“That’s what people are paying thousands of dol ars for?”

“That’s it.” Zamzow snorted in disdain. “At least twenty-eight different forms of packaged medicines purporting to contain bear bile are legal y available in China. Singapore has banned the sale of products extracted from bears, but shops stil sel bear bile pil s, powder, crystals, ointments, and whole dried gal s. Crap like bear bile wine, shampoo, and soap hit the market every day. You can find them in Chinatowns across the United States.” Disgust tightened my stomach.

“Can’t bears be raised domestical y?”

“China began bear farming in the eighties. It’s almost worse. Animals are crammed into tiny cages and milked through holes cut into their abdomens.

Their teeth and claws may be filed down. Sometimes their paws are even chopped off. Once the animals stop producing bile, they’re kil ed for their gal s.”

“Can’t UCDA be produced synthetical y?”

“Yes. And many botanic alternatives exist.”

“But people want the real thing.”

“You’ve got it. Popular thinking is that artificial UCDA isn’t as effective as the natural form. Which is ass backwards. The amount of natural UCDA in a bear gal can vary from zero to thirty-three percent, hardly a reliable source of the drug.”

“Long-held cultural beliefs die hard.”

“Phrased like an anthropologist. Speaking of which, why are you interested in Spix’s macaws and black bears?” I sorted through the events of the past week. What to share? What to hold back?

Tamela Banks and Darryl Tyree?

Possibly unrelated. Confidential.

Ricky Don Dorton and the Cessna crash?

Ditto.

Yesterday’s cyber threats?

Probably irrelevant.

I told Zamzow about the findings at the Foote farm, excluding only the part about Tamela Banks’s license. I also told him about the Lancaster County skeleton.

For a ful thirty seconds I listened to nothing.

“Are you stil there?” I asked, thinking we’d been disconnected.

“I’m here.”

I heard him swal ow.

“You at the ME office?”

“Yes.”

“You’l be working awhile?”

“Yes.” Where the hel was this going?

“I’l be there in three hours.”

22

ZAMZOW ARRIVED JUST PAST NOON. HE WAS A HEAVYSET MAN,probably in his forties, with thick, bristly hair cropped very short. His skin was pasty, his eyes the identical ginger of his hair and freckles, giving him a pale, monochromatic appearance, like someone who’d been born and lived his whole life in a cave.

Seating himself in the chair opposite my desk, Zamzow got straight to the point.

“This may be nothing, but I was going to be passing on my way to the Pee Dee Wildlife Refuge in Anson County this morning, so I thought I’d divert over to Charlotte and lay it on you in person.”

I said nothing, completely at a loss as to what was of such importance that Zamzow felt it needed a face-to-face.