When Dr. Pinkers left, the bones all safely packed in bags and then tucked into a foam container, he said he’d call her as soon as he knew anything. When she pushed him and asked when that might be, he squinted his eyes as if looking far off into the future. “I’ll know something before the week’s out.” She sat at her desk, not really waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it might, and at the same time getting some of her mountains of paperwork done. While Annette had suggested she move into Sheriff Talbert’s office, that felt too uncomfortable—she told the secretary just to route all his calls her way. There was always this weird lag time that happened after the very beginning of an investigation. On the first day there was the franticness of securing the site, interviewing witnesses, taking photos, gathering evidence. Then they would be done, and all the bits that they had pulled together would go off to the experts. She so wished it was like it was on TV, that it would take only as long as a commercial break for the information to come back to them.
