to do this time.

I went in to the kitchen and made myself a cup of hot hibiscus tea. I took my tea back into the living room and sat looking out the French doors at the sights of oncoming spring. I went back in my mind to the first time I met Ted Nikolaides.

I hadn’t been in Da Nang for long, when my gregarious friend decided to come and meet the “new girl.” He came right into the ward where I worked and introduced himself. He saw I wasn’t wearing a wedding band and decided he would find me a man. I laughed at the time at this man so enthusiastic and determined in his old-country matchmaking. It soon became apparent that Ted Nikolaides had a special knack for the task. In the end, Ted had found the perfect man for me-a man who had become the love of my life and with whom I’d had my son. The problem I was having was that my blessings were so numerous and so very much the result of Teddy’s friendship and caring. It seemed incredible to me that this reconstruct would be the only way I would finally have to repay such a friend.

I left the living room and went to my bedroom closet. I got a stool and climbed up into the top and pulled down two big boxes. I took them into the living room and set them on the floor. Then I went into the kitchen and brewed more tea.

I brought my tea into the living room and sat down on the floor next to the boxes. I opened the lid on the first one and found in it Jack’s badge, his gun and his various citations. I had intended a thousand times to make a special case to display all these things, but somehow I had never gotten around to it.

When Jack had died so suddenly, I had been in shock. I boxed up everything that belonged to him and put it away. It seemed at the time that it was easier to deal with that way. In retrospect, I don’t know if it really was or not. I’m not sure anything really makes that kind of separation easier.

I set those things aside and continued to dig in the box. There was a scrapbook I had made of our Vietnam experience. In it were photos of all our friends, the dog we had adopted, the barracks we’d lived in, the dive where we’d eaten and hung out, and Ted. Ted clowning, Ted beaming, Ted laughing. Picture after picture of Ted and Jack yucking it up-the two young bucks in their military uniforms-one a pilot and the other a military policeman.

I felt sick and sad. I could remember meeting Jack-how tall and handsome he was. He was smart and funny, and he had this very sentimental center that he hid from everyone else, but I saw it. Now I could remember the touch of his hand, the feel of his arms and the way he held me. I could remember the smell of his skin-not his cologne, but that wonderful masculine smell that I could only experience when my cheek was right next to his and my nose was pressed against his face.

Time seemed compressed to me now. I didn’t feel like a woman of sixty, but the same young girl who had been in Vietnam over thirty years ago. Everything that happened between me and Jack and Ted was yesterday-but it wasn’t. Ted had been shot down and now Jack was gone. I sat on the floor with mementos scattered all around me-my past on paper in my hands.

I dropped the scrapbook on the floor in front of me and put my head in my hands, and I wept out loud. “Jack, why couldn’t you be here with me now? How could you leave me with this?”

Chapter Eleven

I slept late. I guess the jet lag really got to me. It was 10:00 a.m. and I was still sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and eating waffles.

I was halfway through the first waffle when Chris Nakis appeared at my front door. I stood before her in an old work shirt with clay stains and holes in it, my shaggiest blue-jean cutoffs and no shoes, with my unwashed hair plastered down to my head. She, on the other hand, was wearing a crisp navy cotton twill skirt and a burgundy cotton short-sleeve shirt and her best sensible shoes. As small and youthful-looking as she appeared for a forty-four-year-old woman, she could have passed that morning for a teenager from one of the local parochial high schools.

I offered her a waffle, but she declined, accepting a cup of my French roast with satisfaction.

“You have news or you wouldn’t be here, so what’s up?”

“The victim we dug up yesterday morning was a male.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Definitely.”

“What’s the approximate age of the victim?”

“I’d say somewhere between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.”

“It could be Doug Hughes then. The age is right.”

“That would explain the similarity between the burial and reburial of the bodies.”

“Did you find the same kind of soil samples as before?”

“Well, it looks like it, but I’ve sent them to A &M again for comparison with the others.”

“Did they ever get back to us on the first ones?”

“Not yet, but they’ve promised me some kind of answer soon.”

“I want to start the reconstruct as soon as possible.”

“I thought you were working on this CILHI thing.”

“I am, but we need some answers in this case. I already know the perpetrator of the crimes against our MIA. I want to get an ID on this Waller Creek victim now.”

“Okay, then come on down to the morgue anytime and we’ll get started.”

“Did you determine yet how this one was killed?”

“It wasn’t a bullet to the head. I had to make a thorough inspection of the bones, but I found some marks on the ribs that indicate to me that this person was shot, a couple of times-just not in the head.”