By nine-thirty I’d cal ed Cagle four times at each of his numbers. The professor stil didn’t answer.

When the phone rang at ten I nearly burst from my skin.

“Guess you heard.”

“Heard what?”

Slidel picked up on the disappointment in my voice.

“What? You were expecting a cal from Sting?”

“I was hoping it was Wal y Cagle.”

“You stil waiting on that report?”

“Yes.” I twisted the spirals of the cord around my finger. “It’s odd. Cagle said he’d fax it on Thursday.”

“Walter?” Slidel drew the name into three syl ables.

“That was four days ago.”

“Maybe the guy hurt himself pul ing up his tights.”

“Have you considered a support group for homophobics?”

“Look, way I see it, men are men and women are women, and everyone should sleep in the tent he was born with. You start crossing lines, no one’s going to know where to buy their undies.”

I didn’t point out the number of metaphoric lines Slidel had just crossed.

“Cagle was also going to scan photos of the bones and send them by e-mail,” I said.

“Jesus in a fish market, everything’s e-mail these days. If you ask me, e-mail’s some kinda voodoo witchcraft.” I heard Slidel ’s chair groan under the strain of his buttocks.

“If Aiker’s out, what about the other one?”

“Different tent.”

“What?”

“The other FWS agent was female.”

“Maybe you got it wrong with the bones.”

Not bad, Skinny.

“That’s possible for the privy remains, but not for the Lancaster skeleton.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cagle sent a bone sample for DNA testing. Amelogenin came back male.”

“Here we go again. The black arts.”

I let him listen to silence for a while.

“You stil there?”

“Do you want me to explain amelogenin, or do you prefer to remain in the nineteenth century?”

“Keep it short.”

“You’ve heard of DNA?”

“I’m not a total cretin.”

Questionable.

“Amelogenin is actual y a locus for tooth pulp.”

“Locus?”

“A place on the DNA molecule that codes for a specific trait.”

“What the hel ’s tooth pulp got to do with sex?”

“Nothing. But in females, the left side of the gene contains a smal deletion of nonessential DNA, and produces a shorter product when amplified by PCR.

”

“So this pulp locus shows length variation between the sexes.”

“Exactly.” I was incredulous that Slidel had grasped this so quickly. “Do you understand sex chromosomes?”

“Girls got two X’s, boys got an X and a Y. That’s what I’m saying. Nature throws the dice, you stick with the toss.” The metaphor thickened.

“When the amelogenin region is analyzed,” I went on, “a female, having two X chromosomes, wil show one band. A male, having both an X and a Y

chromosome, wil show two bands, one the same size as the female and one slightly larger.”

“And Cagle’s bones came up male.”

“Yes.”