White Fire

8

Lying on the bed of her room at the Cloud Nine Motel in Basalt, Colorado, Corrie made her decision. If those marks on the bones were what she thought they might be, her problems would be solved. There wouldn’t be any choice: the remains would have to be examined. Even Kermode couldn’t stop it. That would be her trump card.

But only if she could prove it.

And to do that, she needed access to the bones one more time. Five minutes, tops — just long enough to photograph them with the powerful macro lens on her camera.

But how?

Even before she asked herself the question, she knew the answer: she would have to break in.

All the arguments against such an action lined themselves up before her: that B&E was a felony; that it was ethically wrong; that if she got caught, her entire law enforcement career would be flushed down the toilet. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be all that difficult. During their visit two days before, the chief hadn’t turned off any alarm systems or other security devices; he’d simply unlocked a padlock on the door and they had walked in. The shed was isolated from the rest of the development, surrounded by a tall wooden fence and screened by trees. It was partly open to one of the ski slopes, but nobody would be skiing at night. The shed was marked on trail maps of the area, and they showed a service road leading to it from the equipment yard of the ski area itself, bypassing The Heights entirely.

As she weighed the pros and cons, she found herself asking the question: what would Pendergast do? He never let legal niceties stand in the way of truth and justice. Surely he would break in and get the information he needed. While it was too late to achieve justice for Emmett Bowdree, it was never too late for the truth.

The snow had stopped at midnight, leaving a brilliantly clear night sky with a three-quarter moon. It was extremely cold — according to the WeatherBug app on her iPad, it was five degrees. Outside, it felt a lot colder than that. The service road turned out to be snowmobile-only, covered with hard-packed snow but still walkable.

Leaving her car at the very base of the road, by a tall stand of trees and as inconspicuous as possible, Corrie labored uphill, her knapsack heavy with gear: the Canon with tripod and macro, a portable light and battery pack, loupes, flashlight, bolt cutter, ziplock bags, and her iPad loaded with textbooks and monographs on the subject of osteological trauma analysis. The thin mountain air left her gasping, the smoke of her condensing breath blossoming in the moonlight as she hiked, her feet squeaking in the layer of fluff atop the hard-packed snow. Below, the lights of the town spread out in a magical carpet; above, she could see the warehouse, illuminated by lights on poles and casting a yellow glow through the fir trees. It was two o’clock in the morning and all was quiet. The only activity was some headlights high on the mountain, where the grooming equipment was being operated.

Again and again, she had choreographed in her head the exact series of steps she’d need to take, rearranging and refining them to ensure that she would spend as little time in the shed as possible. Five minutes, ten at most — and she’d be gone.

Approaching the shed, she did a careful recon to assure herself that she was alone. Then she stepped up to the fence gate and peered over it. To the left was the side door that she and the chief had used, illuminated in a pool of light, the snow well beaten down before it. The door was securely padlocked. By habit, she carried a set of lock picks. In high school, she had practically memorized the underground manual known as the MIT Guide to Lockpicking, and she took great pride in her skills. The padlock was a ten-dollar, hardware-store variety — no problem there. But she would have to cross the lighted area in order to reach the door. And then she’d have to stand in the light while dealing with the lock. This was one of two elements of unavoidable danger in her plan.

She waited, listening, but all was quiet. The grooming machines were high up on the mountain and didn’t look like they’d be passing by anytime soon.

Taking a deep breath, she vaulted the fence and darted across the lighted area. She had her set of lock picks ready. The lock itself was freezing, and her fingers quickly grew stupid in the cold. Nevertheless it took only twenty seconds for the padlock to spring open. She pulled the door ajar, ducked inside, and gently closed it behind her.

Inside the shed it was very cold. Fumbling a small LED light out of her backpack, she flicked it on and quickly moved past the rows of snowmobiles and antique snowcats to the rear of the structure. The coffins, laid out in neat rows, gleamed dully in her light. It only took a moment to find Emmett Bowdree’s coffin. She removed the lid with care, trying to keep the noise to a minimum, then knelt, playing the light over the bones. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her hands were shaking. Once again, a voice inside her pointed out that this was one of the dumbest things she’d ever done, and once again another voice responded that it was the only thing she could do.

Get a grip, she whispered to herself. Focus.

Following her mental script, Corrie pulled off her gloves again, laid her backpack on the ground, and unzipped it. She quickly inserted a loupe to her eye, tugged the gloves back on, pulled out the broken femur she’d noticed before, and peered at it under the light. The bone showed several long, parallel scrapes in the cortical surface. She examined them carefully for any sign of healing, bone remodeling or periosteal uplifting, but there was none. The longitudinal marks were clean, fresh, and showed no sign of an osseous reaction. That meant the scraping had occurred perimortem: at the time of death.

No bear could have made a mark like this. It had been done with a crude tool, perhaps the blade of a dull knife, and — clearly — it had been done to strip the flesh from the bones.

But could she be sure? Her field experience was so limited. Removing her gloves again, she fumbled out her iPad and called up one of her school e-textbooks, Trauma Analysis. She looked through the illustrations of antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem injuries, including some with scrapes similar to these, and compared the illustrations with the bone in her hand. They confirmed her initial impression. She tried to warm her frozen fingers by breathing on them, but that didn’t work and so she pulled her gloves back on and beat her hands together as quietly as she could. That brought back a little sensation.

Now she had to photograph the damaged bone. Once again the gloves had to come off. She hauled out the portable light, battery pack, and small tripod from her backpack. Next came her digital camera, with the massive macro lens attachment that had cost her a fortune. She screwed the camera into the mount and set it up. Placing the bone on the floor, she arranged things as best she could in the dark, then flicked on the light.

This was the second danger point — the light would be visible from outside. But it was absolutely indispensable. She had arranged things so that it would be on for the shortest possible amount of time, without a red flag of turning it off and on — and so that right afterward she could pack up and leave.

God, it was bright, casting a glow over everything. She quickly positioned the camera and focused. She took a dozen photos as quickly as she could, moving the bone a little bit each time and adjusting the light for a raking effect. As she did this, she noticed, under the strong glare, something else on the bone: apparent tooth marks. She stopped just a moment to examine them with the loupe. They were indeed tooth marks, but not those of a grizzly: they were far too feeble, too close together, and with too flat a crown. She photographed them from several angles.

She hurriedly put the bone back in the coffin, and moved on to the next anomalous mark she’d noticed on her first visit — the broken skull. The cranium showed massive trauma, the skull and face literally crushed. The biggest and, it seemed, first blow had occurred to the right of the parietal bone, shattering the skull in a star pattern and separating it along the sutures. These, too, were clearly perimortem injuries, for the simple reason that survival was impossible after such a violent blow. The green-bone nature of the fractures indicated they had occurred when the bone was still fresh.

The anomaly here was a mark at the point of the blow. She examined the point of fracture. A bear could certainly shatter a skull with the strike of a paw, or crush it with its jaws and teeth. But this mark did not look like either teeth or claws. It was irregular, with multiple indents.

Under the loupe, her suspicions were confirmed. It had been made by a rough, heavy object — almost certainly a rock.

Working even more quickly now, she took a series of photographs of the skull fragments with her macro. This was proof enough. Or was it? She vacillated a moment, then on impulse took out a couple of ziplock bags and slipped the fragment of femur and one of the damaged skull fragments into them. That was proof.

Done. She snapped off the light. Now she had incontrovertible evidence that Emmett Bowdree had not been killed and eaten by a bear. Instead, he had been killed and eaten by a human. In fact, judging from the extensive nature of the injuries, there might have been two or three, maybe more, who participated in the killing. They had first disabled him with a blow to the head, crushed his skull, smashed his bones, and literally ripped him apart with their bare hands. Then they had stripped the meat from the bones with a crude knife or piece of metal. Finally, they had eaten him raw — attested by the tooth marks and the absence of bone scorching and other evidence of cooking.

Horrible. Unbelievable. She had discovered a hundred-and-fifty-year-old murder. Which begged the next question: Were the other ten miners killed in the same way, by humans?

She glanced at her watch: eleven minutes. She felt a sudden shiver of fear: time to get the hell out. Quickly she began packing up her stuff, preparing to exit the shed.

Suddenly she thought she heard a noise. She flicked off the LED and listened. Silence. Then she heard it again: the faintest crunching sound of snow outside the door.

Jesus, someone was coming. Paralyzed with fear, her heart pounding, she continued to listen. A definite crunch, crunch, crunch. And then — across the warehouse, in a window high up in the eaves — she saw a beam of light flash quickly across the glass. More silence. And then the muffled sound of talk and the hiss of a two-way radio.

There were people outside. With a radio.

Heights security? Cops?

She zipped up her backpack with infinite care. The coffin lid was still off. Should she slide it back on? She began to move it back into place, but it made such a loud scraping noise that she stopped. She had to get it back on, though, so in one hasty movement she shoved it back in place.

Outside she could hear more activity: crunching, whispers. There were several people outside and they were trying, not very successfully, to be quiet.

She slid the knapsack over her shoulder and moved away from the coffins. Was there an exit door in the rear? She couldn’t tell now — it was too dark — but she didn’t recall seeing one. What she needed to do was find a secure hiding place and wait this out.

Tiptoeing across the floor, she headed for the rear of the warehouse, where the giant pieces of an old ski lift had been stored — pylons, chairs, and wheels. Even as she moved across the floor she heard the door open, and she ran the last few yards. Now hushed voices could be heard in the shed. More radio noise.

Reaching the stacks of old equipment, she burrowed her way in, getting down on her hands and knees and crawling as far back as she could, twisting and turning among the giant pieces of metal.

A sudden snapping noise, and then the fluorescent tubes came popping and clinking on, bathing the warehouse in brilliant light. Corrie crawled faster, throwing herself behind a huge coil of steel cable and balling herself up, hugging her backpack to her chest, making herself as small as possible. She waited, hardly daring to breathe. Maybe they thought the padlock had been accidentally left open. Maybe they hadn’t noticed her car. Maybe they wouldn’t find her…

Footsteps crossed the cement floor. And then Corrie heard a burst of whispering. Now she could distinguish individual voices and catch snatches of phrases. With a thrill of absolute horror she heard her own name spoken — in the Texas drawl of Kermode: querulous, inciting.

She buried her head in her gloved hands, reeling from the nightmare. She could feel her heart almost bursting with anxiety and dismay. Why had she done this? Why?

She heard a voice speak, loud and clear: the harsh twang of Kermode. “Corrie Swanson?”

It echoed dreadfully in the cavernous room.

“Corrie Swanson, we know you’re in here. We know it. You’re in a world of trouble. If you come out and show yourself now, that would be the smart thing to do. If you force these policemen to have to find you, that won’t be smart. Do you understand?”

Corrie was choking with fear. More sounds: additional people were arriving. She couldn’t move.

“All right,” she heard the chief’s unhappy voice say. “You, Joe, start in the back. Fred, stay by the door. Sterling, you poke around those cats and snowmobiles.”

Still Corrie couldn’t move. The game was up. She should show herself. But some crazy, desperate hope kept her hidden.

Burying her head deeper into her gloves, like a child hiding under the covers, she waited. She heard the tap of footsteps, the scrape and clank of equipment being moved, the hiss and crackle of radios. A few minutes passed. And then, almost directly above her, she heard, loudly: “Here she is!” And then, aimed at her: “This is the police. Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight.”

She simply could not move.

“Stand up slowly, hands in sight. Now.”

She managed to raise her head and saw a cop standing just a few feet away, service revolver drawn and pointed. Two other cops were just arriving.

Corrie rose stiffly, her hands out. The cop came over, grasped her wrist, spun her around, pulled her arms behind her, and slapped on a pair of handcuffs.

“You have the right to remain silent,” she heard him say, as if from a great distance. “Anything you say may be used against you in court…”

Corrie couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

“…You have the right to consult with an attorney, and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you are indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to you. Do you understand?”

She couldn’t speak.

“Do you understand? Please speak or nod your answer.”

Corrie managed to nod.

The cop said loudly: “I make note of the fact the prisoner has acknowledged understanding her rights.”

Holding her by the arm, the cop led her out of the stacks of equipment and into the open. She blinked in the bright light. Another cop had unzipped her backpack and was looking through it. He soon extracted the two ziplock bags containing the bones.

Chief Morris watched him, looking exceedingly unhappy. Standing beside him and surrounded by several security officers of The Heights was Mrs. Kermode, dressed in a slim, zebra-striped winter outfit trimmed in fur — with a look on her face of malice triumphant.

“Well, well,” she said, breathing steam like a dragon. “The girl studying law enforcement is actually a criminal. I had you pegged the moment I saw you. I knew you’d try something like this — and here you are, predictable as clockwork. Trespassing, vandalism, larceny, resisting arrest.” She reached out and took a ziplock bag from the cop and waved it in Corrie’s face. “And grave robbing.”

“That’s enough,” the chief said to Kermode. “Please give that evidence back to the officer and let’s go.” He took Corrie gently by the arm. “And you, young lady — I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”