What mistakes? Taking up with me? Leaving me? Wearing a jacket that was crazy warm for the day?

The door opened and Ryan came in.

We looked at each other as though across a great chasm.

“I’ve missed you,” Ryan said, spreading his arms and beckoning me forward.

I stood motionless, Gran’s clock ticking a metronome for my crashing emotions.

Ryan moved closer.

And that was it.

I stepped into Ryan’s embrace and pressed my cheek to his chest. I smelled starched cotton, male sweat, and the familiar Hugo Boss cologne.

Ryan stroked my hair and pulled me closer.

My arms went around him.

31

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. ANOTHER ROMP IN THE SHEETS, slut girl.

That’s not what happened.

Ryan and I talked.

Old pal talk. Mostly.

We spoke of mutual friends, old cases. Katy. Boyd. Charlie, our shared cockatiel.

Ryan relayed news of a homicide in Montreal, a man shot seven times, his chalet set ablaze. Teams were searching for the victim’s hands and head. If found, the missing parts would be at my lab when I next traveled north.

I told Ryan about T-Bird Cuervo’s cellar, and about the santero’s untimely death by train. I traced the link from Asa Finney to Cuervo via the cauldron bones and the vandalism of Susan Redmon’s tomb. Finney and Donna Scott-Rosenberg to Manuel Escriva to the cauldron.

I described Finney’s Web sites, and his seemingly schizoid personas, Ursa and Dr. Games. I mentioned Jennifer Roberts’s conviction concerning Finney’s innocence, and gave my impression of the Wiccans I’d met at Camp Full Moon.

I recounted the discovery of Jimmy Klapec, and described the 666 and inverted pentagram carved into his flesh. I summarized the entomologist’s report, and shared my uneasiness about the lack of animal scavenging and the paucity of insect activity on the body.

Ryan posed exactly the question that I expected. Santería, Satanism, and Wicca? I had no explanation.

I described Boyce Lingo and his extremist brand of morality, and admitted to my unfortunate on-air tantrum. Ryan asked what Larke Tyrell thought of my performance. I shook my head. He let it go.

I explained that Slidell and Rinaldi had been lead detectives on both the Cuervo and Klapec cases. Ryan made sympathetic noises as I described the shooting in NoDa, more as I explained Slidell’s continuing, though curtailed, involvement in all three investigations.

Ryan asked if those assigned to the Rinaldi murder were sharing their findings with Slidell. I passed on the information they’d given to Skinny and he’d given to me. There was no way to trace the nine-millimeter used to shoot Rinaldi. Few were on the streets that night, and those in the shops and restaurants saw little. Eyewitnesses did agree the vehicle involved was a white SUV. Otherwise, accounts were all over the map. Other than heavy credit card debt, Rinaldi had no known personal problems. No addictions. No angry ex-lovers. Except for being a cop, no associations that would put him at risk. No recently released prisoners who might hold a grudge. No unexplained financial transactions, trips, or phone calls.

Ryan asked about Finney. I said he was Slidell’s prime suspect. I ticked off the incriminating evidence: Susan Redmon’s jaw; the tension when asked about Cuervo; the eyewitness report of a Ford Focus, the same model of car Finney owned; the bloody Dr. Games Web site, verified by Slidell as belonging to Finney; the satanic books I’d found at the Pineville house.

I told Ryan that Finney was sticking to his story that he didn’t know Cuervo, and that he was home the night Jimmy Klapec was killed, but took no calls because he was fasting and meditating. I told him that between the grave-peeing incident six years earlier and his recent arrest, Finney had had no interaction with the police. That a search, reluctantly authorized by the DA, had turned up nothing in Finney’s home. That his phone, bank, and credit card records showed nothing suspicious.

I added that, save for Jennifer Roberts and those at Camp Full Moon, no one had been located who knew Asa Finney. Even his fellow Wiccans barely remembered him. He attended few gatherings, was what they called a solitary practitioner. Finney had no employer, coworkers, family, or friends.

I explained that Jimmy Klapec had no police record, but that he was engaged in a high-risk lifestyle as a chicken hawk. That questioning of other hawks had yielded little. Save for Vince Gunther, no one seemed to have noticed the kid’s existence or his disappearance. That, other than the bugs and the postmortem mutilation, neither the corpse nor the scene had yielded trace or any other kind of forensic evidence. That, except for the sighting of the suspicious Ford Focus, canvassing had turned up no witness to the killing or to the dumping of Klapec’s body.

I outlined what Rinaldi’s informant had told Slidell concerning Klapec and the violent customer resembling Rick Nelson. Finally, I described what we’d found in Rinaldi’s notes. RN, Rick Nelson. VG, the mysteriously absent Vince Gunther. GYE, perhaps Glenn Yardley Evans. Boyce Lingo’s phone number.

Ryan asked my opinion of Lingo and his assistant. I told him I thought something was off there. He gave me one of his looks.

I admitted that I had no idea what the motive might be, and that Lingo and Evans were out of town both the day Klapec got into his fight and dropped from the radar, and the day Klapec was killed and dumped at Lake Wylie.

Ryan asked if I thought the Cuervo, Klapec, and Rinaldi cases were connected. I said I wasn’t sure. He asked what Slidell thought. I reiterated Skinny’s conviction that Cuervo and Klapec were linked, and that Asa Finney was implicated in both.

But what you have on Finney, Ryan said, is diddly.

That’s what we have, I agreed, but added that Finney deserved further scrutiny.

Ryan asked about his backyard welcome from Charlotte’s finest. I told him about the porch light signal and the slit-belly snake. He asked who I thought might have left the little critter. I said take your pick.

Ryan said it was good he was here to protect me. I said “my hero.” Laughed.

Ryan’s voice went serious. No, he said. Really.

Unsure of his meaning, I said nothing.

Then Ryan talked. About Lily. Her addiction. Her rehab. His failed attempt to reconcile with her mother.

Ryan said he and Lutetia were now living apart. Admitted he’d made a mistake. Sought forgiveness. Invited me back into his life.

How those words would have thrilled me a few months back. Now they kicked up an emotional twister.

How would my sister, Harry, put it? I’d ridden that pony and been thrown.

And that’s where we left it at 2:45. Given the hour, I offered the foldout in the study. Ryan accepted. Birdie and I retired to my bedroom.

Sleep was a very long time coming.

My clock radio said 8:14. Arrows of light were shooting the shutters and the bedroom floor. The house was quiet. Bird was nowhere to be seen.

Morning sounds drifted in through my partially open window. Birdsong. A leaf blower. On Queens Road, a garbage truck grinding from pickup to pickup.

I felt as anxious as when I’d crawled into bed.

Throwing back the covers, I dressed, did modest toilette, and headed downstairs.

Ryan was at the kitchen table, reading the Observer. Birdie was in his lap.

The Viking blues lit up when I pushed through the swinging door.

“Bonjour, Madam.”

My southern parts did that wee! thing they do.

“Hey.” I ignored my libido.

Ryan was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned. Under the shirt, his T featured a fat green lizard and the words The Dead Milkmen.