I updated him on everything I’d learned from Snook. Then we rode in silence. I was getting used to it.

We were right about the uselessness of our going to the hospital.

Entering the ER, we passed Rainwater on his way out. He told us that Scar’s body was already en route to Edmonton and that Ollie had left for the scene. As he filled us in on details, I kept thinking he might as well be describing the Castain hit.

Scar was nailed while leaving the apartment of a woman named Dorothea Slider. She saw zip. The neighbors saw zip. The only difference was the level of boldness. Scar’s drive-by took place in broad daylight.

Pointedly ignoring me, Rainwater asked Ryan if he wanted to help run down a tip on Unka. Ryan gave me the courtesy of a raised-eyebrow query.

I held out my hand.

Ryan dropped the keys onto my palm. Behind him, across a tiled lobby, I noticed Maureen King from the Coroners Service talking on a cell phone. She was smaller than my perception of her standing over Castain, maybe five-two, 110 pounds.

She had her back to us. She wore black jeans, a white turtleneck, and the same windbreaker as the night before.

King switched ears and hiked a large black purse onto her other shoulder. As her body turned, she noticed me. Face registering surprise, she gestured me over. I crossed to her.

King kept talking but raised one finger in a “hold on” gesture. A few more words, then she disconnected and dropped the phone into her purse.

I held out a hand. “Temperance Brennan.”

“I know who you are.” Maybe smiling.

We shook.

King was also older than I’d thought, probably late forties. Her hair was muddy blond and started too far back on her head. She tried to hide her expansive brow with long bangs, a mistake given their limpness and paucity.

“You’re the anthropologist.”

“You’re the coroner.”

“Deputy chief.”

“Forensic.”

We exchanged a grin. Then King’s face went serious. “You fall off, you get back on.”

“Excuse me?” I had no idea her meaning.

“You feel the need, I could find us a meeting.”

Heat geysered up the front of my throat and spread across my cheeks. “I don’t know what rumors you’ve heard, Ms. King, but—”

“Maureen. And don’t bullshit me. I’m the empress of bullshit. Can spot it coming from three miles out.”

I said nothing.

“I’m eight years dry. But still I have those days when I want to drive to another town, find a dark little bar where no one knows me, and erase the whole freakazoid world for a while.”

Her words hit me like a Zamboni. Not because they weren’t true. They were. I knew exactly what she meant. But this time I wasn’t guilty. I hadn’t sought escape, had downed the Scotch only at Ryan’s insistence.