Bones Never Lie

CHAPTER 35

IT WAS OUR worst nightmare.

And Ryan’s big bang.

Jaw clamped, Slidell lifted a Ziploc from a cardboard box holding other Ziplocs and a small plastic tub.

Through the clear side of the bag, I could make out four things. A silver seashell ring. A key on a red cord. A yellow ribbon. A pink ballet slipper.

We all stared. Dejected. Appalled. Angry.

“Whose ribbon?” My voice sounded high and taut.

“It don’t matter. This nails the sonofabitch.”

Slidell laid down the bag and chose another. It contained vials filled with a dark liquid that looked like blood. A third held hypodermic needles. A fourth had cotton-tipped swabs, a fifth wadded-up tissues.

“What’s in the tub?” Larabee asked.

Slidell pried off the lid. A noxious odor slapped our nostrils.

“Bloody hell.” Slidell’s head jerked sideways.

“Let me see,” I said.

Slidell extended his arm. Have at it.

Larabee’s breath caught. I think mine did, too.

I saw pale hair floating in muddy brown soup. An unrecognizable mass below.

“It’s some kinda body part, right?”

No one had an answer to that.

“Another souvenir?”

Or to that.

“You believing this? All the time the bastard’s stonewalling us, he’s driving around with this freak show in his car.” To Larabee. “Take the body parts. I’ll send the rest to the lab.”

Larabee nodded.

Yanking off a glove with his teeth, Slidell stormed over to the CSS techs. I couldn’t hear his instructions but knew what they were. Bag and tag everything, impound the car, burn the house down looking for more.

As Larabee sealed the plastic tub into an evidence bag, the techs pulled rolls of yellow tape from their truck and began securing the scene. Slidell hurried to his car and threw himself in.

I watched him gun up the street, mobile mashed to one ear.

Larabee decided to examine the tub first. He didn’t really need me, still asked that I assist. Said if there was anything requiring an anthropology consult, I could proceed with that while he autopsied Ajax.

I agreed willingly. I was jittery and on edge. Knew the annex would feel cramped and claustrophobic, peopled with the ghosts of five dead girls. Maybe six.

Besides, I had no ride home.

We were at the MCME by eight. After changing into scrubs, I met Larabee in the stinky room. Hawkins was busy doing prelims on Ajax, so we’d decided to proceed unassisted.

As I readied the camera, Larabee set the tub on the counter. I asked the case number, prepared labels, and shot pics. When I set the Nikon aside, Larabee gloved and raised his mask. I did the same. He opened the tub. Same stench. Same hair and shit-brown slop.

I took more photos, then, using a fine mesh strainer, Larabee poured the liquid off into a beaker. Unfolded and spread a green towel in the sink.

When he tipped the strainer, a glob dropped onto the cloth, spongy and slick and covered with hair.

Larabee used a probe to uncurl and lay the glob flat. It was thin in cross section, oval, approximately one inch wide by two inches long.

Larabee tested the glob with a probe. Lifted its tangle of hair.

My mind flashed a series of images. I saw flesh the color of curdled milk. Darkness at the end of each pale strand.

I felt a pang of nausea. Swallowed. “It’s scalp.”

“Human?” Larabee bent closer. “Could be.”

“Not could be.” Forcing my voice even. “It is.”

Larabee’s gaze cut to me. Without a word, he got the handheld magnifier, positioned it, and bent close. “I see what you mean. The hair is bleached.”

“It’s from Anique Pomerleau.”

“You’re kidding.” Twisting to face me.

“I assisted at the Pomerleau autopsy.”

“In Burlington.”

I nodded. “Pomerleau had three scalp lesions we couldn’t explain.”

“Areas of necrosis?”

I shook my head. “The tissue was gone right down to the skull. Each lesion was oval and measured roughly one inch by two.”

Above our masks, our eyes held. Larabee’s showed bewilderment. Mine undoubtedly showed revulsion.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the killer took”—I struggled for the right word—“specimens from Pomerleau and placed them on his victims.”

“The hair in Leal and Estrada’s throats?”

I nodded.

“The vials. Christ, he also took blood? Maybe used the Q-tips as swabs to get DNA?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Larabee’s brows drew together. He started to speak.

At that moment Hawkins’s head popped through the door. “Ready,” he said quietly.

“Be right there,” Larabee said.

A long minute passed.

“Ajax was a doctor. He’d have the skill to draw blood. To incise tissue.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“If the liquid in those vials tests positive as human blood, serology should fire it through for DNA sequencing.”

“I’ll phone Slidell,” I said.

“Thanks.”

Stripping his mask and gloves, Larabee hurried from the room.

After shooting a final series of photos, I repackaged the slice of scalp and placed it in the cooler. Then I went to my office.

Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe distraction. Slidell showed no reaction to my news. Just asked that I phone when Larabee finished the autopsy. He was at Mercy, talking to Ajax’s co-workers.

At three-thirty Larabee came into my office. His scrubs were dark at the underarms and stained with blood. Spatter on one sleeve reminded me of the electric icicles framing my neighbor’s front door.

I set aside my report and assumed a listening pose. The boss liked to share detail.

Larabee found no fluid or adhesions in the pleural cavities, no congestion or hemorrhage in the lungs, no infarction in the heart, no ulcer in the stomach, no fibrosis in the liver, no thromboembolism, no varices in the arterial, venous, or lymphatic systems.

Except for minor arteriosclerosis, normal in a man of forty-eight years, Hamet Ajax was in good health. He hadn’t eaten all day. Had only coffee in his stomach.

Larabee had observed the telltale cherry-red blood and musculature, as well as marked hyperemia, or blood engorgement, in all tissues. He’d noted hyperemia, edema, and diffuse punctate hemorrhages throughout the cerebral hemispheres of the brain, widespread degeneration of the cortical and nuclear ganglion cells, and symmetric degeneration of the basal ganglia, particularly the nuclei.

“Asphyxia by acute carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Manner?” I asked.

“Tougher call.”

“Any hints at something other than suicide?”

“Not really. But I’ll wait for tox results before signing it out. I also want to know what they find in that house.

“And now.” His elbows winged out as he pushed to his feet, one palm on each knee. “I have a Christmas party to attend.”

“Holiday.”

“What?”

“Can’t forget Hanukkah.”

“And Kwanzaa.”

With that he was gone.

I passed none of the minutiae on to Slidell. Simply reported that Ajax’s death was confirmed as due to carbon monoxide poisoning. And that Larabee would know more when he received toxicology results.

I also called Ryan. As I laid it all out, I could picture him running a hand through his hair.

“So Slidell thinks the souvenirs nail the coffin on Leal, Gower, and Nance. And possession of Pomerleau’s DNA ties in Estrada,” he said.

“He wasn’t chatty, but I’m sure that’s his thinking.”

“Skinny should be decking the halls. Four solves and bye-bye, Tinker.”

“He sounded exhausted.”

“What about the others?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sucks that Slidell can’t question Ajax,” he observed.

“It does.”

“Stand down on my end?”

“I guess so.”

“I was out of road anyway.”

A long stretch of silence.

“Merry Christmas, Brennan.”

“Merry Christmas, Ryan.”

I hung up and sat a moment, hand still on the phone. I should have felt pleased. Relieved. Why didn’t I?

The others. Koseluk. Donovan. Would they remain open MP cases? Would active investigations continue? Was someone somewhere searching for the child whose skeleton lay on my shelf?

Annually, over eight hundred thousand people vanish in the United States. At least four years had passed since ME107-10 died. Three since Avery Koseluk went missing. I knew the sad answer.

But Ajax was wearing a tag on his toe. The madness was over.

My eyes drifted to a flyer tacked to my corkboard. Larabee’s comment reminded me. I also had invitations.

The UNCC anthropology department’s holiday gathering was scheduled that night. Often the venue was a zillion miles out in the country. This year it would take place at a faculty home in Plaza-Midwood. Not far from the annex.

Still, I wasn’t in the mood. Rarely am. Hot crowded rooms. Bad sweaters. Merrymakers rosy with eggnog and yuletide beer. It’s not the drinking. I’ve learned to live without alcohol. Small talk over canapés just isn’t my strong suit.

Nevertheless, I like my colleagues. Most of the grad students.

I bought a bottle of pinot, put on a red silk blouse, and headed out for some holly jolly.

I should have been ready to party. We finally had our killer. No motive. No explanation how Ajax hooked up with Pomerleau. Why or how he killed her. Why he continued to follow her playbook. Those answers would come later. What mattered was that he’d never strike again.

Still, troubling questions kept me distracted.

I thought of Ryan’s words. Had Ajax wanted to be caught? Then why the lawyer? Why the innocent act when finally reeled in?

That one was easy. Ajax was a sociopath. Sociopaths lie. And they do it well.

I recalled the interviews. Ajax had expressed no sympathy for the murdered girls. For a child he had treated.

Ajax killed himself. If he was planning suicide, why promise Cauthern he’d return to the hospital? Had the decision been spur-of-themoment? Triggered by what?

Ajax was ten miles away when Leal was abducted. How could he be in two places at once? Did he have an accomplice?

When I look back on that Christmas, on those cases, I always remember the moment we opened that trunk. The quavery fluorescents carving our features. The lights strobing blue and red in the cold dawn air. The overnight frost yielding to the warmth of sunlight.

I always wonder—had I voiced my concerns then, might things have gone differently?

I’ll never know. I said nothing.