"No. Nothing. Looks as normal as can be."
We were silent some more. The silence was filled with the sounds of masticating donuts. I thought of the young man who hired me. "How much does David know of his mother?"
"Nothing. As far as he knows, his mother's body had been recovered, a simple case of misplacement, and we acquired the DNA we needed. As far as the rest of the world knows, Evelyn Drake is dead, and has been dead, as she was supposed to have been two years ago."
"And the father lives with the stigma of being a murderer."
Hammer shrugged his meaty shoulders. "You can't win them all, Spinoza. He was given a new identity. A new life. We couldn't do anything else for him except to say thank you and sorry."
"Thank you for trying to kill a bloodsucking killer?"
Hammer looked a little sick. "Right. Something like that."
"Life is weird," I said.
"No shit." He reached in the bag, removed a peanut chocolate cake, and stood. "And now I'm going to go back to work and look for human murderers and psychopaths - and try like hell to forget this ever happened."
"Join the club."
"I'd rather not," he said. "Hey, did you ever collect on your tacos?"
"No," I said. "But I'm ever hopeful."
The End