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Nordstrom.”
    She could imagine the sweat beginning to form on the guard’s forehead. It made her feel warm inside.
    Barbara returned her attention to Natalie, who was now in tears.
    “Ms. Nordstrom. I’ve worked here for twenty-five years. Please,” Natalie pleaded.
    “Security will help you with your belongings. Close my door on your way out,” said Barbara as she returned her attention to her laptop display.
    Barbara heard slow, quiet footsteps recede behind her followed by a non-stop stream of whimpers and sobs.
    Her office door clicked shut.
    She looked out beyond the far windows of her office and smiled. She had important things to accomplish and not a universe of time in which to get them done.

Chapter 5
    Eat bent down to look closer at the foot on Andy’s lab table.
    “Andy, is this a joke?”
    Andy had returned to her desk to find her notes for a new case she’d been assigned.
    “Is what a joke? Have you seen the folder I usually use my project notes? It’s red with a sketch of bio-hazard warning on it.”
    Eat ignored her and continued with what had grabbed his attention.
    “Andy. The specimen you just received.”
    Eat could feel the blood draining from his head, and settling in his feet. Eat picked up the plastic bag, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, and showed it to her. “This.”
    “Eat! What’s wrong? Are you sick? You are as white as a ghost.”
    Andy got up from behind her desk, rolled her chair around the maze of folders piled on the floor to where he was barely standing, and waved for him to sit down. It was the only chair in the office that had a back and arms. All of the others were just stools with wheels and he would have simply melted off of those, and joined the mêlée of folders piled on the floor. She took the plastic bag from his hands and put it back into the tray still on the lab table. Inside of the bag was a human foot. The subject’s tissue seemed to have been ripped twelve inches above the ankle. The bone was just as jagged and torn, as if it had been cut with a simple handsaw. There was more though. The foot within the bag still had a sock on it. A sock with the owner’s initials embroidered on them.
    A.C.T.
    Anderson Charles Teague.
    Eat had no doubt whatsoever that he was holding his father’s left foot sealed in a plastic freezer bag in his hand. The problem was that his father was supposed to be in Eat’s car sealed in a similar bag, pulverized to a fine powder. It didn’t make any sense to have his father’s foot in Andy’s office.
    It was an argyle sock, light brown with purple and dark brown triangular accents. The embroidered initials were centered within one of the brown triangles. Eat had given these to his father last Christmas. He tried not to hyperventilate and make an ass of himself by falling on the floor and spilling formaldehyde everywhere.
    “Dad. I gave him three pairs of these socks last Christmas. You were there. Don’t you remember? He opened them right in front of us. He said he needed socks. He was so excited over a few pair of simple, argyle socks! Look at the initials.”
    Andy was on her knees in front of him. She was holding his hands.
    “Oh. Sweetie. That can’t be. Your father was cremated. You have his ashes. Remember? You’ve been trying to scatter them on the St. Croix for weeks.”
    “Check the seam by the toes. On the inside. I bought these for him and then sent them off to be embroidered. I asked them to not only stitch his initials on the outside at the top but to put a number on the inside for each of the pairs. That way he could always find the matches. He hated that.”
    “What?”
    “When he couldn’t find the matches. He was sure the dryer did something to his socks, just to piss him off.”
    Andy put on a pair of surgical gloves, unzipped the bag, and slowly extracted the socked foot. She placed it on the tray, and then went back to her desk. It had an evidence tag stapled to the top of the