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.”The students didn’t miss a chance for ridicule.“That’s a long time to be adolescent,” Charlotte said.I paused the disk at a close-up of the pool and the technicians, all in cumbersome white suits and head coverings.The robotlike figures used long poles to manipulate the fuel assemblies, the tops of which were several feet below the surface of the water.“Do we have this straight? The waste is in the pools because we think if we bury it, radioactive atoms might get into the water table?” Mi-Weh asked.“Right,” I said.“So we have, like, tons of radioactive waste sitting above the ground where it can spill over or, like, anyone can fall in?”“Sort of,” I said.“Wow,” Jamel said, moving closer to the screen.He ran his pen down the display, showing how deep the pool was.He scratched his neatly shaved dark head.“I’ll bet you could put a body down there, and no one would find it for, like, fifty years.”Fifty years.“I guess that seems like an eternity to you.More than three times your lifetime.”The students and their twenty-something teacher laughed.Fifty years.Fifty-five years.I stood up abruptly.“Excuse me.I have an important errand I just remembered.”What if a body had been buried not in a boric acid waste pool, but behind a building for fifty-five years?That was the question I asked myself all the way to the police station.TWENTY-EIGHTMATT LEANED BACK in his old gray office chair.The aging springs and patched-up vinyl seat gave out sounds halfway between creaking and groaning.“There are a lot of gaps here, Gloria.”None that I could see.I’d laid it out for him, and in my mind it all fit.Yolanda Fiore, the reporter, doing what reporters do, investigates the disappearance of her grandfather.She determines that Sabatino Scotto never got to Italy.The young Brendan Byrne murdered him and buried him in the lot behind the library.Yolanda figured it out, and he had to kill her, too.And, of course, that was the reason Byrne had to stop the excavation for the library expansion, lest his crime be exposed.“First, we can’t prove Scotto didn’t go to Italy.We only know the people Yolanda contacted denied seeing him there.” Not what I wanted to hear.I’d been so relieved to find Matt in his office, it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d dispute my theory of a double homicide, with the killings fifty-five years apart.“It was a pretty exhaustive search of several families.The Pallavos, the Avallones—”“OK, but they have every reason to lie, to preserve a family secret, and to hide their own crime.”“Do you think harboring a fugitive is a crime in Italy?”Matt laughed.“Maybe not.” He was not to be distracted very long, however.“Say Byrne did murder Scotto—and at this point I think you’re picking on him because he’s the only one we’ve been looking at who was an adult in 1940—if we dug up a body, how would we know it was Scotto? Maybe it was a legitimate burial, like the Church is saying we’ll find there.What makes it a murder victim?”“We use DNA.”“Scotto’s DNA is not on file.Where would we get data to make the comparison?”“We could match to Yolanda, and show it’s her family.”“We just happen to think of trying to match to Yolanda?”“No, she just happens to have determined that her grandfather didn’t go to Italy.So she’s suspicious when a body is dug up.And let’s not forget revenge.Byrne finally has a chance for justice.”“In his mind.”“Of course.She’s a Scotto, and at least one Scotto will pay, if not the right one.”A nod, but not a concession.“OK for now.Let’s start down another track.Why would Byrne think anyone would point the finger at him?”“Well, Byrne would be worried that we can make a match to Yolanda, and everyone knows he had motive to kill Scotto.”“Didn’t you tell me …” Matt flipped through his small notebook, but I knew the gesture was for show, teasing me.“Let’s see, your interview with Dorothy Leonard.Here it is.The library expansion project is likely to go through anyway?”“Yes, but with Yolanda out of the way, it’s less likely anyone will care about some bones that are dug up.As you pointed out, they could just say it might be Horatio Alger.”“Who’s that?”“I forget [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]