“You touched a nerve? Okay, maybe Duesie-man was the guy who worked at Swedish and he was more than a friend and she didn’t want to get into details with you. Was Greiner married back then?”

“Yes.”

“Happily?”

I thought about that. “Don’t know.”

“Kids?”

“Five.”

“What was her husband like?”

“He wrote books about Chaucer.”

“Professor?”

“Never got his Ph.D.”

“How’d he earn a living?”

“He didn’t.”

“Real alpha male, Alex. So she was the breadwinner. So a fellow doc with hot wheels coulda been appealing. She doesn’t want to dredge all that up, so she terminates the tête-à-tête.”

“Why have a tête-à-tête in the first place?” I said. “Why not just talk over the phone?”

“She bothers you that much,” he said.

“I’m not saying Salome did anything criminal. I do think she knows more than she let on.”

“Fine, I respect your intuition. Now, what do you suggest I do about it?”

I had no answer, didn’t have to say so because his phone began playing Debussy. Golliwog’s Cakewalk.

He slapped it to his ear. “Sturgis … oh, hi … really? That was quick … okay … okay … okay … yeah, makes sense … could be … if I need to I’ll try it … no, nothing else from this end. Thanks, kid.”

Clicking off, he snatched up the crab claw, sucked meat, swallowed. “That was Liz Wilkinson. She dates the bones consistent with the clippings. No new evidence of trauma, internal or external, not a single deformity or irregularity. She didn’t find any marrow or soft tissue but will ask DOJ to try to get DNA from the bone tissue. Problem is between budget cuts and backlog, this is gonna go straight to the bottom of the pile. If I want to speed it up, she suggested I ask Zeus to descend from Olympus. Only thing that’ll motivate him is if the media continue to cover the case. And Liz just got a call from a Times reporter.”

“The press contacts her but not you?”

“When did you hear me say I wasn’t contacted?” His tongue worked to dislodge food from a molar. Placing the crab claw on a plate piled with empties, he scrolled his phone through a screen of missed calls. The number he selected was from yesterday afternoon.

“Kelly LeMasters? This is Lieutenant Milo Sturgis returning your call on the bones dug up in Cheviot Hills. Nothing new to report, if that changes, I’ll let you know.”

He returned to his food.

I said, “So we forget about Swedish Hospital.”

“I don’t see it leading anywhere, but feel free to pursue. You come up with something juicy, I’ll say it was my idea in the first place.”

An innocuous chime sounded in my pocket. My phone’s turn to join the conversation.

Milo said, “The ringtone era and you’re living in a cave?”

I picked up.