“Yeah.” He tipped his chin at the paper. “A boatload.”

“Ajax was drugged?”

“Doubt he laced his own Joe.”

“You think someone sedated him, then put him in the car?”

“Explains the washup on the cup and coffeemaker. The grounds being outside in the trash.” Slidell thought a moment. “Kind of an odd choice, eh?”

“Chloral hydrate?”

“Yeah.”

“It was found in the victims at Jonestown.” I was referring to the 1978 poisoning of more than nine hundred people at the Peoples Temple in Guyana, a massacre orchestrated by a power-mad evangelist, Jim Jones. “Also in Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe.”

Slidell said nothing.

“Ajax died between midnight and two.” My mind was spinning. “There was a cruiser parked at the curb all night. The surveillance team didn’t see anyone enter or leave the house until Cauthern showed up at dawn.”

“The Ajax property backs up to a walking trail behind Sunrise Court and a couple other dead-enders along that stretch. Whoever capped him probably parked on another cul-de-sac, took the path, then crossed the yard to the kitchen door.”

“That could explain the fibers on the hedge. The dirt on the floor.”

Our eyes exchanged the same questions. Who? Why?

“You taking it to Salter?” I asked.

“Soon.”

I raised my brows in question.

“I want to go at this scumbag Yoder one more time.”

“Why is he a scumbag?”

“There’s something smells there.”

“Not exactly an answer.”

“We ask Yoder about Leal and Donovan, the next thing you know, Ajax is dead with a kit in his trunk.” Slidell looked at me a very long moment. “What’s your gut? We looking at the same doer?”

“The girls and Ajax?”

Slidell nodded.

“My gut says yes.”

“Sonofafriggin’ bitch. And we got squat.”

“We know our killer is male.”

Slidell stared into his cup as if the answer were floating in his coffee. I’d never seen him so discouraged. “Think the guy’s a sexual sadist?”

“None of the victims was sexually assaulted.” I’d chewed on this a lot. “I think his arousal comes from control, from the ability to manipulate.”

“Us or his vics?”

I hadn’t looked at it that way. “Both. He’s definitely toying with us.”

Slidell rose. I walked him to the door.

“How’s he do it?” As he stepped outside.

“Do what?”

“Move under the radar and leave us nothing.”

I was in the study checking email when the phone rang again. I glanced at the caller ID. S. Marcus. Not recognizing the name, I let the call roll to voicemail. Seconds later, I heard the voice of my little cat-sitter friend, Mary Louise, on the answering machine. She wanted to visit after school. Had something for me.

Sorry, sweetie. Not today. Adding my guilt over Mary Louise to my guilt over Ajax, I turned back to the computer.

Ryan’s email attachment had opened. Tawny McGee looked at me from the deck of a boat, breeze lifting her collar and tossing her hair.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why did you go to Pomerleau?”

McGee continued to gaze straight ahead with her empty, still eyes. She was tall and full-breasted. But she didn’t flaunt what a lot of women paid big bucks to have. She downplayed it with a modest turtleneck.

I recalled the odd dynamic between the Kezerians. Bernadette’s comments. Jake’s.

Tawny hated being photographed. Hated being seen naked. Never dated or felt comfortable around men or boys.

Bernadette said her daughter had body-image issues. Jake said she was nuts.

I studied the long limbs, the double-D’s, the expressionless face. Wondered what was going on behind the vacant eyes.

From nowhere, another conversation winged into my consciousness.

Ryan’s report on Lindahl. He’d said the therapist had hinted that something was off.

As I stared at the woman on my screen, an idea slowly shaped up in my brain. An improbable possibility.

Heart hammering, I reached for the phone.

CHAPTER 39

AFTER A GRILLING, then a brief wait, “Pamela Lindahl.”

“My name is Temperance Brennan. We met some years back.”

“You work at the medico-legal lab here in Montreal.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you are calling from North Carolina. The receptionist said you were quite insistent.”

“The matter is urgent.”

“Go on.” With the wariness of a snitch in witness protection.

“It’s about Tawny McGee.”

“I suspected as much.” Sighing. “I will tell you what I told the detective. To discuss a patient without his or her permission would be a serious breach of professional ethics.”

No dancing around. No appealing to her sense of justice or fairness. I put one straight in her gut. “Tawny hooked up with Anique Pomerleau.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes,” I said, “you do. And I don’t have time to play games.”

“What is it you want?”

“Tawny has androgen insensitivity syndrome, doesn’t she?”

No reply.

“The lack of menses at puberty. The height, the large breasts, the abundant head hair.”

“You seem confident in your diagnosis. Why call me?”

“I need verification.”

“I’m sorry but—”

I fired another zinger. “Tawny may have killed Pomerleau. She may be murdering children.”

A deafening quiet came down from Montreal.

“Young girls. Four so far. Maybe six.”

“Where?”

“Does that matter?”

“No.”

“Well?”

“Her medical status, which I am not confirming, would be relevant for what reason?”

“DNA was recovered from one victim, a fourteen-year-old girl. Amelogenin testing indicated it was left by a male. That finding has pointed the search for her killer in what I now suspect is the wrong direction.” I didn’t complicate the discussion by mentioning Pomerleau’s DNA.

“How does this involve me?”

“I think you know.”

“One moment.”

I heard movement, guessed Lindahl was closing a door.

“Tawny came to me following an unimaginable ordeal, as you know. I cannot divulge details of our conversations, but five years in that basement left her terribly damaged.”

“Fine.” For now.

“We dealt with her immediate issues first. As I gained her trust, Tawny opened up, eventually talked of concerns about her body.”

Lindahl paused to collect her thoughts. Or to devise a strategy for revealing only what was essential. “Tawny had never menstruated, never grown underarm or pubic hair. The doctors told her it was due to a combination of poor diet and constant stress. Advised that, with time, she would catch up.

“In many ways, she did. Tawny grew tall, grew busty, but other changes never took place. At my suggestion, she agreed to be tested. If I chose the doctor and accompanied her. Which I did.” Pause. “What do you know about androgen insensitivity syndrome?”

“The basics. It’s a condition that impacts sexual development both prenatally and at puberty. Persons with AIS can’t respond to androgens, male sex hormones. I’m sketchy on the underlying genetics.”

I regretted the last as soon as the words left my mouth. I didn’t want a lecture. Was anxious to establish only one thing.

“Androgen insensitivity syndrome is caused by mutations in the AR gene, which encodes for proteins called androgen receptors. Androgen receptors allow cells to respond to hormones that direct male sexual development.”

“Testosterone.” No matter my preference, the lecture was coming down. I wanted to hurry it along.

“And others. Androgens and their receptors function in both males and females. Mutations in the AR gene prevent the androgen receptors from working properly. Depending on the body’s level of insensitivity, an affected person’s sex characteristics can vary from mostly female to mostly male.”

I tapped my nails on the desktop, impatient to get what I needed. To confirm what was keeping my pulse in the stratosphere.