Mandy rose from behind the desk and strutted to a door behind her. She wore blue jeans fitted so tight they might have been shrink-wrapped to her body. She had an unnaturally narrow waist, and he guessed she must have gotten a liposuction procedure in her midsection.

Mandy re-appeared and conducted him back to Sullivan’s office.

If Mandy seemed to be preparing for the role of a middle-aged Barbie, then Sullivan could have been the Ken doll. He rose from behind his oak desk as Troy entered, and Troy did a double-take at his appearance. Sullivan was about six-two, Troy’s height, with broad shoulders. He was clean-shaven and square-jawed, with golden-brown hair, and a dipped-in-bronze complexion. He wore a white button down shirt and gray slacks.

In their initial phone call, Sullivan had shared that he’d worked as an Atlanta cop for a decade. Troy had expected a man who looked as if he’d lived a rough-and-tumble existence, not a guy who probably got weekly manicures.

When they shook hands across the desk, Sullivan’s grip was, reassuringly, firm and dry.

“Glad you could make it, Doc,” Sullivan said. “Can I get you anything? Water, coffee? Something stronger, maybe?”

“I’m good, thanks.” Troy noted the walnut veneer bar cabinet in the corner, a row of glass tumblers lined along the surface, as if in preparation for a drinking game. Troy took a closer look at Sullivan and spotted the cracks beneath the man’s glossy exterior: a slight redness to his skin, touches of yellow in his eyes. He glimpsed a breath mint sliding around on Sullivan’s tongue and caught a bracing whiff of peppermint. How many drinks had the man already consumed that day?

Troy eased into a leather chair with a split cushion and frayed arm rests. Including the bar cabinet, the room held a printer, a five-gallon aquarium with one sad gold fish and water that needed to be filtered, and a live cactus plant. Photos of Sullivan at various stages of his career hung on the walls: dressed in Marine blues, a shot of his graduation from the police academy. His framed pi license hung behind his desk, on which stood a battered Sony laptop.

Sullivan tented his slender fingers. He flashed a smile, showing off capped teeth.

“You got the goods, Doc?” he asked.

Troy placed two plastic bags on the desk, each containing hair samples from Grace, and Monica, respectively. Both bags were clearly marked with the woman’s name, as Sullivan had instructed.

“I’ll get these delivered to the lab, via courier.” Sullivan ripped a sheet of paper from a notepad and used a paperclip to package the samples and his note. Then he punched a button on his phone. “Mandy, I need you to run to the lab, pronto.”

“Courier, huh?” Troy said.