The Silent Girl

can you eliminate?” asked Tam.
    “If it were deer or caribou, the root would be wineglass-shaped, and the hair would be coarser. So it’s not in the deer family. The color argues against raccoon or beaver, and it’s too coarse for rabbit or chinchilla. If I were to go by the shape of the root, the diameter, and the scale pattern, I’d say it’s most similar to human hair.”
    “Then why couldn’t it be human?” asked Jane.
    “Take another look in the microscope.”
    Jane bent down to peer into the eyepiece. “What am I supposed to focus on?”
    “Notice how it’s fairly straight, not kinked like a sexual hair from the pubic or underarm regions.”
    “Making this a head hair?”
    “That’s what I thought at first. That this was a human head hair. Now focus on the medulla, the central core of the strand. It’s like a channel running down the length of the hair. There’s something very strange about this specimen.”
    “Can you be more specific?”
    “The medullary index. It’s the ratio between the diameter of the medulla and the diameter of the hair. I’ve looked at countless humanspecimens and I’ve never seen a medulla this wide in a head hair. In humans, the normal index is less than a third. This is more than half the diameter of the strand. It’s not just a channel, it’s a huge, honking pipe.”
    Jane straightened and looked at Erin. “Could it be some kind of medical condition? A genetic abnormality?”
    “None that I know of.”
    “Then what is this hair?” asked Tam.
    Erin took a deep breath, as though trying to find the right words. “In almost every other way, this looks human. But it’s not.”
    Jane’s startled laugh cut through the silence. “What are we talking about here? Sasquatch?”
    “I’m guessing it’s some sort of nonhuman primate. A species I can’t identify with microscopy. There are no epithelial cells attached, so the only DNA we can look at would be mitochondrial.”
    “It would take forever to get those results,” said Tam.
    “So there’s one more test I’m thinking about,” said Erin. “I found a scientific article out of India, about electrophoretic analysis of hair keratin. They have a huge problem with the illegal fur trade, and they use this test to identify the furs of exotic species.”
    “Which labs can run that test?”
    “There are several wildlife labs in the US I can contact. It may turn out to be the quickest way to identify the species.” Erin looked at the microscope. “One way or another, I’m going to find out what this hairy creature is.”
    R ETIRED DETECTIVE H ANK BUCKHOLZ looked like a man who’d fought a long, hard war with devil alcohol and had finally surrendered to the inevitable. Jane found him in his usual spot, sitting at the bar in J. P. Doyle’s, staring into a glass of scotch. It wasn’t even five PM yet, but by the looks of him Buckholz had already gotten a good head start for the evening, and when he stood up to greet her, she noticed his unsteady handshake and watery eyes. But eight years of retirement could not break old habits, and he still dressed like adetective, in a blazer and oxford shirt, even if that shirt was frayed around the collar.
    It was still early for the usual crowd at Doyle’s, a favorite hangout for Boston PD cops. With one wave, Buckholz was able to catch the bartender’s attention. “Her drink’s on me,” he announced, pointing to Jane. “What would you like, Detective?”
    “I’m good, thanks,” said Jane.
    “Come on. Don’t make an old cop drink alone.”
    She nodded to the bartender. “Sam Adams lager.”
    “And a refill for me,” added Buckholz.
    “You want to move to a table, Hank?” asked Jane.
    “Naw, I like it right here. This is my stool. Always has been. Besides,” he added, glancing around at the nearly empty room, “who’s here to listen in? This is such an old case, no one’s paying attention anymore. Except for maybe the family.”
    “And you.”
    “Yeah, well, it’s hard to let go, you know? All these years later, the ones I never closed, they still keep me up at night. The Charlotte Dion case especially, because it ticked me off when her father hired a PI to follow up on it. Implication being I’m a lousy cop.” He grunted and took a gulp of scotch. “All that money he wasted, just to prove that I didn’t miss anything.”
    “So the PI never got anywhere, either?”
    “Nope. That girl just plain vanished. No witnesses, no evidence except