Desmond stood up and turned to the young officer. The name tag said BLAKE.
"Officer Blake. Is your supervisor around?"
"She's on break."
"Could you call her? I think there's a way through this. The urns that come back opaque on the X-ray, there's a secondary procedure, isn't there? If she's got the crematory certificate, and you do a trace swab on the outside, a supervisor can make a call. I've seen it done."
Blake opened his mouth to argue and then, perhaps because Desmond's voice was the voice that came over the PA at thirty-seven thousand feet to say we're expecting a few bumps, folks, nothing to worry about, keep your belts fastened, he closed it again and picked up the radio on his shoulder.
The certificate was in her purse. The purse was a soft, boxy thing of tapestry fabric, roses on a cream background, with a brass clasp and a strap that had been mended near the buckle with careful hand stitches in thread that did not quite match. Dolores went through it with shaking fingers and came up with hairpins, a roll of butterscotch candies, two pill bottles, a folded church bulletin, a reading magnifier, and finally a long envelope from Pinecrest Cremation Services with a certificate inside, embossed, notarized, stamped.
"Arne would be so embarrassed," she said. "He hated a fuss."
"There's no fuss," Desmond said. "This is just paperwork. Airports run on paperwork. So do airplanes. I've got more paperwork in that roller bag than clothes."
The supervisor came, a lean woman in her forties with a gray braid down her back and a lanyard heavy with keys. Her name was Ines Garrido. She looked at the certificate. She looked at Desmond's badge. She looked at Dolores for a long time, and something in her face changed, and she said, "Let's get a swab."
It took eleven minutes. The trace swab came back clean. Garrido wrote something on a form and signed it and had Dolores sign it, and then she lifted the blue velvet bag with both hands, the way you would lift a sleeping baby, and set it in Dolores's lap.
"Have a safe trip, Mrs. Lindqvist," she said. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Dolores held the box against her chest and closed her eyes.
Six-fifty-nine.
A wheelchair attendant came up the corridor pushing an empty chair, a young man with headphones around his neck and a nametag that said MARCUS, and Desmond waved him over and helped Dolores move from the plastic chair to the wheelchair with the urn still clutched in her arms. He picked her purse up off the steel table and set it in her lap on top of the velvet bag, and she said thank you, and thank you, and thank you, and he said, "I'll see you on board, Mrs. Lindqvist. You're going to have a smooth ride. I promise. I'm going to fly it like I'm carrying eggs."