Spider Bones

WEDNESDAY I WAS BACK AT THE CIL BY NINE.

Danny was in his office, hunched over his desk. He spun a wheelie with his chair when I entered.

“Aloha.” Beaming.

“You look like one of those obnoxious smiley-face logos.”

I’d slept badly, awakened with bongos thumping in my head. The drive into Honolulu hadn’t helped.

“I feel happy.” Danny spread both arms and feet.

“And pretty, and witty, and gay?” Shoving aside journals, I dropped onto a love seat many years past its shelf life.

“Are we having a grumpy-pants day?”

“Headache.”

“Did the ladies enjoy a hearty night out?”

“Katy downed the ten-gallon mai tai, not me.” Rubbing circles on my temples. “What brings such glee into your world?”

“I finally got the poop on the Huey crash.”

“The chopper transporting Spider Lowery from Long Binh?”

“The very one.”

“And?”

“According to the REFNO, the fifth body was never recovered.”

Danny used the shortened version of “reference number.” REFNO files contain information on all military misadventures, including the names of those who died, those who survived, the location, the timing, the aircraft type, the artifacts recovered—all known facts concerning an incident.

“The missing crew member?”

“The maintenance specialist.”

“Do you have a name?”

Danny’s grin stretched so wide I thought his head might split and the top fall off, as in one of those Monty Python animation sequences. Maybe I was projecting.

Impatient, I gestured for more.

“Luis Alvarez.”

It took a moment for the import to worm through my pain.

“The guy was Latino?”

“Presumably.”

I shot upright. “Let me see.”

Danny handed me a fax. “IDPF to follow shortly, I’m told.”

The information was meager but telling.

“Spec 2 Luis Alvarez, maintenance specialist. Date of birth February twenty-eighth, nineteen forty-eight,” I read.

“Alvarez was a month shy of twenty when the chopper went down.”

“Five-nine, a hundred sixty-five pounds. Home of record, Bakersfield, California.”

I looked up.

“Alvarez is listed KIA/BNR.” Killed in action, body not recovered.

Danny nodded. “Here’s my take. Lowery was just out of jail, so the mortuary staff at Tan Son Nhut assumed the victim wearing no uniform insignia was him. The profile fit, the location, it all made sense. But they blew it. The burned corpse was really Alvarez.”

“If Alvarez was still MIA, why do you suppose they ruled him out?”

“You and I agree that 2010-37’s racial architecture is a mixed bag. Given body condition, the guys at Tan Son Nhut probably missed what we saw. Or maybe someone with little knowledge of bone noted only the more Caucasoid craniofacial features. Either way, they concluded that the guy was white.”

“Thus Lowery.”

“I’ll bet the farm Alvarez’s records say Latino.”

I agreed.

“Dr. Brennan, I think we’ve done it.”

“Dr. Tandler, I think we have.”

“Oh, Cisco.” Danny raised a palm.

“Oh, Pancho.” I high-fived it.

We whooped. It hurt.

“Here’s what I don’t get.” Danny began swiveling his chair from side to side. “Alvarez ends up buried in North Carolina. Lowery ends up diddling himself in Quebec. How’s that roll?”

I had no explanation.

Seconds passed. Watching Danny loop back and forth started making me seasick.

I shifted my gaze to the desk. Remembered the gold whatsit locked in the drawer.

“Has Craig come up with any ideas on the duck-mushroom thing?”

“Not that he’s shared.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we await the Alvarez file.”

“And?”

“Reconstruct what’s left of the skull.”

That’s what we did. I did. Danny was busy with a case review meeting most of the morning.

As I maneuvered and glued fragments, a maelstrom of emotions swirled inside me. If we were right about the mix-up back in ’68, the Alvarez family would finally have closure. Plato would be forced to accept an altered reality.

So goes life. A positive for one, a negative for another.

Images elbowed for attention in my aching head. Plato leafing through photos in my car. Squinting in the sun at the Lumberton cemetery.

I wondered. I seemed to have his trust. Now, how to tell the old man that the grave at which he’d mourned all those years had never held his son?

I was squeezing Elmer’s on a hunk of frontal when a thought blindsided me.

My hands froze.

Spider Lowery was from Lumberton, North Carolina. Robeson County.

No way.

I pictured Plato.

The faces in his album.

The boy in the snapshot in Jean Laurier’s desk.

Way?

I returned to Danny’s office and checked Spider’s file.

Wherever a form queried race, a check marked the little box beside the word white. A handwritten note in the dental record described Lowery as “Cauc.” Caucasian.

Yet.

I looked at the clock. Twelve forty.

I went to the kitchen and downed a yogurt and a granola bar. Popped a Diet Coke. Considered.

Returned to gluing.

Again and again I circled back to one simple truth.

People misrepresent when filling out forms. Men record themselves as taller. Women record themselves as slimmer, younger.

People lie.

One thirty.

Not too late.

I punched a number into my BlackBerry. Area code 910.

Twelve rings, then the line went dead.

Clicking off, I entered a different set of digits. Though the lab was cool, sweat now beaded my brow.

“Sugarman’s Funeral Home,” a syrupy voice purred.

“Silas Sugarman, please. Temperance Brennan calling.”

“Hold, please.”

“Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Orpheus and Eurydice? Meant to be soothing, the music only agitated me further.

“Dr. Brennan. What a pleasure. You’ve returned from Hawaii?”

“I’m calling from Honolulu.”

“How may I help you?”

“I’m in need of personal information on Spider Lowery.”

“Perhaps you should talk to Spider’s daddy.”

“Plato isn’t answering his phone.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Apprehensive. “Within the bounds of ethical constraints, of course.”

“Of course. Are the Lowerys Native American?”

Sugarman didn’t reply for so long I thought he’d found my question offensive. Or an invasion of privacy.

“You mean Indian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hell’s bells, little lady, most folks in Robeson County have a papoose or two up the old family tree. My own great-grandma was Indian, God rest her soul.”

“The Lowerys, sir?”

“Course they’ve got blood. Plato’s half Lumbee, his wife too, come from up the road in Pembroke.”

Sugarman referred to the Lumbee, a Native American group taking its name from the Lumber River.

Descended mainly from Cheraw and related Siouan speakers, the Lumbee have occupied what is now Robeson County since the eighteenth century. They’re the largest tribe in North Carolina, the largest east of the Mississippi River, and the ninth largest in the nation.

And perhaps the most disadvantaged.

The Lumbee were granted formal recognition as a tribe by North Carolina in 1885. Three years later they started pressing claims with the federal government for similar recognition. To date, they’d met with limited success.

In 1956, Congress passed a bill acknowledging the Lumbee as Indian, but denying them full status as a tribe. As a result, they are ineligible for the financial support and Bureau of Indian Affairs program services provided to officially recognized groups.

All forty-seven thousand are pretty cheesed off.

“—don’t take my meaning wrong.”

“Of course not.” I couldn’t wait to get off the phone. “Thank you so much.”

Danny was still in his case review meeting.

Damn. I was seriously jazzed.

Back to gluing fragments.

By the time Danny broke free I practically manhandled him into his office.

When I’d explained my misgivings, he checked Spider’s file as I had done.

“Mongoloid features. Alvarez was undoubtedly Latino. Lowery had Native American blood. So probably we’re back to square one. Your boy could be Lowery or Alvarez.”

“Fingerprints say Lowery died in Quebec.”

“Maybe the screwup belongs to the FBI, not to Tan Son Nhut.”

“Maybe.”

I thought for a moment.

“What if 2010-37 is neither?”

“Neither?”

“Alvarez or Lowery.”

Danny’s brows shot up.

“Was anyone else BNR from the region where the Huey went down?”

“I could do a REFNO search using geographic coordinates. What do you think?”

“I think you dazzle,” I said.

“As do you.”

“Me?”

“Don’t forget.” Danny winked. “I’ve seen you naked.”

Heat flared across my face.

“How about I go back a month from the date 2010-37 was recovered?” Danny was once again all business.

“I should think that would do it, given the mortuary officer’s description of decomp.”

“Could take a while.”

“I’ll soldier on with the Elmer’s.”

Danny wasn’t kidding. It was 4:45 when he finally reappeared. One look told me that something was up.

“You got a hit?” I asked.

“No. But I found this.”

Danny waved a paper. I grabbed, but he held it beyond my reach.

“A decomposed body was recovered on August seventeenth, nineteen sixty-eight, less than a quarter mile from the site of the January Huey crash. The remains were processed through Tan Son Nhut. White male, midtwenties to midthirties. The deceased came stateside as case number 1968-979.”

“And?”

“There is no and.”

“Was he identified?”

“No.”

“Where are the bones?”

“Here.”

Danny strode toward Red Sweater, who was sitting at his desk. I watched as he requested the case. Red Sweater disappeared into the movable shelving.

Time passed. A lot.

Red Sweater reappeared carrying what looked like a very old box. The color was different and the cardboard corners looked scraped and worn.

Danny accepted the box, swiped his badge, and rejoined me. Together we moved to the designated table.

Questions winged in my brain.

Was Luis Alvarez Latino, as his name implied?

Was 2010-37 Luis Alvarez?

Was 1968-979 Luis Alvarez? If so, why weren’t Alvarez’s remains ID’ed back in August of ’68?

If 1968-979 turned out to be Alvarez, then who was 2010-37? And how did this man end up designated as Spider Lowery and shipped to Lumberton, North Carolina?

The Lowerys had Native American blood. Could 2010-37 be Spider after all?

Clearly the body shipped from Long Binh and the body in the pond in Hemmingford could not both be Spider Lowery.

Danny lifted the cover on the box holding 1968-979.

We both leaned in.

Seconds passed.

Our eyes met.

Reflected mutual shock.