'You need to get a reference sample for Mitchel'

She hesitated a moment. Then, 'I can look into it.'

'Sheriff.'

The kiwi eyes met mine.

'This may be bigger than Jeremiah Mitchel.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Three hours later Boyd and I were crossing Little Rock Road, heading north on I-85. The Charlotte skyline rose in the distance, like a stand of saguaro in the Sonoran Desert.

I pointed the highlights out to Boyd. The giant phalus of the Bank of America Corporate Center. The syringelike office building on The Square housing the Charlotte City Club, with its circular green cap of a roof and antenna sticking straight up from the center. The jukebox contour of One First Union Center.

'Look at that, boy. Sex, drugs, and rock and rol.'

Boyd raised his ears but said nothing.

While Charlotte's neighborhoods may be smaltown cozy, its downtown is a city of polished stone and tinted glass, and its attitude toward crime is au courant. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is housed in the Law Enforcement Center, an enormous concrete structure at Fourth and McDowel. The CMPD employs approximately 1,900 officers and 400 unsworn support personnel, and maintains its own crime laboratory, second only to that of the SBI. Not bad for a populace of less than 600,000.

Exiting the expressway, I cut across downtown and puled into the visitors' lot at the LEC.

Officers entered and left the building, each uniformed in deep blue. Boyd growled softly as one crossed close to the car.

'See the emblem on the shoulder patch? It's a hornet's nest.'

Boyd made a yodel-like noise but kept his nose at the window.

'During the Revolutionary War, General Cornwalis encountered such pockets of intense resistance in Charlotte that he branded the area a hornet's nest.'

No comment.

'I have to go inside, Boyd. You can't.'

Disagreeing, Boyd stood.

I promised to be gone less than an hour, gave him my last emergency granola bar, cracked the windows, and left him.

I found Ron Gilman in his corner office on the fourth floor.

Ron was a tal, silver-haired man with a body that suggested basketbal or tennis. The only blemish was a Lauren Hutton gap in his upper dentition.

He listened without interrupting as I told him my theory about Mitchel and the foot. When I'd finished, he held out a hand.

'Let's see it.'

He slipped on horn-rimmed glasses and studied the fragment, roling the vial from side to side. Then he picked up the phone and spoke to someone in the DNA section.

'Things move faster if the request comes from here,' he said, replacing the receiver.

'Fast would be good,' I said.

'I've already checked on your bone sample. That's done, and the profile's gone into the database we set up for the crash victims. If we get results on this' — he indicated the vial — 'we'l feed them in and search for a hit.'