Revving up a Stryker saw, I removed a small square of bone from the right parietal and sealed it into a ziplock. Then I extracted and added a right second molar. Even if we couldn’t afford C14 testing, we might need the specimens for DNA sequencing.

Samples bagged, I finished entering my observations onto my case form.

PMI: Five to fifty years.

MOD: Unknown.

I could picture Slidell’s expression when I reported that. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.

Discouraged, I turned to the nonhumans.

Yep. Goat and chicken.

Both skulls retained remnants of desiccated flesh. I found a few larvae and puparial cases inside the vault and auditory canals of the goat.

I’d already sampled from the chicken on Tuesday, and knew it had held the motherlode. Adult flies. Larvae. The body had even yielded a few beetles and a number of very large roaches. I’d await word from the entomologist, but I had no doubt Chicken Little had gone to her reward in the past few months.

I turned my attention to the large cauldron.

First I took photos. Then I placed a stainless steel tub in the sink, settled a screen over it, masked, and began troweling. The dirt shished softly as it fell through the mesh. An earthy smell rose around me.

One scoop. Three. Five. A few pebbles, snail shells, and bug parts collected in the screen.

Twelve scoops in, I sensed resistance. Abandoning the trowel, I dug by hand. In seconds, I’d freed a shriveled mass measuring approximately two inches in diameter.

Laying my find on the gurney, I gingerly explored with my fingers.

The mass was shrunken, yet spongy.

Apprehension began to tap at my brain. What I was handling was organic.

As I teased away dirt, detail emerged. Gyri. Sulci.

Recognition.

I was poking at a hunk of mummified gray matter.

My own neurons fired up a name.

Mark Kilroy.

I pushed it back down.

The human brain measures in at approximately 1,400 cubic centimeters. This thing could claim but a fraction of that.

Goat? Chicken?

A sudden grisly thought. One lobe of a human cerebrum?

That was a question for Larabee.

After bagging and tagging my find I continued with the fill.

And made my next chilling discovery.

6

AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A HOLY CARD, A MASS-PRODUCED devotional used by the Catholic faithful. My sister, Harry, and I used to collect them as kids. A bit smaller than a driver’s license, each card depicts a saint or biblical scene and provides a suitable prayer. The good ones promise indulgence, time off the purgatory sentence you’ve got to serve for screwing up on Earth.

It wasn’t. When removed from its plastic wrapping, the image that emerged was actually a portrait, the kind that shows up in school yearbooks.

The subject was shown from the waist up, tree-leaning, face turned toward the lens. She wore a brown long-sleeved sweater that allowed a peek of stomach. One hand pressed the tree, the other thumb-hooked a belt loop on a faded pair of jeans.

The girl’s hair was center parted, swept back and flipped up behind her ears. It was black. Her eyes were dark chocolate, her skin nutmeg. She looked about seventeen.

I felt a constriction in my chest.

A black teenaged girl.

My eyes jumped to the gurney. Dear God, could this be her skull? If so, how had it ended up in that basement? Had this girl been murdered?

I looked back at the portrait.

The girl’s head was subtly tipped, her shoulders lightly raised. Her lip corners rose in an impish grin. She looked happy, bursting with self-assurance and the promise of life. Why was her photo buried in a cauldron?

Could Arlo Welton be right? Had he uncovered an altar used for satanic ritual? For human sacrifice? I’d read news stories, knew that, though rare, such atrocities did take place.

The phone shrilled, sparing further contemplation of the dreadful possibilities.

“Weren’t we the early bird today.” As usual, Mrs. Flowers sounded a yard north of chirpy.

“I have a lot to go through.”

“The media is in a dither over this basement thing.”

“Yes.”

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Well, I guess they don’t really have hooks anymore. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

I looked at the wall clock. Twelve forty.

“They’ll move on once something new die-verts their attention. Thought I’d let you know. There’s a detective steaming your way.”

“Slidell?”

“Yes, ma’am. Partner’s with him.”

“Warning heeded.”

I was hanging up when the autopsy room door swung in. Slidell entered, followed by a gangling skeleton toting an Italian leather briefcase.

Skinny Slidell and Eddie Rinaldi have been partners since the eighties, to the puzzlement of all, since the two appear to be polar opposites.

Rinaldi is six feet four and carries a little over 160. Slidell is five-ten and carries a whole lot more, most of it south of where his waist should be. Rinaldi’s features are sharp. Slidell’s are fleshy and loose, the bags under his eyes the size of empanadas.

Why the Skinny handle? It’s a cop thing.

But the differences aren’t limited to physique. Slidell is messy. Rinaldi is neat. Slidell inhales junk food. Rinaldi eats tofu. Slidell is Elvis, Sam Cooke, and the Coasters. Rinaldi is Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Slidell’s clothes are blue-light special. Rinaldi’s are designer or custom-made.

Somehow the two stick. Go figure.

Slidell removed knockoff Ray-Bans and hung them by one bow in his jacket pocket. Today it was polyester, a plaid probably named for some golf course in Scotland.

“How’s it hangin’, doc?” Slidell sees himself as Charlotte’s very own Dirty Harry. Hollywood cop lingo is part of the schtick.

“Interesting morning.” I nodded at Rinaldi. “Detective.”

Rinaldi flicked a wave, attention fixed on the cauldrons and skulls.

That was Rinaldi. All focus. No jokes or banter. No complaining or bragging. No sharing of personal problems or victories. On duty, he was perennially polite, reserved, and unflappable.

Off duty? No one really knew much. Born in West Virginia, Rinaldi had attended college briefly, then come to Charlotte sometime in the seventies. He’d married, his wife had died shortly thereafter of cancer. I’d heard talk of a child, but had never witnessed the man mention a son or daughter. Rinaldi lived alone in a small brick house in a sedate, well-groomed neighborhood called Beverly Woods.

Other than his height, lofty taste in music, and penchant for expensive clothing, Rinaldi had no physical traits or personality quirks that other cops poked fun at. To my knowledge, he’d never been the butt of jokes concerning screwups or embarrassing incidents. Perhaps that’s why he’d never been tagged with a nickname.

Bottom line: Rinaldi was not the guy I’d invite to my margarita party, but, if threatened, he was the one I’d want covering my back.

Slidell raised and waggled splayed fingers. “Some cretin’s idea of a Halloween freak show, eh?”

“Maybe not.”

The waggling stopped.

I summarized the biological profile that I’d constructed from the skull.

“But the stuff’s older than dirt, right?”

“I estimate the girl’s been dead no less than five, no more than fifty years. My gut goes with the front end of that range.”

Slidell blew air through his lips. His breath smelled of tobacco.

“Cause of death?”

“The skull shows no signs of illness or injury.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s the jaw?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Calm, Brennan.

“I found this in the large cauldron. About four inches down in the fill.”

I placed the school picture on the gurney. The men stepped forward to view it.