Page 55 of Making His Bones

“What’s wrong with a hoedown?” asked Galileo.

Elektra showed Tiago the phone. “Do you recognize anyone here as the guy who took your drugs from you?”

Accepting the phone, Tiago looked studiously at it while we looked studiously at his face. I think we were kind of shocked when his little features lit up.

“Sí!” he shouted. His voice always sounded so much younger when he cried out like that. “This one!”

Elektra took the phone back. Now we watched her face carefully. Disbelief colored her expression. “Why, that’s Narcissa Whitman. Unmarried daughter of Upton’s sister.” She told me, “She ran the daycare in the church where Delilah was last seen.”

“No she—he!” declared Tiago.

Elektra showed the kid the phone again. “No, see her long hair? Her bust line?”

Galileo pointed. “Tetas.”

Tiago giggled, but he was adamant it had been this woman who had taken his drugs at the hotel restaurant. “It was him. He had no boobs, and shorter hair, but it was him.”

I said, “Well, they’re all members of the same family. Maybe another relative that looked like her.”

Elektra was drifting away to the window, thoughtfully gazing at her phone.

Slushy pointed at her. “Could be a he/she,” he said sensitively.

Galileo said, “We had a few of those in the rez. Nádleehimeans‘one who changes.’ It was often hard to tell if they were boys or girls.”

“The Bent Zealots have a couple,” said Slushy.

I said, “So this Narcissa could’ve dressed as a man to confuse the issue when picking up drugs. No big deal. We just go to her garbage can on garbage day and get some more pizza.”

“You forget one thing,” said Galileo. “The murderer’s DNA is of a man. If Narcissa did it, it would say ‘woman.’ Elektra told me that’s one of the first most basic things DNA tells you. Automatically reduces the pool by fifty-one percent.”

Elektra walked toward us now, a forefinger held up as she still stared at the phone. “Or listen to this. She was never capable of having children, aside from the fact she never married. She adopted her daughter Hannah—from where, I don’t know. Bud Pitchfork was rumored to have lured new mothers to airports just to abscond with their infants to hand to his childless relatives.”

“Wow,” said Slushy. “That is one ill-timed crime.”

Elektra said, “I did go into her private apartment once, an annex off the church, to pick up Delilah. I did see wigs on stands. Those could’ve been for when she needed to fake being a man or”—she finally looked directly at us and spoke in a meaningful hush—“or she could really be a man pretending to be a woman.”

Wow. I heard myself speaking before I’d really formulated the thought. “So Narcissa Whitman is still in the game for being Delilah’s murderer.”

Eyes wide, Elektra nodded.

“Chąą’,” whispered Galileo. Poop. “What day is garbage day?”

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