“No,” Livia said. “The tooth was the only match to date. But the hope is that the new DNA technology will be able to get through the remaining unidentified bone fragments in the next few months. If more of Victoria Ford was recovered in the ruins of the Twin Towers, we’ll know soon enough.”

Avery suspected that, if her wild theory were correct, none of the other specimens salvaged from the Twin Towers would belong to Victoria Ford.

CHAPTER 42 - Manhattan, NY Sunday, July 4, 2021

CHAPTER 42

Manhattan, NY Sunday, July 4, 2021

HE CHECKED HIS WATCH AND THEN GLANCED AT HIS PHONE ON THE passenger’s seat. He resisted the urge to text Avery. He’d woken this morning to find her already gone, vanished without a trace other than her scent on the pillow next to him. No note. No voice mail. No text. On a different morning or with a different woman, this would have confused or embarrassed him. Perhaps some of that still existed now, but he and Avery had plans to rip through the rest of the Cameron Young file later in the day, so Walt chalked up the disappearing act to Avery chasing down leads sniffed out during their initial review of the case. He was doing the same.

His and Avery’s dive into the Cameron Young investigation had him curious, if not worried. Specifically because he knew the box of files sitting in his hotel room did not tell the full story. As soon as Walt woke, he called Jim Oliver and requested some federal bureaucratic pressure be applied to the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, who had up to this point refused to return Walt’s calls. Walt found himself in a unique position of power. Jim Oliver needed Walt’s skills in the delicate matter of locating Garth Montgomery, and now Walt needed Oliver’s influence to find whatever additional information was out there on the Cameron Young case. Walt’s curiosity had nothing to do with the investigation into Garth Montgomery, but he convinced Oliver that it was imperative to locate any lost evidence pertaining to the twenty-year-old case. Walt knew the US Attorney’s Office possessed what he needed.

Calls were made, pressure was placed, and over a holiday weekend the right people were pulled from vacation to get it done. Walt had his answer, and locating the missing files was easier than he imagined. Originally confiscated from Maggie Greenwald’s office—the DA who was set to prosecute the case—during the investigation into her misconduct, the US Attorney’s Office had eventually shipped the evidence back to the BCI headquarters for storage.