dresses way too girly for the job.”
Bost-the-Best shot me and Cate a wink and a smile. “Pay no attention to Detective Skwarecki, ladies. She can’t hack the competition.”
“Hand to God,” said Skwarecki. “My next paycheck? I’m buying Louise here a pair of sneakers.”
Bost waved a hand in Skwarecki’s general direction. “Such a kidder, this one. Laugh? I thought I’d never stop.”
She teetered up to us, a little out of breath. “I came straight from court, and I want to look nice for my clients. They’ve got it hard enough.”
Sobering thought: dressing well for her clients was a show of respect for the dead.
Skwarecki said, “This is Cate Ludlam, in charge of the preservation efforts here.”
Bost reached to shake Cate’s hand.
“And Madeline Dare,” Skwarecki continued, “who discovered the child’s remains.”
“A pleasure, Ms. Bost,” I said when she shifted to grip my hand in turn.
“ Louise,” she replied. “Let’s not stand on formality. I’m sure this hasn’t been an easy day for the two of you, and if the ME does weigh in a hundred percent, we may be spending some time together.”
No sooner had she said that than the man himself climbed out of the bushes. He stood up and removed his thin gloves with a snap.
From the grim look on his face, a hundred percent was the least of it.
9
The ME took Skwarecki and Bost aside to talk. They stepped into a spot of shade just inside the chapel’s doorway.
We could see their faces again, now, and the conversation was obviously a grim one.
“Those are not happy people,” said Cate. “Not by a long shot.”
“I wonder what he’s telling them,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”
The ME finally peeled off from the trio and climbed into his van.
Bost wasn’t worried about her shoes anymore when she and
Skwarecki started back toward us.
“Ladies,” she said, “we’d like to drive you down to the precinct house now, if that’s all right.”
“They don’t give you guys air-conditioning?” I asked Skwarecki, cranking my window down as she pulled out onto the boulevard.
Bost and Cate followed in separate cars.
Skwarecki snorted at that. “Half the time you’re lucky these crates have wheels.”
She drummed her fingertips along the top of the steering wheel, already impatient with driving slow enough for the entourage to keep pace.
“Big engine, though, huh?” I asked.
Skwarecki smiled. “Big enough.”
“Slap that cherry on the roof, I bet you could haul serious ass in this thing.”
“Got that right.”
She checked the rearview mirror, making sure we hadn’t lost Cate and Bost.
“Crap,” she said, impatient. “Make way for ducklings.”
We pulled into the One-Oh-Three and Skwarecki led us upstairs, into a warren of glossy, institutional-green hallways. We wandered down them single file behind her, twisting and turning past windowed door after windowed door.
Most of these bore a department title—FRAUD or SPECIAL VICTIMS or ROBBERY—with butcher paper taped to the back of each glass panel. You couldn’t see a goddamn thing beyond them.
Bost obviously knew her way around as well as Skwarecki did, but I was getting more disoriented by the second, sneakers squeaking against the highly polished linoleum.
We skidded to a halt in front of a door marked HOMICIDE.
Skwarecki ushered us over the threshold and into a bright, noisy bull pen crammed with desks.
I looked at my watch again: just after five.
“You have to be somewhere?” asked Skwarecki, pulling up a couple of chairs for me and Cate.
“I’m supposed to meet people around eight,” I said, “but I can blow it off. No biggie.”
“We should have you out of here by then,” she said.
Bost looked at her own thin watch but didn’t sit down. “I need to make a call. May I get anyone some water?”
Cate asked for the ladies’ room, and the two of them walked away.
“I take it the ME’s news wasn’t good?” I asked Skwarecki.
“It wasn’t, no.”
“Could he tell how old the kid was?”
“Around three.”
“ Three,” I said, “Jesus. And you guys think this was a homicide?”
“Skeletal remains, you can have trouble with cause of death, but the ME seems pretty certain in this case.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just… looking at the rib cage.”
Skwarecki nodded. “We’ll know more when they finish the postmortem, but there were a number of badly healed fractures.”
My throat went all tight. I winced and shook my head, raising my hands up like I could keep the images of suffering at bay.
“You okay?” Skwarecki asked, voice quieter, tough-chick edge fallen away when she saw my eyes tearing up.
“Okay? Yeah,” I said. “But really, really pissed off.”
“Good for you.”
I wiped away