'I want to check some bone samples to make sure I'm right on my age estimate. If that foot didn't come from the plane, the tampering charges wil be irrelevant.'

'I mentioned your suspicions about the foot to Tyrel.'

'And?'

'And nothing. He brushed it off.'

Again I felt the flush of anger.

'Have you turned up any unlisted passengers?'

'Nope. Hanover swears deadheading is strictly regulated. No paper, no ride. The Air TransSouth employees we've interviewed confirm their CEO's claim.'

'Anyone who might have been transporting body parts?'

'No anatomists, anthropologists, podiatrists, orthopedic surgeons, or corrective footwear salesmen. And Jeffrey Dahmer isn't flying these days.'

'You're a scream, Ryan.'

I hesitated.

'Has Jean been identified?'

'He and Petriceli remain among the missing.'

'They'l find him.'

'Yeah.'

'You al right?'

'Tough as nails. How 'bout you? Feeling lonely al by yourself?'

'I'm fine,' I said, staring at the bed I'd just vacated.

===OO=OOO=OO===

North Carolina has a centralized medical examiner system, with headquarters in Chapel Hil and regional offices in Winston-Salem, Greenvile, and Charlotte. Due to geography, and to its physical layout, the Charlotte branch, dubbed the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner, was chosen for the processing of specimens colected at the incident morgue in Bryson City. A technician had been loaned from Chapel Hil, and a temporary histology unit had been set up.

The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner is part of the Harold R. 'Hal' Marshal County Services Center, which takes up both sides of Colege Street between Ninth and Tenth, just on the edge of uptown. The facility's home was once a Sears Garden Center. Though an architectural orphan, it is modern and efficient.

But Hal's tenure may be threatened. Shunned for years, the land on which the center sits, with its views of condos, shops, and bistros, has caught the interest of developers as more fitting for mixed-use commercial expansion than for use as county offices, parking lots, and a morgue. American Express gold cards, cappuccino makers, and Hornets and Panthers club seats may soon flourish where scalpels, gurneys, and autopsy tables used to hold sway.

Twenty minutes after finaly donning the panties, I puled into the MCME lot. Across Colege, the homeless were being served hot dogs and lemonade from folding tables.

Blankets covered the moss strip between sidewalk and curb, displaying shoes, shirts, and socks for the taking. A score of indigents miled about, nowhere to go, in no hurry to get there.

Locking the car, I walked to the low-rise redbrick structure and was buzzed through the glass doors. After greeting the ladies up front, I checked in with Tim Larabee, the Mecklenburg County ME. He led me to a computer that had been set aside for crash victim processing and puled up case number 387. It was probably violating the terms of my banishment, but I had to take the chance.