Why the hell was the damn chromatograph taking so long? he wondered.

Jim Bell and Mason Germain sat nearby, both silent. Lucy had called in a few minutes before to say that they’d lost the trail and were waiting north of the trailer—at Location C-5.

The chromatograph rumbled and everyone in the room remained still, waiting for the results.

Silence for long minutes, finally broken by Ben Kerr’s voice. He spoke to Rhyme in a soft voice. “They used to call me it, you know. What you’re probably thinking.”

Rhyme looked over at him.

“‘Big Ben.’ Like the clock in England. You were probably wondering.”

“I wasn’t. In school, you mean?”

A nod. “High school. I hit six-three and two-fifty when I was sixteen. I got made fun of a lot. ‘Big Ben.’ Other names too. So I never felt real comfortable with the way I looked. Think maybe that was why I acted kinda funny seeing you at first.”

“Kids gave you a tough time, did they?” Rhyme asked, both acknowledging and deflecting the apology.

“They sure did. Until I took up junior varsity wrestling and pinned Darryl Tennison in three-point-two seconds and it took him a lot longer than that to get his wind back.”

“I skipped RE. class a lot,” Rhyme told him. “I forged excuses from my doctor, my parents—pretty good ones, I will say—and snuck into the science lab.”

“You did that?”

“Twice a week at least.”

“And you did experiments?”

“Read a lot, played around with the equipment. … A few times, I played around with Sonja Metzger.”

Thom and Ben laughed.

But Sonja, his first girlfriend, put him in mind of Amelia Sachs and he didn’t like where those thoughts were headed.

“Okay,” Ben said. “Here we go.” The computer screen had burst to life with the results of the control sample Rhyme had asked Jim Bell to procure. The big man nodded. “Here’s what we’ve got: Solution of fifty-five percent alcohol. Water, lot of minerals.”

“Well water,” Rhyme said.

“Most likely.” The zoologist continued, “Then there’re traces of formaldehyde, phenol, fructose, dextrose, cellulose.”