I'd been the editor of a book on forensic techniques that had become a leading text in its field, largely due to the excelent work of the contributing authors I had managed to assemble, but including a couple of my own chapters as wel. After twelve years it had been updated with a second, entirely new edition.

'The first one.'

'Hold on.'

In seconds she was back.

'What do you need?'

'There's a chapter on population differences in the calcaneus. Flip to that.'

'Got it.'

'What's the percentage of correct classification when comparing Mongoloid, black, and white foot bones?'

There was a long pause. I could picture her scanning the text, forehead creasing, glasses creeping down her nose.

'Just below eighty percent.'

'Not great.'

'But wait.' Another pause. 'That's because the whites and blacks don't separate wel. The Mongoloids could be distinguished with eighty-three to ninety-nine percent accuracy. That's not too bad.'

'O.K. Give me the list of measurements.'

I had a sinking feeling as I wrote them down.

'Now see if there's a table that gives the unstandardized canonical discriminant function coefficients for American Indians, blacks, and whites.' I would need these figures for comparison to coefficients I would derive from the unknown foot.

Pause.

'Table Four.'

'Wil you fax that chapter to me?'

'Sure.'

I gave her Primrose Hobbs's name and the fax number at the incident morgue in Bryson City. Hanging up, I dug out the notes I'd taken on case number 397.

When I punched another number and asked for Primrose Hobbs a voice told me she was not there, but asked if I would like her number at the Riverbank Inn.

Primrose also answered on the first ring. This was my lucky day.

'Hey, sweetie pie, how you doin'?'

'I'm good, Primrose.'

'Don't you let these slanders get you down. God wil do what God wil do, and he knows it's al bunk.'

'I'm not.'

'One day we're going to sit down, play us some more bid whit, and laugh at al this.'

'I know.'

'Though I must say, for a smart woman, Tempe Brennan, you are the sorriest bid whit player I've ever sat a table with.' She laughed her deep, throaty laugh.

'I'm not very good at card games.'

'You sure got that right.'

Again the laugh.

'Primrose, I need a favor.'

'Just ask, sugar.'

I gave a condensed version of the history of the foot, and Primrose agreed to go to the morgue early Sunday morning. She would read the fax, cal me, and I would walk her through the missing measurements. She commented again on the charges against me, and suggested anatomical locations in which Larke Tyrel could store them.

I thanked her for her loyalty and disconnected.

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