the incipient tears. “I mean, what the fuck is wrong with people, you know?”
“I know,” she said.
“A little kid?”
“Preaching to the choir,” she said.
“Does it get to you?”
“Every damn time.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of balls this job must take.”
“They’re not all this bad,” she said. “Most times, it’s bad guys killing bad guys, you know? But a kid…”
“Does it get easier?”
She shook her head. “No. Never.”
“Does it help if you nail who did it?”
“Sure,” she said. “That’s what keeps me going. What makes me love this job. I get up every morning and I know I’m going to spend my day trying to do something that matters, you know?”
“And this one—you think there’s any chance?”
“A kid this age, I doubt we’re going to have dental records to go on. And proving cause of death…?” She shook her head again.
“Where do you start?” I asked.
“We pull missing-persons reports. Hope we get a hit.”
“What are the odds of that?” I asked.
“Crappy,” she said. “There’s forty thousand sets of unidentified remains in the United States—Jane and John and Baby Does.”
“Forty thousand?” I tried to get my head around that number: a small city of, literally, lost souls.
“There’s no exact figure,” she continued. “Not like we’ve got any national database.”
“Even the feds?” I asked.
“Most cases,” said Skwarecki, “it’s local police. Hell, we’ve still got a lot of our Does filed on index cards, and we’ve got one of the bigger budgets in the country. Go back a few years, even here, and you gotta cross-check the reports by hand.”
“So is there any chance of finding out who this kid is?”
Bost stepped up beside me. “We’ve got one thing in our favor. The remains hadn’t been there very long. Six months, give or take.”
I couldn’t help picturing the species of urban fauna capable of reducing even so tiny a corpse clean down to the bone in half a year.
Rats. Ants. Roaches.
My stomach went sour and I closed my eyes for a second, which only made it worse.
Skwarecki touched my knee. “Hey, that’s good news. Best we could hope for.”
“Okay,” I said, still trying really hard not to give in to my urge to barf.
“What happens next?” asked Cate, taking the seat beside me.
“First,” said Skwarecki, “we pray the victim was local, and that we turn up something at the scene to help with identification—”
“Second,” cut in Bost, “we pray double someone cared enough to report this child missing.”
10
Cate and I didn’t have much to say as far as official statements went. We’d already told Skwarecki and Bost the times we’d arrived at the cemetery, respectively.
I described finding the bones, said I hadn’t actually touched them before I backed out of the bushes again and started yelling. We gave our addresses and our phone numbers, work and home.
We both asked to be kept in the loop on any further information they might turn up at the cemetery, and Cate asked if it would be all right if she continued work on the brush clearing once the police had finished with the scene.
“Maybe we can find something else,” she said. “Something to help with identification.”
Skwarecki agreed to that, but asked that Cate not return until she’d called with the official all clear.
“We’ve got a new group of volunteers scheduled for next Wednesday,” Cate said. “Do you think that would be enough time?”
“Probably,” said Skwarecki, “but wait until I let you know for certain, all right?”
“Absolutely,” said Cate. “I wouldn’t think of doing anything otherwise.”
Bost and Skwarecki gave both of us their business cards.
“If you find anything when you go back in,” said Skwarecki, “don’t touch it. I want you to call me from that pay phone immediately, day or night. My beeper number’s on there, okay?”
Cate and I assured her that we’d follow her instructions to the letter, and that we wouldn’t ever be in the cemetery at night anyway, especially now.
Bost still looked concerned. “Is the next group going to be from the high school as well?”
“No,” said Cate. “They’re members of a Quaker meeting in Matinecock. Mostly retirees. They come twice a year—wonderful people. I can promise you that they’ll be careful, respectful.”
Bost nodded. “I’m certainly fine with it, then. You strike me as a woman with good judgment.”
“Thank you,” said Cate.
“Cate,” I said, “I’d like to come back too, if that’s cool with you?”
She smiled. “Absolutely. I’d love it.”
The four of us stood up and shook one another’s hands.
Cate and I started to leave, but after a few steps she stopped. She turned