“He wasn’t chatty, but I’m sure that’s his thinking.”

“Skinny should be decking the halls. Four solves and bye-bye, Tinker.”

“He sounded exhausted.”

“What about the others?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sucks that Slidell can’t question Ajax,” he observed.

“It does.”

“Stand down on my end?”

“I guess so.”

“I was out of road anyway.”

A long stretch of silence.

“Merry Christmas, Brennan.”

“Merry Christmas, Ryan.”

I hung up and sat a moment, hand still on the phone. I should have felt pleased. Relieved. Why didn’t I?

The others. Koseluk. Donovan. Would they remain open MP cases? Would active investigations continue? Was someone somewhere searching for the child whose skeleton lay on my shelf?

Annually, over eight hundred thousand people vanish in the United States. At least four years had passed since ME107-10 died. Three since Avery Koseluk went missing. I knew the sad answer.

But Ajax was wearing a tag on his toe. The madness was over.

My eyes drifted to a flyer tacked to my corkboard. Larabee’s comment reminded me. I also had invitations.

The UNCC anthropology department’s holiday gathering was scheduled that night. Often the venue was a zillion miles out in the country. This year it would take place at a faculty home in Plaza-Midwood. Not far from the annex.

Still, I wasn’t in the mood. Rarely am. Hot crowded rooms. Bad sweaters. Merrymakers rosy with eggnog and yuletide beer. It’s not the drinking. I’ve learned to live without alcohol. Small talk over canapés just isn’t my strong suit.

Nevertheless, I like my colleagues. Most of the grad students.

I bought a bottle of pinot, put on a red silk blouse, and headed out for some holly jolly.

I should have been ready to party. We finally had our killer. No motive. No explanation how Ajax hooked up with Pomerleau. Why or how he killed her. Why he continued to follow her playbook. Those answers would come later. What mattered was that he’d never strike again.

Still, troubling questions kept me distracted.

I thought of Ryan’s words. Had Ajax wanted to be caught? Then why the lawyer? Why the innocent act when finally reeled in?

That one was easy. Ajax was a sociopath. Sociopaths lie. And they do it well.

I recalled the interviews. Ajax had expressed no sympathy for the murdered girls. For a child he had treated.

Ajax killed himself. If he was planning suicide, why promise Cauthern he’d return to the hospital? Had the decision been spur-of-themoment? Triggered by what?

Ajax was ten miles away when Leal was abducted. How could he be in two places at once? Did he have an accomplice?

When I look back on that Christmas, on those cases, I always remember the moment we opened that trunk. The quavery fluorescents carving our features. The lights strobing blue and red in the cold dawn air. The overnight frost yielding to the warmth of sunlight.

I always wonder—had I voiced my concerns then, might things have gone differently?

I’ll never know. I said nothing.

PART III

CHAPTER 36

THE HOLIDAYS CAME and went.

I drove often to Heatherhill Farm. Goose was omnipresent, fluffing Mama’s pillows, brushing her hair, setting out clothes and insisting she wear them.

Harry flew in from Texas.

For three days we stayed at a B&B near Marion, the same one where Goose had taken up residence. Our rooms featured four-posters and chintz gone wild.

Harry bought Mama a stuffed zombie doll designed to be pulled apart and disemboweled to vent frustration. And a four-thousandcarat diamond brooch. I got her a cashmere poncho.

Being the center of attention perked Mama up. She twittered about Christmases past. The ones at the beach. The one in Grand Cayman. No mention of the ones she spent in the underworld solo in her room. Or gone.

When we were alone, Mama asked about my cases. I shared the whole story. Pomerleau, the Corneau farm, the barrel of maple syrup, the horror in Ajax’s trunk. I figured the outcome would appeal to her sense of justice.

Mama asked about Ryan’s contribution to the tale. I figured that in her mind, we were Orpheus and Eurydice. Maybe Scully and Mulder.

I told her Ryan had spent most of his time searching for Pomerleau’s sole surviving victim. She asked where the poor thing was. I said he hadn’t found her. She was intrigued, wouldn’t let up on the subject until Goose arrived to bully her into a bath.

The boards at the LEC came down. The photos, maps, interview summaries, and reports were packed back into their respective boxes. The conference room reverted to its intended purpose.

Tinker faded off. Rodas disengaged. Barrow moved on to other cold cases.

Slidell went incommunicado. I hadn’t a clue what he was doing. Made no effort to learn.

The CMPD held a press conference. Broadcasters went fluently doleful. Headlines howled. Reports told of Ajax’s arrest in Oklahoma, of “evidence in his possession linking him to the murders of Shelly Leal, Lizzie Nance, and others,” of his death on Sunrise Court. Slidell stayed away. Tinker did humble while deftly exaggerating his role and that of the SBI. I had to agree with Slidell. The guy was an unctuous little prick.

Ryan and I talked often. Almost like old times. Almost. He was back on the job, working as a floater as before, adding his expertise to investigations as needed.

Friday morning, the second day of the New Year, Larabee received the toxicology report. Ajax had a blood carbon monoxide saturation of 68 percent. A level that kills you deader than shit.

Ajax also had chloral hydrate in his system, which showed up only when Larabee requested a second test expanding beyond the opiates, amphetamines, barbiturates, alcohol, and other substances on standard tox screens. Though the drug was a somewhat antiquated choice, in Larabee’s opinion, it wasn’t significant. As he’d said at the scene, a lot of folks need pharmaceuticals to pull the plug.

There was no record of chloral hydrate withdrawal at the Mercy dispensary, no prescription at any Charlotte pharmacy. Not a big deal. As a physician, Ajax would have had easy access to the drug, often used as a sedative prior to EEG procedures.

More troubling was the fact that no empty pill bottle turned up at the house on Sunrise Court or on Ajax’s person. CSS found the kitchen trash container empty, unlike other cans on the premises. A Hefty in the curbside rollout produced nothing that might have held the capsules.

The big shocker came the following Monday.

Larabee caught me in the biovestibule, paper in his hand, puzzled expression on his face.

“Post-holiday credit card bill?” Unwrapping a scarf from my neck.

Larabee thrust the paper at me. I shifted my briefcase and took it.

A quick skim, then the line that mattered. I understood why Lara-bee hadn’t laughed at my joke. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“The DNA from the lip print isn’t a match for Ajax.”

Larabee shook his head solemnly.

“Any possibility the jacket was contaminated?”

“They say no way.”

“And the samples you sent over were good?”

Larabee just looked at me.

“I saw lip balm in Ajax’s medicine cabinet. Maybe—”

“CSS collected it. The lab ran it as a cross test. In case some defense attorney found an expert to say the stuff scrambled the DNA sequencing, or some other junk-science hogwash.”