“That what I’m thinking?” Slidell is sparking energy that wasn’t there before.

“It is.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Detective. It’s a bullet entrance.”

“How do you know?” He flips to a clean page in the spiral.

“The round shape, the radiating fractures, the beveling on the endocranial border.”

Slidell’s eyes come up and narrow in warning.

“On the inside of the skull.”

“Where’s the exit?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s the slug?” The questions fire pepper-hot. I wonder if this could be Slidell’s first homicide.

“It may have exited through an orbit, maybe the mouth or nasal opening. The face is too damaged to tell.”

“Any way Millikin could have popped himself?”

“It’s possible, but unlikely.” I demonstrate by winging an elbow to point a finger to the back of my head.

“What else?”

“It puzzled me why Millikin’s skull stayed intact. The bullet hole explains it.”

Slidell twirls the pencil stub, impatient.

“It must have been an oven in that Airstream. At temperatures that high, liquids in the brain expand and the increased intracranial pressure leads to cracking, even explosion.” An oversimplification, but good enough.

“The hole acted like a steam vent.”

“Yes.” Not bad, Skinny.

“So you’re telling me some fuckbucket capped Millikin, then fricasseed his ass?”

“I’m telling you Millikin suffered a gunshot wound to the head. I don’t know what killed him. If it is Millikin.”

“What about those?” Indicating Dr. Steiner’s envelope.

“I’m not a forensic dentist.”

“I’m gutted. Just take a look.”

Slidell watches as I remove a set of tiny X-rays and arrange them in anatomical order on an illuminator.

“Crap.”

“What?”

“Millikin’s dental work is all on the lower right. I don’t have that half of the jaw.”

“You think it’s still out there?”

I shrug. Who knows?

Slidell makes a sound in his throat I cannot interpret. Shoots a cuff to check his watch. “Rinaldi radioed while I was on my way here. In twenty minutes, the arson boys start tossing that trailer.”

I know that’s a death sentence for fragile bone. Knowing I know it, Slidell hammers harder.

“By all accounts, this guy Millikin was Charlotte’s answer to Mother Teresa. You don’t want to help catch the bastard that killed him?”

“That’s your job.”

“One day ain’t gonna derail your life.”

I know Slidell is playing me. I also know he’s right. Conscience already booking a guilt trip, I cross to the phone. Check a list of extensions. Dial the other autopsy room. When Larabee answers, I explain the situation.

“We’ll have to be careful with this.”

We?

“How much are you missing?”

I tell him, then wait out a long, gaping pause.

“You think more teeth may have survived?”

“It’s possible.”

“Will you go out there?”

“I’ve never worked a fire scene.”

“Suppose we do it together?”

I rearrange things in my mind. Take a look at priorities. Make another decision.

—

Millikin’s Airstream is off Highway 49, almost at the South Carolina border. Too far south of Charlotte and too far north of Lake Wylie. Real estate that is cheap and untrendy. I pass few other homes along that stretch of two-lane.

I find the turnoff and make a right down a narrow track cutting through hickory, chestnut oak, and shortleaf pine. My wipers slap the windshield, fighting off rain. My tires spit gravel, struggling for traction. My radio pumps songs about angels and reindeer.

A quarter mile, then I reach barbed-wire fencing. Signs warn NO TRESPASSING in bold orange on black. The gate is open. I drive through and across a clearing.

The Airstream is a motor home, not the small bubble I’m expecting, silver with a bright blue stripe. The entrance is outfitted with an awning and makeshift wooden porch. On the porch is a green La-Z-Boy, stuffing sprouting from the seams like over-yeasted dough. The door has a square window with blinds covering the inside. Like the gate, someone has left it wide open.

I take a moment to assess. Behind the Airstream is a shed. Opposite the shed is a rectangle of dirt fenced in the same barbed wire that encloses the clearing. A triangle connects the three through soggy brown grass, gravel paths neatly edged with rock.

In the garden, stakes project from parallel mounds now devoid of vegetation. Rain pools between the mounds in long, skinny canals, brown-black and pockmarked by the deluge.

A truck is parked beside the Airstream, CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG PD CRIME LAB written on one side. A white Crown Victoria is parked beside the truck, a black Pontiac Bonneville beside that. I assume the cars belong to Slidell and Rinaldi. Not sure why. The Airstream must be towed by a vehicle. I ponder the whereabouts of Millikin’s car or truck.

I pull in beside the Pontiac, kill the engine, and get out. Somewhere, a startled creature squeals. I glance around, banjos dueling in my brain. Seeing nothing sinister, I retrieve Becknell’s case and the camera bag from the backseat, lower my head, and scurry to the trailer.

I enter what was once a kitchen. The air is damp and smells of smoke, scorched metal, and melted plastic. Everything wears a thick coat of soot.

My mind continues logging input. I note the burned-out hulks of a sink, stove, and fridge. Warped cabinetry. A blackened tube that probably supported a table. Pipes twisting inward from their points of attachment.

Slidell and Rinaldi are to my right, in what I assume is the living room. Wires dangle from the ceiling. Unrecognizable objects cover the floor and lie angled against walls or the denuded frames of built-in sofas or chairs.

Two arson investigators are present. One is taking photos. The other is down on all fours, making notes as he advances along a wall. I assume Slidell has told them the trailer is now a crime scene.

I set down the case and camera bag and start picking my way forward. Hearing movement, Slidell turns.

“Bedroom.” Pointing toward the opposite end of the trailer. “Have at it. They’ve already shot pics.”

I reverse, grab the equipment, and duck under toppled metal shelving, boots crunching on complicated stratigraphy involving a lot of broken glass. At the burned-out doorframe, a noxious element enters the olfactory mix. Gas or kerosene.

I stop dead, adrenaline zinging. Not the smell. The sight.

The room is small, maybe six by nine. Almost filling it is a jumble of charred rubble, blackened mattress coils peeking through. All that remains of a bed and bedding. To the right of the bed sits a scorched metal box, I assume the suspect space heater. Beside the box, a grotesquely distorted lamp. No bulb. No cord. No shade.

High up, on the trailer’s rear wall, is another window covered with aluminum blinds. Bleak, rainy-day light oozes through the disfigured slats.

I make out footprints. Ash trails leading to objects stacked along the baseboards. The handiwork of the brothers Grimm. I realize it is pointless to try to reconstruct body position. To recapture information forever lost.

I step forward. Squat. See a chalky-white metacarpal. A talus. Moving ever so calmly, I open the case, pull on latex gloves, and drag my fingers through the ash. A molar crown rolls into the track, enamel brittle and checked by a latticework of spidery cracks.

I stare at the tooth, a funhouse of emotion whirling inside me. Can I do this? Unbidden, Slidell’s taunt sounds in my head. A charred stiff’s a charred stiff. Crude wording. But this morning I’ve learned it is true.

I shout, “I need light in here!”

Minutes later two battery-operated LEDs have the room blazing like a Hollywood set. Becknell’s tools are laid out: trowels, brushes, strainers, tweezers, pipettes. I have marked the date, the location, and my initials on vials and evidence bags. I have prepared Vinac, a solution of polyvinyl acetate resin and methanol useful for preserving calcined bone.

I mask and go to work. Larabee arrives thirty minutes later. I explain the grid system I have devised for mapping the location of finds, then continue searching the east side of the room. He takes the west. We work in silence. I lose all track of time.

I’m dripping Vinac onto a crumbling incisor when I hear raised voices. Male. The words are muffled, but the cadence is clear. Both men are angry.

I look to Larabee. He shrugs, a bony move that makes me think of a turtle.

Cold and needing a break, I creak to an upright position. My knees are not happy with the new arrangement. I flex and straighten each to encourage circulation. Behind me I hear Larabee doing the same.

We are about to worm our way toward the kitchen when Slidell appears in the doorway. He is tense as a cobra poised to strike. His face is the color of claret.

“You ain’t gonna believe this.”

“We’ve found most of the missing dentition.” I think good news might prevent a cardiac event.

“We’re busting our chops out here and who strolls in?”

“I’m not following.” Larabee speaks for us both.

“The asshole himself.”

Nothing.

“Jesus Christ. Do I have to spell it out? The dumbshit doc.”

“Millikin?” Simultaneous.

“No. Hawkeye Pierce.”

Neither Larabee nor I appreciates the sarcasm.

“Turns out Mother Teresa’s been partying south of the border.”

“Millikin was in Mexico?” This is making no sense to me.

Slidell nods.

“Doing what?” Larabee asks.

“Muchachas and margaritas. Ain’t they famous for it?”

“So who’s this?” I arc an arm at the evidence bags lining one wall.

“Beats me.” The LEDs cause a collision of shadows on Slidell’s face. “But he took a bullet to the head and there’s a shooter out there who’s going down.”