Kathy Reichs - Break No Bones

It seemed pointless to mention that Pete wasn't my boyfriend. Or that he owned not a single wingtip.

Gullet pointed a warning finger. "You keep that boy reined in. Things go sideways, I'm the one takes the heat."

"Will you check out the clinic?" I asked.

"Not much to justify that at the moment."

Gullet tapped the PC. "You come up with the password, you call. Otherwise we shoot this thing up to SLED." South Carolina Law Enforcement.

"Won't that mean queuing up for a long wait?" I asked.

Gullet repositioned his Ray-Bans. "You take your shot, ma'am."

When the sheriff had gone, I phoned Emma. She told me to leave the eyelash and snail and she'd have Lee Ann Miller pick them up and send them to the state crime lab.

After photographing the vertebral fractures, I bagged and delivered the lash and shell, and told the tech I was through for the day. The clock said two. I headed home.

On the way, I phoned Pete's BlackBerry. No answer. Big surprise.

I was so pumped about getting into Cruikshank's hard drive, I didn't stop for lunch. At "Sea for Miles" I took Boyd out to the road for a quick health break, threw together a ham and cheese sandwich, then settled at the kitchen table.

The laptop booted through the Windows opening sequence to a blue screen. There, a cursor blinked, awaiting clearance to load personal settings.

I started with commonly used passwords: 123123. 123456. 1A2B3C. Password. Open.

No go.

Cruikshank's initials? Birthday?

I got up and retrieved the AFIS printout that Emma had given me.

Noble Carter Cruikshank.

I tried NCC, CCN, and varying combinations of the man's initials, with and without his date of birth, forward and backward. I inverted each name, then rearranged groupings of letters. Then I substituted digits for letters and letters for digits.

The cursor didn't budge.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department.

I tried every combination using CMPD in differing positions with the name and DOB.

Nope.

Shannon. I didn't have Shannon 's middle or last name. When had they married? No idea. The beach photo was dated July 1976. I tried more combinations.

The cursor wouldn't buy it.

Baseball. I got the box and pulled the trophy. June 24, 1983.

DOB. Date of league championship. Combined. Scrambled. Inverted.

No sale.

I played with Cruikshank's address and every date on the AFIS sheet.

By four thirty I'd run out of ideas.

"I don't have enough personal information," I said to the empty kitchen.

Boyd shot to his feet.

"Still mad about the stingy walk?"

Boyd's mouth opened and his tongue drooped over one purple gum.

"You chows are a forgiving breed."

The chow cocked his head and tipped his ears forward.

"Let's switch to the files."

Shutting down the laptop, I moved to the den. Boyd padded along.

Cruikshank's file carton was still on the window seat. I took it to the coffee table and sat on the couch.

Boyd hopped up beside me. Our eyes met. Boyd dropped back to the floor.

The box held about forty manila folders, each with a handwritten date and name. Some files were fat, others thin. I ran through the tabs.

The files were organized chronologically. I could tell from the dates there were times Cruikshank was working multiple cases. There were also gaps, presumably his periods of heavy drinking.

I pulled the oldest file.

Murdock, Deborah Anne. August 2000. C.

Deborah Murdock's folder held the following:

Shorthand notes similar to those in Helene Flynn's file.

Canceled checks drawn on the joint account of Deborah and Jason Murdock. The last was written December 4, 2000.

Photos of a couple entering or exiting a restaurant, bar, or motel.

Letters addressed to Jason Murdock in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and signed by Noble Cruikshank. The letters spanned the period from September to November 2000.

I was getting the drift. I read only one letter.

Yep. Deborah was the woman in the pics. The man wasn't Jason.

I moved on.

Lang, Henry. December 2000. C.

Same deal. Notes, checks, photos, reports. Cruikshank spent six months on this one. Here it was hubby who was stepping out.

Next folder.

Todman, Kyle. February 2001 . C.

This case involved an antiques dealer who suspected his partner of ripping him off. It took Cruikshank a month to nail the swindler.

I pulled file after file. The stories had a sad sameness to them. Cheating spouses. Missing parents. Runaway teens. Few had happy endings. What is it they say? If you acknowledge your suspicion, it's probably true.

I looked at the clock. Six fifteen. I wondered what Pete was doing.

I wondered what Ryan was doing.

I checked my cell. No messages. The battery was fine.

Of course it was.

Back to the files.

Ethridge, Parker. March 2002.

This was one of the fattest jackets in the carton.

Parker Ethridge, age fifty-eight, lived by himself. In March 2002 Parker's son went to collect him for a long-planned fishing trip. Ethridge wasn't home and was never seen again. Cruikshank spent over a year investigating, but to no avail. Ethridge junior fired him in May 2003.

Franklin , Georgia . March 2004. C.

In November 2003, a nineteen-year-old coed disappeared from her dorm at the College of Charleston. Four months later, dissatisfied with police progress, Georgia 's parents hired Cruikshank to find their daughter. He did. Living with a Buddhist jewelry maker in Asheville, North Carolina.

Poe, Harmon. April 2004. Unemployed male. Last seen at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. Reported missing by a friend.

Friguglietti, Sylvia. May 2004. C. Elderly female. Wandered from an assisted living center. Found floating in the harbor near Patriot's Point.

Again, I checked my watch and my cell.

Seven fifty-two. No calls.

Discouraged, I rolled my shoulders and stretched my arms overhead. Boyd opened sleepy lids.

"It wasn't a complete waste of time," I said.

Boyd rolled his eyes up at me.

"I've learned that C on a tab means the case was closed."

Boyd looked unconvinced. I didn't care. I was getting somewhere.

Dropping my arms, I picked up where I'd left off.

Snype, Daniel. August 2004. Disappeared while visiting Charleston from Savannah, Georgia. Return bus ticket unused. Reported missing by granddaughter, Tiffany Snype.

Walton, Julia. September 2004. C. Runaway housewife found living with her boyfriend in Tampa, Florida.

Some of the most recent files contained only newspaper clippings and a few shorthand notes. No checks. No photos. No reports.

I read several clippings. Each described a missing person.

"Were these cases Cruikshank was hired to investigate?"

Boyd had no answer to that.

"Or was he looking at MPs for some other reason?"

Or that.

Opening the last file, I read another clipping.

A name caught my interest.

HOMER WlNBORNE'S BYLINE GRACED THE MOST RECENT ARTICLE. Less than two column inches, the piece reported on the 2004 disappearance of a man named Lonnie Aikman.

A Mount Pleasant woman is asking Charleston residents to keep an eye out for her son. Lonnie Aikman, 34, has been missing for two years, Susie Ruth Aikman told the Moultrie News.

"He just vanished," said Aikman. "He said, 'Catch you later, Mom,' and went off and never come back."

When police failed to locate Lonnie, Aikman consulted a psychic and was told her son was in the Charleston area. Aikman says seeing the psychic was a last resort.

"When you lose someone you're willing to believe in anything that will give you hope," she explained.