Temporary barricades had been set up along the road. Parked behind them were cars, pickups, and media vans. Drivers and passengers stood in twos and threes. Some conversing, others staring across the sawhorses or looking at the ground. A number wore T-shirts printed with the words Find Nellie above the face of a smiling adolescent.

I knew the players. Samaritans who’d devoted hours to searching and to answering phones. Gawkers eager for a glimpse of a body bag. Journalists seeking the best slant on another human tragedy.

Inside the barrier were cruisers, a crime scene truck, a coroner’s van, and a pair of unmarked cars, each angled as though suddenly frozen in flight. I recognized the usual responders. Evidence and coroner’s techs. A woman in a windbreaker with Medical Examiner printed in yellow block letters on the back. Cops in uniform, one with his head cocked to speak into a shoulder radio.

A canopy had been erected at center stage. Below the blue plastic, yellow tape stretched from pole to pole, forming a rough rectangle. Enclosed in the rectangle was a painfully small mound. Rodas squatted beside it, face grim, notepad in hand.

The next series focused on the child. Nellie Gower lay on her back, legs straight, arms tight to her torso. Her red wool jacket was zipped to her chin. Her sneaker laces were looped in symmetrical bows. The bottom of a polka-dot blouse was neatly tucked into bright pink jeans.

Several photos framed the face printed on the tees. No smile now.

Nellie’s hair covered her shoulders in long chocolate waves. I noted that it was parted down the center of her scalp and evenly draped, as though combed and arranged.

Eight days of exposure had wrought the inevitable. The child’s features were bloated, her skin mottled purple and green. A maggot mass filled her mouth and each of her nostrils.

The last three shots were close-ups of the child’s right hand. Dotting the palm were traces of a filmy white substance.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“CSS bagged both hands. The ME swabbed her skin and scraped under her nails. The trace guys thought it might have been remnants of a tissue.”

I nodded, still staring at the photos. Synapses were firing in my brain. I remembered another child. Another set of heartbreaking photos.

I knew why I’d been called. Why Skinny was here.

“Sonofabitch.”

Rodas ignored Slidell’s outburst. “We got a few leads, phone tips, a witness saying a teacher showed unusual interest in Nellie, a neighbor claiming he saw her in a truck with a bearded man. Nothing panned out. Eventually, the case went cold. We’re a small department. I had to move on. You know how it is.”

Rodas looked at Slidell, then Barrow. Met eyes that knew only too well. “But it ate at me. Kid like that. Whenever I had spare time, I’d pull the file, hoping to spot something I missed.”

Again, the Adam’s-apple bob. “According to all accounts, Nellie was timid. Careful. Not likely to go with a stranger. We all believed the perp was local. Someone she knew. I guess we got channeled on that.

“Last year I figured what the hell. Think outside the box. I tried VICAP.”

Rodas was referring to the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a national database maintained to collect and analyze information about homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and other violent crimes. The repository contains approximately 150,000 open and closed investigations submitted by some 3,800 state and local agencies, and includes cold cases dating as far back as the 1950s.

“I entered what we had, MO, signature aspects, crime scene descriptors and photos, victim details. Took weeks to get a response. Then damned if our profile didn’t match an unsolved here in Charlotte.”

“The Nance kid.” Slidell spoke through barely parted lips.

“Never got a collar on that one.” Tinker’s first words since telling Slidell he was posted locally.

Slidell opened his mouth to reply. Apparently reconsidered and closed it.

I glanced at the tub. 090431070901. Lizzie Nance. Skinny’s own gut-eating failure.

On April 17, 2009, Elizabeth Ellen “Lizzie” Nance left a ballet class, heading for her mother’s apartment three blocks away. She never made it home. Media coverage was massive. Hundreds turned out to answer tip lines, post flyers, and search the woods and ponds near Lizzie’s complex. To no avail.

Two weeks after Lizzie’s disappearance, a decomposed body was found at a nature preserve northwest of Charlotte. The corpse lay supine with feet together, arms tucked to its sides. A black leotard, tights, and pink cotton underwear still wrapped the putrefied flesh. Bright blue Crocs still covered the feet. Residue found under a thumbnail was identified later as common facial tissue.

Slidell led the homicide investigation. I analyzed the bones.

Though I spent days bending over a scope, I spotted not a single nick, cut, or fracture anywhere on the skeleton. Tim Larabee, the Mecklenburg County medical examiner, was unable to establish definitively whether sexual assault had occurred. Manner of death went down as homicide, cause as unknown.

Lizzie Nance died when she was eleven years old.

“Fortunately, Honor had also entered his unsolved. The system picked up the similarities.” Rodas raised both hands. “So here I am.”

A moment of silence filled the room. Tinker broke it. “That’s it? Two girls roughly the same age? Still wearing their clothes?”

No one responded.

“Wasn’t the Nance kid too far gone to exclude rape?”

Palming the table, Slidell leaned toward Tinker. I cut him off.

“The autopsy report noted complicating factors. But the child’s clothing was in place, and Dr. Larabee was confident in concluding there’d been no rape.”

Tinker shrugged, not realizing or not caring that his cavalier attitude was offending everyone. “Seems weak.”

“It’s not just the VICAP profile that brings me to Charlotte,” Rodas continued. “By the time we found Nellie, her body had been rained on for a day and a half. Her clothes were saturated with a mixture of water and decomp runoff. Though not optimistic, I submitted everything to our forensics lab up in Waterbury for testing. To my surprise, some DNA had survived.”

“All hers,” Slidell guessed.

“Yes.” Rodas placed his forearms on the table and leaned in. “Eighteen months ago, I went over the file yet again. This time I caught something I thought could be a break. The residue from Nellie’s hand hadn’t been submitted with her clothing. I phoned the ME; she found the scrapings taken at autopsy by her predecessor. Knowing it was a long shot, I had her send them up to Waterbury.”

Rodas looked straight at me.

I looked straight back.

“The material contained DNA not belonging to Nellie.”

“You sent the profile through the system?” Tinker asked the unnecessary question.

Rodas chin-cocked the report in my hands. “Take a look at the section marked ‘Updated DNA Results,’ Dr. Brennan.”

Curious why I’d been singled out, I did as instructed.

Read a name.

Felt the flutter of adrenaline hitting my gut.

CHAPTER 2

THE REPORT WAS short, printed in both French and English.

Struggling to make sense of it, I reread the closing paragraph. In both languages.

A match was obtained on DNA sample 7426 to Canadian national number 64899, identified as Anique Pomerleau, W/F, DOB: 12/10/75. The subject is currently not in custody.

Anique Pomerleau.

My eyes rose to Rodas. His were still fixed on me. “You can imagine how amped I was. Years of nothing, then I get word they’ve sequenced DNA that isn’t Nellie’s. I told the analyst to shoot the profile through CODIS.”