The Skeleton's knee

14

I drove straight from Burlington to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, not bothering to check in at the office. What Nora Gold and Beverly Hillstrom had given me was the breakthrough I’d been hungering for-tangible evidence linking the skeleton, and therefore Abraham Fuller, to a concrete historical event. If I was lucky, the metal knee would not only lead to the surgeon who’d implanted it but to the identity of the skeleton, and possibly that of last night’s sniper, whose desperate attempt to destroy the knee had given my hopes a boost.

I found Michael Brook where his nurse said I would, in the hospital cafeteria-a small, pleasant, sunlit room with one window looking out on the parking lot and another overseeing the front lobby. It was one of the town’s best-kept secrets: a low-priced, high-quality, friendly place to eat that was rarely crowded.

Mike was sitting by the outside window, his artificial leg stuck straight under the chair opposite him, finishing up a chicken-salad sandwich. It was well beyond the lunch hour, and there were only two other people in the place, sitting together in a far corner.

“Joe,” he called out, “you’ve been grabbing headlines again.”

He pulled a rolled up newspaper from his lab coat pocket and slapped it on the table. CARS RIDDLED BY SNIPER ON I-91, the headline screamed. There were pictures of the burial scene, a shot of the hearse on the interstate, and one of Red, our tracker dog, sitting on his butt, looking bored.

Mike hoisted his leg out of the way and I sat across the small table from him. “You got a couple of minutes?”

“Sure. This is my afternoon off. I was about to get rid of some paperwork. This about Fuller again?”

I shook my head and tapped the picture of the burial scene. “This.”

His eyes widened. “The skeleton? Who was it?”

“I’ve just spent the morning with Hillstrom and a forensic anthropologist friend of hers, trying to find out. I got an amazing amount of information from them, but a couple of things came up I was hoping you could help me with.”

He finished off his Coke and sat back. “Shoot.”

“The skeleton was outfitted with an artificial knee.”

An interested grin appeared between the mustache and the beard. “So I read.”

“Well, the anthropologist figures the guy died within a few months of getting that knee…”

“Of an infection?”

“No, no. He was shot; as far as I know, the operation went fine. But Nora Gold, the anthropologist, thought the leachate from the bone cement looked a little odd, so she had it analyzed. Turns out it was heavily laced with antibiotics.”

Brook stared at me for a long moment without moving. “Why was the knee put in?” he finally asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

He turned his gaze toward the window and scratched his whiskered cheek absentmindedly. “Huh. Did Nora Gold-or Hillstrom, for that matter-notice if any other kind of surgical procedure had been done on the leg?”

“They didn’t mention it if they did. I looked at the thing and it seemed clean as a whistle, except for the fancy metalwork. Why?”

“Just kicking a few ideas around in my head. What about the general condition of the guy. Could they tell if he’d been healthy, or suffering from hemophilia or TB?”

“No; in fact, Gold’s guess was he was a jock-a runner, a ballet dancer. She even hypothesized he’d had a bit of an ego, which further helped to keep him trim.”

He chuckled at that. “So, the ego’s in the bones. I always wondered. Look, let’s assume she’s right-that he was a perfectly healthy, normal specimen. That means the knee was a result of trauma. Now, normally, a patient comes in with his knee shattered, we open it up, clean it out, and let it sit for a few days, watching and treating for infection, which is almost a given in those cases. Then, we might even fuse the joint temporarily while we scratch our heads about the next move. To make a long story short, the guy’s left dangling for quite a while before we finally decide to slip him a metal knee, assuming that’s what we opt for. Then, we cut a little here, drill a little there, dab on a bunch of cement, and put the whole thing together.”

“The point is, by the time that happens, the infection-fighting stage-as a result of the wound, that is-is over, so there’s no need for antibiotics in the cement.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a satisfied look.

“That may mean something to you, Mike, but it don’t mean squat to me.”

He laughed loudly, drawing stares from the other table and giggles from the counter servers. “Right, right. I guess it wouldn’t. The point is, the only justification for a surgeon to apply a cement mixed with antibiotics is because he slapped the joint in right off the bat, with the wound still fresh. Very jazzy thing to do-also a bit foolish, for my money. Nowadays, with all those hungry lawyers running around, you’d have to have your head examined.”

“Those bones were twenty years old.”

He grew animated with interest. “The bonanza years. Between 1965 and 1975, there were about two hundred and fifty different knee designs out there. Everybody with a slide rule and a lathe was cranking them out. Then the FDA got twitchy and brought down the hammer. You wouldn’t have a picture of the thing, would you?”

I smiled at his enthusiasm, and my own good fortune. I opened the manila envelope Nora Gold had prepared for me and slid out the glossies of the knee assembly.

Brook studied them intently. “Can’t say I recognize it; probably built by one of the companies that went under. Big son of a gun-no wonder the metal detector sniffed it out.”

I was going to ask him how he knew about the detector, then remembered the newspaper. “They don’t make them that big anymore?”

“They do-I’m not crazy about the hinged style, but there’re plenty of ’em around, mostly made of a cobalt, chrome, molybdenum alloy.” He put the photos down. “They used to make airplane turbine blades out of that stuff in the late forties.”

I pulled the slip of paper Nora Gold had given me out of my pocket. “These numbers were on the knee. They mean anything to you?”

He glanced at them. “Not offhand; probably a catalogue number followed by a lot number. Companies put these on for their own benefit, using patients as guinea pigs, in a way. If the implant fails, they get it back, check those two numbers, and trace it back to its origin to find out why it crapped out. They’re always fooling with one aspect or another, changing alloy mixes or designs.”

“Can you tell who the manufacturer was?” I asked hopefully.

He stuck a lower lip out and I expected the worst. “Don’t see why not,” he said, surprising me. “See the first number, the one with the 03 after the hyphen? That’s probably the catalogue number. Generally, the first digit or two of the catalogue number identifies the product-in this case an artificial-knee assembly. Each company has a different product identifier so their device won’t be confused with another company’s. All we need to do is find the manufacturer’s catalogue in which this number stands for knee assemblies.”

I couldn’t keep the skepticism from my voice. “Won’t that mean locating the twenty-year-old catalogues of all two hundred and fifty manufacturers?”

He pushed himself up out of his chair, completely unruffled. “No problem. I’ve got ’em-all the way back to 1948.”

I stood also. “Every catalogue?”

He laughed at my expression. “Yup. Knees, hips, elbows, wrists, ankles-you name it. They’re just like any other catalogue you get in the mail. Don’t ask me why, but I never throw ’em away-kept every one I ever received.”

He led the way down the hall, detailing the mania that had driven him to save volume upon volume of useless literature, but I was only half listening. My mind was already leaping ahead to petitioning Brandt for travel papers for wherever this kneecap factory might be.

I should have curbed my enthusiasm. Michael Brook’s description of his collection paled by comparison to the real thing. He had an entire room dedicated to it, lined with bookcases and piled with cardboard boxes. There were medical journals, books, magazines, and ream upon ream of catalogs for everything under the medical sun.

I froze on the threshold, daunted by the number of days I thought I’d be spending here, and already convinced the search would be fruitless.

Brook, however, didn’t even pause. He went straight to a particular shelf and beckoned me to join him. “All right, this shelf holds catalogues from about twenty years ago, give or take five. You start from one end and I’ll start from the other. The trick is to check the contents for knee replacements, or anything having to do with knees, go to that part of the catalogue, and see if the first two digits of the first item match what you’ve got. If they don’t, then you know you’ve got the wrong company. If you get a match, then all we have to do is concentrate on that one company’s catalogues. Shouldn’t take over half an hour.”

To my relief, he was right-even pessimistic. Twenty minutes later, he slapped a single catalogue on the wooden table in the center of the room. “There you go-Articu-Tech, 1969, located in Boston. ’Course that’s good news/bad news.”

“Why?” I asked as I opened the catalogue and flipped to the right page.

“Because while Boston’s nearby, Articu-Tech’s out of business. Has been for years.”

I pulled Nora Gold’s photo back out of the manila envelope and laid it next to the glossy black-and-white illustration before me. They were one and the same. The sense of victory I felt completely obliterated any gloom I might have felt from Michael’s “bad news.” To me, seeing that knee assembly was like finding a long-lost murder weapon. I felt I was on a roll, as I had since I’d left Burlington, and indeed, as I’d been hoping I would be since we’d found the unmarked grave.

I flipped back to the front of the catalogue and looked at the masthead. There was an address, along with the names of three people: the CEO/president, the vice president in charge of sales, and the treasurer. I looked up at Brook, who was beaming like a proud parent. “All right, assuming I find one of these people, or someone else who could help me, and assuming they still have all their records, would the lot number show me who bought this particular knee?” I tapped the photo Gold had taken.

Michael shrugged. “Maybe, but probably not. It might tell you who sold it, though. Articu-Tech was pretty big in its day and had its own sales force. The lot-number files should indicate which direction the knee went. Then you’d probably have to canvass the hospitals or surgeon’s offices that particular salesman covered to find your specific knee. It shouldn’t be all that bad, though. Remember, with all those assemblies flooding the market, no one of them was a runaway best-seller. Individual lot numbers usually covered only a few units.”

I closed the catalogue and straightened my back. “You’ve been a scholar and a gentleman, Michael. Can I borrow this?”

“Sure-you kidding? You’ve just justified my keeping the whole mess.”

I went home first, instead of back to the office. Although it was only mid-afternoon and I needed to know if the dozen or so feelers we had out had snagged anything, I needed a little peace and quiet and the chance to see if I could make any headway on the Articu-Tech lead.

I sat down in a lumpy, ancient, but very comfortable leather armchair nestled in the embrace of one of the apartment’s three bay windows. Besides my bed, this is where I spent the majority of my time at home. The light was good, the curved enclosure allowed me to surround myself with a table, a bookcase, a reading lamp, and a phone, all within equal reach, and I could also look up when the whim required and cast an eye across most of my domain.

I’d lived in this apartment for more years than I could recall. It was old and not dressed up by any means, but with the odd grace note that told of an earlier splendor: panes of leaded glass here and there, dark wood wainscoting throughout, slightly uneven, trowel-applied plaster on the walls. From the outside, these subtleties had been flattened into submission by a long-gone remodeler with little money and no taste, who’d converted a once-majestic Victorian into a three-floor apartment building. Presumably, the gingerbread, the fancy ironwork, and the broad, shady porches that had once given the building its flair had been condemned as too much to keep up. Their removal had left a forlorn blandness behind.

But the innards-especially the top floor, where I lived, and which had been the least touched of all-had retained the soul of that earlier gentility. I’d done little to help the situation, admittedly. I had no interest in interior decorating. But over the years, the house and I had blended somewhat, so that my garage-sale furnishings probably fit in better than the antiques that had once lived here. Also, there were my books and the shelves that supported them, both of which helped bridge the cultural gap between the building’s highborn beginnings and my own humble tastes. Reflecting a lifetime of eclectic interests, the books rested everywhere, from proper bookcases that lined almost every wall, to tabletops and counters, windowsills and closets. Among them all was a battered portable television set that was turned on during my gloomiest moments, when other mental support systems had crashed; but the books were my best company, along with the classical music I would play gently in the background when I read.

I parked Michael Brook’s catalogue on my lap, open at the masthead, and placed the phone before me.

Simply dialing the number listed as the Articu-Tech headquarters proved too optimistic by far, as Michael had warned me it would be. The receptionist answering identified the company as a computer software company, stated she’d never heard of Articu-Tech, and maintained she’d been answering this number for the past ten years.

At first, Directory Assistance was no help, either. They didn’t list the company or the man identified in the catalogue as its CEO and president. They also had nothing for the vice president. The treasurer, however, was listed, or at least someone with the same name.

It was not a man’s voice, though, that answered the phone, but a woman’s, tired and blurry. The treasurer was known to her-in fact, he’d walked out on her eighteen years earlier, right after the company had gone belly-up. That had left her with a big house, a fancy car, and a lot of unpaid bills. She had no idea where he was, but it was far enough away that they’d never been able to slap a subpoena on him, and she didn’t give a damn any more, anyhow.

I commiserated with her, lending an ear to her tale of economic disintegration, before gently turning the conversation to the people he’d worked with. It was a long time ago, she stressed, but there had been one guy-Hank Broca-she still saw on the street every once in a blue moon. Maybe I could find him.

I did, again through the operator-or more precisely, I found his wife, who gave me his work number.

“Articu-Tech?” Broca repeated back to me. “Wow. I haven’t heard that name in a while. I worked for ’em, all right-more like a summer job, for the amount of time it lasted.”

“Oh?” I said, trying to sound as encouraging as possible.

But Hank Broca didn’t need much prompting. “Well, all right, maybe it was a year, but time flies when you’re playing fast and loose, the way they did. Not that I knew that when I joined up. But, you know, fresh out of graduate school, full of hopes-Christ, I had no idea what they were up to.”

“What was that, Mr. Broca?”

“Hank. I still don’t know everything. I just know it put us all out of work. You gotta remember, of course, it was the go-go sixties. Companies like Articu-Tech were a dime a dozen; every engineer with a design for a hip, knee, wrist, or whatever hung out a shingle and made a grab for a million bucks. No surprise most of the companies went broke, and no surprise most of the designs didn’t hold up and that the feds came down hard.”

“Was the Articu-Tech knee any good?”

There was a stunned silence, and I immediately regretted my question. “Which one?”

I flipped to the right page and read the catalogue number to him.

“Oh. That one was okay. That was more an adaptation than a true design; the Germans had put one out like it years before.”

“What did you do for Articu-Tech?”

“I’m a mechanical engineer-was for them, too, a cheap one. I ain’t so cheap no more.” He laughed with great self-contentment.

“Did you work on this particular knee?”

For the first time, I sensed caution on his part. He had not, so far, even asked me why I was calling, nor had I had a real chance to tell him. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m a policeman up in Vermont. We’ve just dug up a twenty-year old skeleton with that particular knee implant, and I need to put a name to the skeleton.”

The caution vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “No shit. Really? That’s amazing. You know what I thought at first?”

“What’s that?”

“I thought you were a lawyer representing some poor slob with a sour implant. You know how people get: As soon as something like that goes wrong, they forget about the ten years of pain-free activity it gave them, and they try to sue you because they jumped off a ladder one too many times and screwed up the works. It ain’t like a real knee-we tell ’em that from the start. You got to take care of it.”

“Mr. Broca, I don’t want to tie you up too long, but I was wondering how I could find out who bought that particular knee.”

“Please-Hank. Boy, that’s a tall order.”

I waited for more, but nothing came. “Did you keep in touch with any of the people you worked with back then? Maybe someone in sales?”

He laughed again. “Hey, I know. Give me that lot number again. There was one guy-a lawyer. I always thought he was about the only straight shooter among them. He was real twitchy about lawsuits, although I never heard of one being filed against Articu-Tech. I’ll give him a buzz and see what I can find out. You got a phone number?”

“I’m calling from home at the moment. Maybe I better give you my office number.”

“No, no. Sit tight. This’ll only take a few minutes. We’re not great friends, but I know where to find this guy. I’ll call you right back.”

I gave him the number and waited. He was true to his word; ten minutes later, he called back.

“Told you-back in a flash. There were three pieces in that lot, and all of ’em were sold in Chicago.”

I was amazed. “The lawyer knew that?”

His laugh almost deafened my ear. “Hah. Pretty good, huh? I told you he was twitchy. He kept all the files-there weren’t that many, anyhow. See, he went with the firm that bought most of the bits and pieces of Articu-Tech after they folded. I don’t know if that meant they also bought the liability if something went wrong with an implant, but I figured this guy was the type to think that way, just to be on the safe side. I mean, we’re talking major compulsive here, right? I gave him the number and he pulled the file, like he had it right under his hand. Must be weird being married to a mind like that, huh?”

“He didn’t say where in Chicago, or who, did he?”

“Oh, no-I could’ve told you that. They didn’t give a damn about that part of it. The records only reflected what was interesting to them-the design evolution, the alloy mixes used, stuff like that. They didn’t track who bought ’em. I asked who the sales rep was, just for laughs-I mean, you never know, right? But he drew a blank. Chicago’s the best I can tell you, and all three of ’em sold, so it shouldn’t be too hard to locate who put the one in your skeleton. Hey, tell me something. What did your guy die of?”

It was obviously payoff time, which he had richly deserved. It made me sad not only to disappoint him but to mislead him, as well. “Can’t say. We think he died of a heart attack, hunting in the woods. We just have to get an ID on him. Pretty routine, I’m afraid. By the way, do you have an approximate date when the implants were delivered to the Chicago area?”

“Yeah, early ’69.”

“Would that mean that the knee was put in around the same time? Or can things like that sit on the shelf for a long time?”

“Beats me. You may have to go to Chicago to find that out.”