My niece has always been into extreme technology and has been tinkering and tampering with electronics and machines since she could walk. She isn’t the sort to care about firing a flintlock gun or a muzzle-loader. She’s never been particularly interested in things that are old. She’d rather read a book about physics than history. She doesn’t collect antiques. She’s not particularly sentimental about the past.

Lucy does her own handloading of ammunition and has for almost as long as she’s been shooting her very fine guns. I’ve always preached safety first and would be very unhappy if Lucy worked with black powder. It’s easily ignited. It’s highly unpredictable and I’ve worked my share of explosive catastrophes when someone decides to make a dirty bomb and arrives at the morgue in heavy-duty plastic bags. I remember my surprise in the early days of my career when I realized that the first question in such cases is who are the bombers versus their victims.

It wasn’t always obvious at first that the eviscerated, handless, headless body I examined turned out to be what was left of a cruel intention that literally blew up in the perpetrator’s face. Now and then evildoers do it to themselves. I won’t say it’s poetic justice. But I think it.

“How many granules did you find?” I ask Ernie as I wonder if Carrie knows what we’ve discovered.

Or is the evidence in question something she left deliberately? Because it could be. It very well may be. If so what is it she’s hoping we’ll conclude and act on? I don’t want to engage with her. I don’t want to dance but I’m doing it even as I tell myself to resist. I shouldn’t have started but I did, and the synchronizing isn’t mine. I didn’t choreograph it. I wasn’t invited. I was recruited and tricked. But it doesn’t matter at this point.

I fatti contano più delle parole. Another thing my father used to say.

“Five,” Ernie answers my question. “Two in the dust bunny. Three in the fletching, the dyed human hair glued to the arrow. By the way? Jim had to head out to a deposition. He said to call if you need anything else.”

Actions count more than words. I’m demonstrating it even as I’m sitting here. If I didn’t want to play along I should have returned to my office hours ago. But that’s not who I am and Carrie knows it.

“And I’ve just e-mailed you a couple photos,” Ernie says.

“Hold on.” I log on to the laptop built into the console.