Bones of the Lost: A Temperance Brennan Novel

“KILL THE LIGHTS, PLEASE.”

Slidell clumped to the wall, back to the table.

Larabee clicked on a small UV light and directed it toward the girl’s inner left thigh.

A scatter glowed blue-white on her skin.

Semen.

As Larabee slowly moved the beam, some stains fluoresced more intensely than others.

“Multiple donors?” I asked.

“We’ll need DNA to confirm,” Larabee said. “But that’s my impression.”

“We talking rape?” Slidell’s mouth was right at my ear.

“I found no vaginal tearing or abrasions. No sign of anal entry.”

“So we’re back to my first guess.” I heard Slidell straighten. “The kid was on the stroll.”

I bit back a response.

Larabee thumbed off his flash. “Get the switch?”

Slidell did.

“Think you can narrow the age estimate?” Larabee spoke to me as the fluorescents buzzed to life.

“Has Joe taken dentals?” I was referring to Joe Hawkins, most senior of the lab’s autopsy techs.

Larabee indicated a brown envelope lying on a countertop light box.

I crossed to it and poured the small black squares onto the box’s viewing plate. After pushing the on button, I arranged the films anatomically and studied the illuminated dentition.

“All four second molars are in occlusion, with the roots fully formed down to the tips. That puts her, minimally, above twelve. The third molars are unerupted and show little root development. I’m not an odontologist, but, dentally, I’d say she’s in the range of thirteen to seventeen.”

The men waited as I continued to study the X-rays.

“Left first molar’s got a mean abscess. Lots of caries, but not a single restoration.”

“No evidence she ever saw a dentist.” Larabee got my meaning.

“So I don’t bust my ass chasing dental records.” Slidell parked his hands on his hips. “An abscess. Wouldn’t that hurt like a sonofabitch?”

“People have different thresholds for pain,” Larabee said. “But yes, probably. What are you thinking?”

“Maybe she went to one of those free clinics. You know, looking for drugs or something.”

“Good idea, detective.”

Like a mail-order toy, the human skeleton comes with assembly required. Most bones are present at birth but lack the knobs, bumps, and borders that make them complete. Throughout infancy and adolescence, these fiddly bits, called epiphyses, appear and fuse to the shafts or main bony elements. The fusion takes place with age predictability.

I shifted my attention to the skeletal X-rays. More than a decade of working with me had made Joe Hawkins savvy to the exact views I needed. As usual, he’d nailed them.

I started with a plate showing the girl’s hand and arm bones. Slidell’s insistence she was a hooker had my nerves on edge. Knowing it would annoy him, I went all “jargony.” Petty, but I did.

“The distal radial epiphysis is in the process of fusion, the distal ulnar epiphysis has recently fused. The rest of the hand bones are complete.”

I moved to a film showing the shoulder and left arm.

“The acromial epiphyses are present on both scapulae, but remain unfused.”

I pointed to the broken humerus.

“The medial epicondyle and the distal composite and proximal epiphyses are in the process of fusing.”

On to the pelvis.

“The iliac crest is present but still separate.” I was referring to a sliver of bone that would eventually form the superior border of the hip bone.

The upper leg.

“The femoral head and trochanter are fused. The distal epiphysis is in the process of fusing.”

Lower leg.

“The proximal and distal epiphyses of the tibiae and fibulae are in the process of fusing.”

The foot.

“The proximal phalanges—”

“So what’s it all mean?” Slidell cut me off.

“She was fourteen to fifteen years old when she died.”

Far too young to catch a hint of what life had to offer. Fifteen years. She should have had eighty.

Rotten teeth. Needle tracks. Semen stains. Fifteen crappy years.

For a full minute the only sounds in the room were the fluorescents overhead and the air whistling in and out of Slidell’s nose.

“Might be I could work the clothing, track down where it was sold.” Slidell shoved his notepad into his jacket. “Boots might be a goer.”

My mind had moved from how to who. Who had left this kid facedown on the asphalt? A drunk too impaired to see her in the dark? Too callous to stop? Or a killer fully intending the result?

“Anything else?” Barely trusting my voice.

Larabee gave a tight shake of his head.

Nodding to Slidell, I returned to my office. Sat at my desk. Antsy. Uneasy.

Slidell was a good cop. But he had a habit of falling captive to defeatist mind-sets. Convinced the girl was undocumented, a prostitute, and a junkie, would he devote sufficient energy to finding her killer?

Yes, he would, I admitted to myself. Druggie hooker or not, the kid turned up dead on Skinny’s patch, and he would look upon it as a personal challenge.

Then why so anxious?

Katy? My abandoned vehicle and purse? The goddamn blisters?

Whatever.

I crossed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. Took a look in the mirror. Assessed the face looking back.

Intense green eyes. Weary, but determined. A few starbust wrinkles at the corners, well earned. Chin and lids holding firm. Dark blond hair yanked into a pony, not having a good one.

“Right, then. Peruvian dogs.”

The image in the glass mouthed the same words. Nodded the same nod.

I bunched and tossed my hand towel and headed out.

While the new MCME facility is immense, the same is not true of my office. Were a realtor to advertise it for rental, she’d use descriptors like “cozy” and “snug.” My desk takes up most of the space. File cabinets, coat tree. If Larabee steps in, it’s crowded. If the visitor is Slidell, forget about breathing.

I’m good with the square footage. It’s mine. No one encroaches. Mostly I use it for writing reports or examining files. Like the one lying on my blotter.

I sat down and opened the cover. On top was a form requesting an anthropology consult. I skimmed the contents.

Case number. Morgue number. Police incident number. Investigating officer, agency. Larabee was the requesting pathologist.

I skipped to the Summary of Known Facts. The brief, hand-scrawled paragraph contained nothing I hadn’t heard from Slidell. Suspicion of smuggled antiquities, objects confiscated at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Dominick Rockett.

I moved on to Description of Specimens. The items in question were identified as mummy bundles. Four in number. Peruvian in origin. Possibly Inca. Likely obtained from a cemetery.

My eyes dropped to the final section: Expertise Requested. The boxes beside “Exhumation,” “Biological Profile,” and “Trauma Analysis” had been left unchecked. Beside the category “Other” were six scribbled words: Analysis and written report. Human remains?

I set the form aside and thumbed through the stack of paper-clipped photos.

In the first three, the bundles lay side by side, wrappings intact. Though desiccated and discolored with age, each seemed in pretty good shape. Fair enough. The Peruvian desert would have provided a reasonably dry environment, a burial context kind to preservation.

The next several photos showed one of the bundles partially unwrapped. I could see what appeared to be a shriveled dog’s head, eyelids closed, fur still covering one flattened ear.

I dug back to my grad-school days, to a course on South American archaeology. And came up with little beyond the basics. Fifteenth century. The Andes Mountains. Machu Pichu. The Quechua language. Inti, the sun god.

I lined up the photos. Stared. A gaggle of brain cells coughed up an article I’d read maybe five years earlier. National Geographic? The Chiribaya, a pre-Inca population living in the Osmore River valley, some five hundred miles southeast of Lima. The Chiribaya had interred their dogs along with their dead.

I booted my laptop, opened Google, and entered a few key words. Peru. Canines. Mummies.

Yep. The Chiribaya buried their dogs between the graves of their dearly departed. Some with blankets and food for the long journey onward.

Now I understood my involvement in the case. I was to make sure there were no human bones caught up in those bundles.

According to the case board, the dogs were here. I could walk across the hall and unpack them.

I didn’t.

My thoughts kept drifting back to the hit-and-run victim, now under Larabee’s scalpel.

My gaze fell on the photo closest to me, on a slash of white visible below the rolled gum of the unwrapped dog. A tooth. Perfect after centuries.

Unlike the teeth of our young Jane Doe.

I reclipped the photos and closed the file.

Sat a moment.

Reopened the file.

Checked a name.

Picked up and dialed the phone.