“Yet, he wasn’t burned,” Nate murmured. “What about that tiny metal object coated with glass? Did you figure out what that was?”

“Yep. It’s a PIT tag—like the kind they stick into your friendly family pet to identify them. Except this one had an active transmitter. And it looked like it probably once had a wire antenna, but it had broken off. With the antenna, it would be powerful enough to track this thing from a good distance.”

They approached a door with DNA Lab printed on it.

Hendrickson swiped his ID against a badge reader and the door opened.

“So is that the kind of thing someone might use for a pet? In case they get lost?” Nate asked.

“Not a chance. The stuff they use for pets wouldn’t be transmitting anything unless you’re inches away. I’ve seen this kind of thing only once before. They used it to track the prisoners they let out of Gitmo.”

“They? The CIA?”

The tech flicked the lights on in the small lab and shook his finger. “The CIA tracked the Gitmo prisoners, that much I do know. It would be a good guess that’s where this tag you found might be from, but I haven’t yet verified who made the thing. Give me some time, I’ll track it down.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk about the hair samples.” Hendrickson scooted to his right and typed into the nearby computer terminal. “Come here and look at this.”

Hendrickson had pulled up a DNA analysis report. The conclusion stated simply, UNIDENTIFIED.

“So, no match,” Nate said. “That’s not unusual in a fire.”

The tech frowned. “Nate, I’m not an idiot. But some of what you retrieved wasn’t burnt—including the sample being reported on here. The computers still couldn’t find a match.”

Nate didn’t understand. “What does this mean?”

Without answering, Hendrickson unlocked a drawer and pulled out an evidence bag containing a slide. He slipped it under the clips of a high-powered microscope and flipped a switch. A monitor lit up, showing two hair samples.

“These look the same, right?”

They looked the same to Nate, not that that meant anything. “I guess so. I take it one of those is a strand I picked up, and the other is…?”

“The other is a dog. Specifically, a Labrador. I thought your sample looked like a canine hair, so I ran through a bunch of samples until I found a visual match.”

Nate studied the images. “So, someone put a tracking device on a dog after all. I don’t understand what’s interesting about this. Seems like a dead end. A pet locator. High-tech, but still.”