I made a face. “I don’t know for sure that he did die, but Jenny—Matt’s girlfriend—was camping out as part of an anti-nuke protest east of Lawrence. A fire swept through their campsite and no remains were found. I’ve heard a rumor that I can’t prove that Matt was there and died at the campsite. It’s possible he survived, although the fact that neither you nor anyone else ever heard from him makes me doubt it. However, about a month ago, someone found part of a baby’s skeleton out where Jenny was camping with the baby. Would you be willing to let me have a DNA sample? It might show whether that baby was Matt and Jenny’s child.”

Charmaine was eager to be tested if it meant learning one concrete thing about her brother, even if it was the difficult news that all that remained of him was part of his dead child’s skeleton. I paid Simone, and drove with Charmaine to a drugstore for another sterile kit.

When we’d paid for the kit, she let me swab her mouth and spelled out her name and address for the label. “If it turns out that baby’s hand belongs to Matt’s child, I want it,” she said. “I’m the little girl’s aunt, she should come home to Belleville with me and be buried with her people.”

That seemed like a fitting request, although I wondered how Gertrude Perec would feel about it. Still, I promised I’d do my best to get the little hand to her.

When I dropped her at her car, she asked for directions to the missile silo. “If that’s where his life ended, I want to see the spot. I want to walk that land.”

“A couple of people out there have died from a rather serious illness recently,” I said. “I can tell you how to find the farm, but it would be best if you didn’t get out of your car. It’s not clear what’s going on, but there’s an old Minuteman Missile silo there, and there might be some contamination.”

When Charmaine had driven off, I texted Aanya to let her know I had another DNA sample to check against the baby. She offered to drive in to Lawrence to collect it—“You have been doing all the errand running so far; now it is my turn. Until I learn whether Dr. Madej has a place for me on his team, I am not having enough to do with my time except to sit and be unhappy.”

I didn’t want to tie myself down to a time and place to meet. I went back into the Hippo and asked Simone if I could leave a package behind the bar for a friend to collect. She agreed, on condition I tell her what had made Deke Everard leave the bar without saying good-bye.