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She nodded, gave me a fleeting smile, and then left. I got my phone out and rang Aiden back.
“Dead or alive?” he said without preamble.
“Alive, but injured, if what I’m getting from the watch is anything to go by.”
“Do you need a driver?”
“I do indeed.”
“Be there in five.”
He hung up. I carefully placed the watch in a small silk bag to dull some of the sensations rolling from its surface, then—after grabbing my phone, purse, and keys—headed out to the street to wait for Aiden. He pulled up two minutes later and leaned across the front seat to open the door.
“I canceled dinner,” he said as I climbed in. “Better to be safe than sorry. Where to?”
“Swing left onto Hargraves.” I put on my seat belt and then twisted to face him. “Why all the secrecy about the dinner location?”
“It’s a surprise.” His voice was mild. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“Nothing beyond the fact that curiosity will now kill me.”
He grinned. “Curiosity only ever kills cats, so I think you’re pretty safe. Ciara finished her prelim examination on the two sets of bones, by the way.”
“A not-so-subtle redirect, but I’ll let you get away with it this time. Did she manage to identify either victim?”
“No, not at the moment.” He glanced at me, the amusement leaving his expression. “It appears your intuition was right—the teeth were missing.”
I shuddered. “I’m guessing that means identifying them will now be difficult.”
“Maybe not. They’re going to use a forensic facial reconstruction program to get a workable image of both victims. Thankfully, the current list of missing persons isn’t a large one.”
“That’s presuming both victims are from the reservation. They may not be.”
“True, but once we have an image to work with, we can access the database used by the state cops if they’re not listed in ours.”
“Was she able to get an idea of approximate age from the bones of either victim?”
“The length of their tibias suggests they’d both reached maturity and stopped growing, which means they were at least eighteen or nineteen. But there was also little in the way of the degenerative changes that start happening in the late twenties, and that means they were probably in their early twenties.” He swung the truck left and then sped up. “How far away do you think Joe is?”
I briefly tightened my grip on the silk-covered watch and then screwed up my nose. “Hard to say, but not far. Where does Mrs. Hardwick live?”
“Over near Campbell’s Creek.”
“And the mate who had the party?”
“Preshaw Street.”
I frowned. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because it leads onto Stephenson’s Track.”
An area that was riddled with disused mineshafts, including the one we’d fallen into. What was the betting that Joe’s trail would lead us into that area again? “How likely is it that he walked home that way?”
“Very. And before you ask, we did search the immediate area either side of the track, but couldn’t find his scent.”
“Given they were partying, maybe he took a shortcut through the scrub rather than remaining on the track.”
“It’s possible, although most of the kids who live in that area are well aware how dangerous it can be.”
