Mobley’s phone rang and he picked it up. “I told you no calls.” He slammed it down and looked back at the Louis.

“What are you looking for?”

“A slide.”

“What, like a lab slide?”

Louis nodded. Mobley stood just as Louis pulled out a large yellow envelope with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement seal, postmarked 1977. Just as Vince had said, the samples had been returned to the police ten years after Cade’s trial. He turned it over. It had been opened once.

Mobley was reading over his shoulder as Louis pulled out a letter from the lab. The phone on his desk started to ring again, but Mobley ignored it.

TO: The Lee County Sheriff’s Office. As per our policy, we are returning the following items to you for your case file #4532, Homicide, LCSO, Florida, May, 1966, Jagger, K.

Please be advised that we will no longer be able store items for cases that have a final disposition. Please let us know if we can be of service to you in the future.

Louis emptied the envelope’s contents onto the desk: a half-dozen slides, some fingerprint cards, and a small heart-shaped locket, everything still sealed in plastic.

He glanced at the locket, thinking of Bob Ahnert, then began sorting through the slides. He stopped at the one labeled R-24, Vaginal. It had Ahnert’s initials on the seal.

“This is it,” Louis said.

“What is it?” Mobley asked.

Louis turned to him. “There were two semen samples taken from this crime. One off the panties, which the cops assumed came from Cade, and one from her body.”

Mobley looked down at the slide. “They match, right?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to see Duvall’s old case file because the report on the second one is missing from what you gave me.”

Mobley turned away, looking at his ringing phone with venom. “I gave you everything, Kincaid. I wouldn’t hold anything back.”

“You never had the report. I think someone removed it from the case file twenty years ago.”

“Why?”

“Because it didn’t match Cade’s O-positive and someone wanted to keep the prosecution’s case simple.”

“Who? The prosecutors themselves?”

“It’s missing from your files, Sheriff. I think maybe it was Dinkle. I think he did it after the trial so no one would ever ask questions again.”

The phone started again, and Mobley walked to it, knocking the receiver off its cradle.

“You sure like to sling mud on the uniform, don’t you, Kincaid?”

“No, I don’t.”

“The hell you don’t.”

Louis tightened, the pounding in his head growing stronger. He knew he didn’t owe Mobley an explanation. But he was tired of the looks from the deputies, tired of groveling for their assistance when he needed it on something as simple as tracking down a deadbeat dad. He was tired of being looked at like a leper when he walked into O’Sullivan’s, for chrissake.

“I’ve shown you and your department every respect in this case,” Louis said.

“Respect? Don’t talk to me about respect,” Mobley said, his voice rising. “What about last March? You and Dan Wainwright butt-fucked me in front of the whole city. Shut me out of the biggest case this county ever had.”

Mobley went back behind his desk and sank into his chair. Louis resisted the urge to put his hands on his temples.

“Leaving you out wasn’t my call,” Louis said. “It was Dan’s.”

“They laughed at me, dammit.”

Louis knew he needed to say something else, but an apology wasn’t it. Mobley had blown it on the Paint It Black case. They had laughed.

Louis picked up the slide. “Maybe we can turn it around with this,” he said. “Let me have this typed again. Discreetly. I’ll take it to Vince myself.”

“I don’t know.”

Louis took a breath. He knew Mobley had no business letting a civilian take evidence, even from a closed case.

Okay. Start lying. You’re getting pretty damn good at it.

“Look,” Louis said, “if you don’t agree to this, Susan will eventually subpoena Sandusky for any copies he has.”

Mobley’s eyes jumped to Louis’s face. His expression took on a whole new look of frustration.

“It’s us against the lawyers, Lance.”

Mobley swung his chair slightly. “All right. But I get to see the results first. If that slide comes back O-positive, it goes back in the box and neither of us ever touched it. Agreed?”

Louis nodded. “What if it doesn’t?”

Mobley picked up the Clot Buster and bounced it lightly against his palm. “Maybe it still goes back in the box,” he said.

Louis sat on the bench outside Vince Carissimi’s office. He could hear Vince inside, talking to someone. Across the hall, through the glass door to the autopsy room, he could see a green bulk moving slowly around. It was Octavius, the diener, finishing up a cadaver. Louis leaned his head back against the cool tile.

He had called ahead, but the receptionist told him Vince was busy. Louis had come over to wait anyway. His eyes drifted up to the wall clock, then to the sign above the autopsy door.

Mortui vivos docent. “The dead teach the living.”

He reached back to the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the picture of Kitty. It was starting to get creased from all the handling and he ran his palm over it, trying to flatten it back in shape. Finally, he reached back again for his wallet, opened it, and carefully slipped the picture in between some bills.

He heard Vince’s door open and jumped to his feet, slipping the wallet back in his pocket.

A strange man came out, followed by Vince, who looked at Louis in surprise. “Hey, Louis, what gives?” he asked.

“Vince, I need your help,” Louis said, picking up a manila envelope from the bench.

“Gotta be quick, man, I am up to my ass in alligators today,” Vince said, starting down the hall with long strides.

Louis was at his side, holding out the envelope. “I got the sample.”

Vince stopped, frowning at the envelope.

“The missing vaginal semen sample,” Louis said.

Vince hesitated, then took the envelope. He dug inside and pulled out the slide, still in its twenty-year-old plastic evidence bag. Vince held it up to the florescent light.

“Can you type it?” Louis asked.

Vince sighed. “Won’t know ’til I get it under the scope.”

“Can I wait?”

Vince gave him a look, then glanced at his watch. “All right, come on.”

In the lab, Louis hovered in the background while Vince slipped the old slide under the microscope. He knew this was a long shot. What were the chances that anything could survive twenty years in some municipal storeroom? His fears were confirmed when Vince turned. He could read it in the M.E.’s face.

“It’s totally disintegrated,” Vince said. “Memoriae, Louis, nothing but a memory now.”

Louis let out a sigh and watched as Vince pulled out the slide and slipped it back in the plastic. He handed it to Louis.

“I’m sorry, man,” Vince said.

“I appreciate you trying, Vince.”

Vince cocked his head. “You okay?”

Louis nodded, looking at the slide in the plastic evidence bag.

“Look, I understand how this can be,” Vince said. “I had a little girl on my table once, an abuse case. I didn’t sleep for weeks until they finally put her stepfather behind bars. A case like the Kitty Jagger thing, it can get under your skin.”

Louis looked up at him. Maybe it was the way Vince had said her name, maybe it was just the look of compassion on Vince’s face. But something pulled inside Louis’s chest.

“I’ve got to get going,” Louis said. “Thanks again, Vince.”

Outside, Louis paused to slip on his sunglasses. His gaze drifted over to Page Field, where a small plane floated down to the runaway and rose again, the pilot practicing touch-and-goes.

Dead end. Like Vince said, there was nothing but memories of Kitty now, memories that the decades had rendered useless. Joyce Novick’s rose-colored reminiscences, Willard’s fading echoes, none of that could help him now.