Speaking in Bones

I stared at the bright yellow file on my blotter. Larabee would be anxious for word on the mummified corpse.

I was still staring when my iPhone beeped an incoming message. The flight reminder triggered an unexpected wave of uneasiness.

Decision.

Deep breath, then I dialed. As my call winged north, I pictured Ryan and chose words to structure my argument.

Andrew Ryan, lieutenant-détective, Service des enquêtes sur les crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec. Translation: Ryan works homicide for the Quebec Provincial Police. I am forensic anthropologist for the Bureau du coroner in La Belle Province. For years we have investigated murders together.

For a period, Ryan and I were also a couple. We both chose to end it. Then he chose to drop off the map. Recently, he’d chosen to return from exile and propose marriage. Months down the road, my mind was still too boggled to deal.

I pictured Ryan’s face. No longer young, but the crags and furrows in all the right places. The sandy hair and electric blue eyes. Eyes that would now show disappointment.

I grinned, despite my apprehension over the upcoming conversation. Ryan had that effect on me. I really did miss him.

Ryan answered, sounding cheerful as a balloon on a string. “Madame. I have reserved a prime table for two at Milos. And organized a full range of postprandial activities. Also for two.”

“Ryan—”

“ ‘Postprandial’ means after supper. Said activities will take place in the privacy of my home.”

“I hate to do this, but I have to cancel.”

Ryan said nothing.

“A case has come up. Two, actually. I’m sorry.”

“Well, there’s some things a man just can’t run away from.” In a bad John Wayne imitation.

“Stagecoach.” I guessed the film. It was a game we played. “Do you want to hear about the cases?”

“Perhaps later. When can you reschedule?”

“As soon as I’ve finished.”

A beat, then, “Tempe, deep down I fear that quote really nails it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Are you sure you’re bailing on this visit because of work obligations?”

“Of course it’s because of work.” Was it? My throat felt tight and my eyes burned. “Talk tonight?”

“Sure.”

The line went dead.

I sat a moment, feeling lonely and confused. Half decided to call Ryan back to say that I’d changed my mind. Instead I dialed US Airways.

As I spoke to the agent, my eyes fell on the yellow folder. On the chair Hazel Strike had occupied.

Again, I imagined the terrified girl on the recording.

I’d bumped Ryan. Recliner Man could also wait.

But before discussing Strike with the boss, I’d check the facts. I remembered little about the case. Only that I’d done the analysis as a special request since the MCME doesn’t normally investigate deaths occurring in Burke County. Couldn’t recall the reason I’d been tagged for this one.

Thanks to Strike, I knew the remains had turned up approximately eighteen months earlier. And that I’d entered them into the NamUs database.

Logging on to my computer, I used the key words “Burke County” and a limiter for dates. It took just moments. The decedent had been registered at our facility as ME229-13. I pulled my report and scanned the contents.

ME229-13 arrived on August 25, 2013. The remains had been found by a hunter. By his dog, Mort, to be fair. I remembered chuckling at the irony of the name. Inappropriate, but I had.

Mort had made his macabre discovery twenty miles north of Morganton, off NC Highway 181. The bones lay downslope from an overlook, scattered over fifty square meters and covered in leaves and debris. Apparently, old Mort possessed one hell of a nose.

The investigating officer was a Burke County sheriff’s deputy named Opal Ferris. It was coming back now. I recalled my surprise that Ferris had been canny enough to spot something suggesting the remains were human. That she’d bothered to walk the site to collect more. That she’d delivered Mort’s booty to the local ME.

I read the section of my report titled “Postmortem Condition.”

Little soft tissue had remained, the work of scavengers and nature’s inevitable march. The small amount present consisted of leathery bits of ligament, enough to keep two segments of spinal column articulated. The rest had survived as isolated elements. My skeletal inventory listed eighteen partial ribs, fifteen complete and three fragmentary vertebrae, two partial clavicles, fragments of right and left scapula blades, and one fragment of sternum.

In the section titled “Age at Death” I’d entered a range of seventeen to twenty-four years. My estimate was based on the youthful appearance of the three sternal rib extremities, the ends where the ribs attach via cartilage to the breastbone. And on recent fusion of the growth cap on the medial end of the right clavicle. The left clavicle had been too damaged for observation.

Using measurements taken from the hunks of intact spine, I’d calculated height as somewhere between sixty and seventy-two inches, a range so broad it was virtually useless.

Based on bone quality, and on the presence and amount of desiccated soft tissue, I’d estimated PMI, postmortem interval, at a minimum of three months to a maximum of two years.

I’d been unable to determine gender or ancestry.

That was it.

I left the MCME system, went to the Internet, and typed in www.NamUs.gov. After entering my credentials, I chose the Unidentified Persons Database, and provided the number assigned to the Burke County torso. The section marked “Case Information” included the date and location of the find, and the date of the file’s creation. No modifications had been made since the time of the latter. The individual’s status remained “unidentified.” I was listed as both the local contact and the case manager. Fair enough. That’s how Strike had found me.

I moved through the pages of the report.

I’d had nothing to enter with regard to weight, facial or body hair, eye or hair color. Nothing on amputations, deformities, scars, tattoos, or piercings. No evidence of medical implants or missing organs. Zilch on clothing, footwear, jewelry, eyewear, or documents. No DNA. No fingerprints. No dentals.

Small wonder the bones still lay on a shelf in my closet. ME229-13 consisted of a headless, limbless, skeletonized partial torso.

Shoving away from my desk, I walked down the corridor to a small room whose walls were lined floor to ceiling with metal shelving. Each shelf was filled with cardboard boxes. Each box was labeled with a case number in bold black marker.

ME229-13 was straight ahead on the door-facing wall, two shelves down from the top. I reached up, slid the box free, and carried it to the “stinky room,” a small autopsy suite with special ventilation to accommodate the more odoriferous dead. The decomps. The floaters. My kind of case.

Placing the box on the autopsy table, I pulled latex gloves and a plastic apron from an undercounter drawer, donned them, and lifted the lid. As expected, the contents of the box consisted of a handful of bones. Except for the ten thoracic vertebrae I’d boiled to clean away soft tissue, all were stained a deep mahogany brown.

One by one, I removed and arranged the bones in anatomical position. When I’d finished, a jigsaw-puzzle rib cage lay on the stainless steel. Gaps left by missing parts looked like pieces not yet plugged in.

Over the next hour, I examined every bone and bone fragment under an illuminated magnifier lens. I saw postmortem trauma—gnawed edges and conical punctures left by the teeth of scavenging animals. A few of the punctures had pale yellow spongy bone deep inside. The absence of staining told me this damage could be credited to Mort.

I saw no evidence of antemortem trauma. No healed or healing broken ribs. No joint remodeling resulting from the dislocation of a clavicle or vertebra.

I saw no evidence of perimortem trauma. No unhealed fractures due to blunt force attack or rapid deceleration impact injury. No bullet entrances or exits. No sharp-instrument nicks or gashes. Nothing to suggest violence at the time of death.

I saw no evidence of illness or abnormality. No porosity, thickening, irregularity, or lesion hinting at malnutrition, infectious disease, or metabolic disorder.

Discouraged, I straightened and rolled my shoulders. As before, I was clueless as to ME229-13’s gender, race, state of health, or manner of death.

The clock now said 2:37 P.M. Larabee was expecting a briefing on the man with the remote.

So what did I know that could shed light on Hazel Strike’s theory?

I looked back at the jigsaw-puzzle torso.

Bone size was average, consistent with that of a large female or a small male. Estimated age at death, seventeen to twenty-four, was consistent with Cora Teague’s age. Height, sixty to seventy-two inches, was consistent with half of North America.

Consistent with. The darling phrase of forensic experts. Not a match, not an exclusion. I made a note to ask about Cora Teague’s height.

Again, I considered. Was Strike a charlatan or a nutcase? Or had she stumbled onto something truly evil?

I saw nothing on the bones to suggest foul play. Except that they had lain miles from anywhere, downslope from a two-lane blacktop.

How had ME229-13 ended up in such a remote spot? Had the victim wandered from the highway? Fallen from the overlook? Jumped?

Or did the explanation involve far more sinister events? Had the body been tossed from the overlook? Dumped from a car in the middle of the night?

In my mind I heard the trembling little voice on the tape. Again felt the chill.

Using a small autopsy saw, I cut a plug from the mid-shaft of the less damaged clavicle, sealed it in a small plastic vial, and marked the lid with the MCME case number, date, and my initials. I wasn’t optimistic the bone would yield DNA, but at least we’d have a sample for testing.

Should Strike’s theory have legs. Should a member of the Teague family provide a comparison sample. Should Larabee agree to foot the bill for analysis.

Aspects of Strike’s story didn’t track. Deputy Ferris had walked the site, found other bones, yet she hadn’t spotted the key chain? And Hazel Strike had?

Above me, the fluorescents hummed softly. My neck and shoulders were knotted, and a headache was tuning up at the base of my skull.

Enough.

After returning ME229-13 to storage, I walked back to my office. Passing the other autopsy rooms, I heard not a single rattle or whine. The pathologists had finished cutting Y’s for the day.

I still keep hard copy on all my cases. Antediluvian, but there you have it. I went straight to my file cabinet and pulled the neon yellow folder with ME229-13 handwritten on the tab. It felt very slim.

I sat at my desk and opened the file. Clipped to the inside front cover was the small brown packet I sought.

Slowly, I worked through Opal Ferris’s “crime scene” pics. As in 2013, I was impressed with the deputy’s grasp of the need for documentation. And unimpressed with her photographic skills.

The first three-by-five captured the overlook, though most detail was fried because the camera had been pointed into the sun. Ditto for the next two. The third showed a flat area with a wooden handrail and a steep drop-off beyond. Forest in the distance. The next several shots panned across trees, mostly pine, and dense mountain laurel, presumably the area of Mort’s find.

The final series were close-ups of bones in situ: a cluster of ribs dappled by shadow, a segment of spinal column half buried in soil, an isolated vertebra protruding from the ground at the base of a pine.

Each image contained a small plastic evidence marker, but no scale or directional arrow. Some were sharp, others blurred due to inadequate lighting or instability of the camera. And it was obvious that Ferris had done a bit of cleaning and arranging before taking some shots.

The last picture featured the right clavicle full-frame, the squiggly fusion line in sharp focus. I stared at the telltale indicator of youth. When last seen, Cora Teague was eighteen years old. Did the bone belong to her? If not Teague, whose kid had ended up dead on that mountain?

Time to talk to Opal Ferris. Then I belonged to Recliner Man.

After checking the number in my file, I dialed. The phone was answered on the first ring.

“Burke County Sheriff’s Department. Is your situation an emergency?” The voice was female, the words robotic.

“No. I’d like—”

“Hold, please.”

I held.

“Okay, ma’am, may I have your name?”

“Dr. Temperance Brennan.”

“What is the reason for your call?”

“I’d like to speak to Deputy Opal Ferris.”

“Can you describe the nature of your business?”

“Human remains found off Highway 181.”

“Hold, please.”

I held. After a full minute, I switched to speaker and set down the handset.

“Okay. When were these remains found?”

“August of 2013.” More clipped than I intended. But my head hurt. And I was finding the grilling annoying as hell.

“Can you tell me anything else?”

“No.” Sharp.

A slight hesitation. Then, “Hold, please.”

I held. Longer than either of the previous times.

I was finger-drumming the blotter with one hand, rubbing circles on my right temple with the other, when something clicked on the other end of the line. Then the same voice came through the phone’s little square holes.

“Deputy Ferris is unavailable. Would you like to provide contact information?”

I gave her both the MCME main line and my mobile number. And pointed out that the former was a medical examiner facility. Brusquely.

The woman wished me a good day and was gone.

I jabbed the disconnect button. A pointless attempt at maintaining control.

The world beyond my door had grown quiet. The death investigators were either out bagging bodies or doing “paperwork” in their cubicles. The pathologists had retreated to their offices or departed for other tasks.

My eyes dropped to the file on my blotter. Shifted to my watch. 3:55 P.M.

I wanted to go home, share dinner with my cat, Birdie, spend time chatting with Ryan. Appeasing?

I pictured Larabee’s face. The slow, concerned-but-unconcerned look I’d get for snubbing the mummy.

“Fine.”

I scooped up the folder, intending to return to the stinky room. I was swiveling my chair when my iPhone rang. Thinking it might be Opal Ferris, I picked up.

It wasn’t.

The call kicked the headache into overdrive.