Page 85 of Fire and Bones

“Of course.”

“Lizzie. Thanks for calling back so soon.”

“My pleasure. What can I do for you?”

I described the case I wanted to send her. The subcellar environment. The burlap bag. The mummy-skeleton corpse.

“Think there’s any possibility of doing a genetic genealogy workup?” I asked when finished.

“PMI?”

“I think she may have died after 1940.”

“May have?”

“Yes.”

Following a long stretch of dead air, Lizzie asked, “You’ve cut specimens?”

“One dental, one bone.”

“Sounds like low odds.”

“But worth a shot?”

“All the good ones are.”

“I’ll overnight the samples by FedEx. Same address?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you need payment up front?”

“I can bill your ME.”

“Do that. I’ve had to sell her my soul to fund this testing.”

“Gotta admire your dedication, girl.”

We were on Chain Bridge Road when Zanetti posed his next question.

“What did you make of Ivy’s W-C Commerce news?”

“I think it shifts focus away from the victims and onto the landlords.”

“Meaning the property owners were the targets?”

“That could be, though it seems a stretch that arsonists aiming at owners wouldn’t take more care to not set fire to tenants. Still, two houses owned by the same holding company in the same neighborhood catching fire or being torched within days of each other hardly seems random. Tell me if this sounds crazy. I’m thinking the W-C in the name stands for Warring-Cady.”

“And that said targets are somehow associated with the Foggy Bottom Gang? Maybe members of the Warring or Cady family? Doesn’t sound crazy at all, except for the tenants winding up as casualties. That part looks pretty inept.”

“It would be awesome if Ivy could verify ownership.”

“Trust me, she’s all over this, and she’s amazing. She told me that W-C Commerce has no website or social media presence, so most of her internet searches have gone nowhere. But she’s checking free databases and subscription databases and looking for official records, court records, that sort of thing. And she belongs to an outfit called the Global Investigative Journalism Network.”

“You’re confident she’ll come up with names?”

“That or she’ll find someone who can.”