“Someone with a reason to keep a secret in the past,” Whitlock added.
Ten minutes later, Silas stepped through the doorway, his hair wild, tropical button-up shirt half tucked in, as if he’d been dragged away from something tedious.
Foley pointed at the locket, and Silas said, “What’s this, then?”
“This here is a piece of history,” Whitlock said.
“It’s also evidence,” Foley replied. “And there’s a hair on it.”
“I’m guessing it has to do with the investigation you’re working on and the cold case Whitlock’s looking into again?”
“It does,” I said.
Whitlock had told Silas about Anne when he’d dropped off the scarf, but he wasn’t sure how it was all connected. Over the next few minutes, I filled Silas in on the locket, its connection to Anne Fontaine, and to the abandoned cabin.
“Speaking of the cabin,” Silas said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.”
“What do you know?” Foley asked.
Silas reached into his bag and pulled out a small plastic container holding the vertebrae I recovered and set it on the desk between us.
“It’s human,” he said.
Whitlock closed his eyes for a second, his expression a mixture of relief and sadness over what it meant. If the bone was human, we might be solving two murders, not one.
“Which part of the spine is it from?” Foley asked.
“Thoracic vertebrae,” Silas said. “Midback.”
He tapped the side of the container. “Based on the morphology, I believe it belonged to a female.”
Foley raised a brow. “How can you tell?”
“Male vertebrae tend to be thicker and heavier,” Silas said. “Female vertebrae show subtle differences, lower down the spine where curvature helps accommodate childbirth. This one aligns with female anatomy. Not definitive yet, but I’m close enough to make the call.”
I felt a knot in my stomach. “I wonder if it’s Anne’s.”
“It’s possible,” Silas said. “I can’t confirm until we compare DNA. But the locket? The hair? The bone? Something tells me you’re headed in the right direction.”
“I wonder if there are more remains at the cabin,” I said.
“We were over there again yesterday. Didn’t find anything more, though we haven’t done any digging yet.”
“If the bone is Anne’s, what you found is just the beginning,” Foley said. “That bone wasn’t sitting there for twenty-five years without company. I’ll call the judge, let him know we need a warrant to dig at the cabin.”
Whitlock nodded.
Silas gathered up the locket and the bone and placed both in his bag. “I’ll go ahead and test the strand of hair, even though we’re just almost certain that it’s Anne’s.”
He left the room, and Foley reached for his coat. “If that cabin holds the rest of Anne’s remains, we need to get to it fast, before the killer has another chance to clean up the past.”
21
Foley texted me an hour later saying the judge was reviewing the warrant.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” he added. “Be ready.”
Ready felt like an understatement.
