Bare Bones (2 page)

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The old man beaming over the photo, adamant that each child would go to col ege.

Did they?

No idea.

I slipped off my lab coat and hung it on the hook behind my door.

If the Banks kids had attended UNC–Charlotte while I was on the faculty, they’d shown little interest in anthropology. I’d met only one. Reggie, a son midrange in the offspring chronology, had taken my human evolution course.

The memory cel s offered a gangly kid in a basebal cap, brim low over razor-blade brows. Last row in the lecture hal . A intel ect, C+ effort.

How long ago? Fifteen years? Eighteen?

I’d worked with a lot of students back then. In those days my research focused on the ancient dead, and I’d taught several undergraduate classes.

Bioarchaeology. Osteology. Primate ecology.

One morning an anthro grad showed up at my lab. A homicide detective with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD, she’d brought bones recovered from a shal ow grave. Could her former prof determine if the remains were those of a missing child?

I could. They were.

That case was my first encounter with coroner work. Today the only seminar I teach is in forensic anthropology, and I commute betweenCharlotte andMontreal serving as forensic anthropologist to each jurisdiction.

The geography had been difficult when I’d taught ful -time, requiring complex choreography within the academic calendar. Now, save for the duration of that single seminar, I shift as needed. A few weeks north, a few weeks south, longer when casework or court testimony requires.

North CarolinaandQuebec ? Long story.

My academic col eagues cal what I do “applied.” Using my knowledge of bones, I tease details from cadavers and skeletons, or parts thereof, too compromised for autopsy. I give names to the skeletal, the decomposed, the mummified, the burned, and the mutilated, who might otherwise go to anonymous graves. For some, I determine the manner and time of their passing.

With Tamela’s baby there’d been but a cup of charred fragments. A newborn is chump change to a woodstove.

Mr. Banks, I’m so sorry to have to tel you, but—

My cel phone sounded.

“Yo, Doc. I’m parked out front.” SkinnySlidel . Of the twenty-four detectives in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD Felony Investigative Bureau/Homicide Unit, perhaps my least favorite.

“Be right there.”

I’d been inCharlotte several weeks when an informant’s tip led to the shocking discovery in the woodstove. The bones had come to me.Slidel and his partner had caught the case as a homicide. They’d tossed the scene, tracked down witnesses, taken statements. Everything led to Tamela Banks.

I shouldered my purse and laptop and headed out. In passing, I stuck my head into the autopsy room. Larabee looked up from his gunshot victim and waggled a gloved finger in warning.

My reply was an exaggerated eye rol .

The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner facility occupies one end of a featureless brick shoebox that entered life as aSearsGardenCenter . The other end of the shoebox houses satel ite offices of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Devoid of architectural charm save a slight rounding of the edges, the building is surrounded by enough asphalt to paveRhode Island .

As I exited the double glass doors, my nostrils drank in an olfactory cocktail of exhaust, smog, and hot pavement. Heat radiated from the building wal s, and from the brick steps connecting it to a smal tentacle of the parking lot.

Hot town. Summer in the city.

A black woman sat in the vacant lot acrossCol ege Street , back to a sycamore, elephant legs stretched ful length on the grass. The woman was fanning herself with a newspaper, animatedly arguing some point with a nonexistent adversary.

A man in a Hornets jersey was muscling a shopping cart up the sidewalk in the direction of the county services building. He stopped just past the woman, wiped his forehead with the crook of his arm, and checked his cargo of plastic bags.

Noticing my gaze, the cart man waved. I waved back.

Slidel ’s Ford Taurus idled at the bottom of the stairs, AC blasting, tinted windows ful up. Descending, I opened the back door, shoved aside file folders, a pair of golf shoes stuffed with audiotapes, two Burger King bags, and a squeeze tube of suntan lotion, and wedged my computer into the newly created space.

Erskine “Skinny”Slidel undoubtedly thought of himself as “old school,” though God alone knew what institution would claim him. With his knockoff Ray-Bans, Camel breath, and four-letter speech,Slidel was an unwittingly self-created caricature of aHol ywood cop. People told me he was good at his job. I found it hard to believe.

At the moment of my approach Dirty Harry was checking his lower incisors in the rearview mirror, lips curled back in a monkey-fear grimace.

Hearing the rear door open,Slidel jumped, and his hand shot to the mirror. As I slid into the passenger seat, he was fine-tuning the rearview with the diligence of an astronaut adjusting Hubble.

“Doc.”Slidel kept his faux Ray-Bans pointed at the mirror.

“Detective.” I nodded, placed my purse at my feet, and closed the door.

At last satisfied with the angle of reflection,Slidel abandoned the mirror, shifted into gear, crossed the lot, and shot across Col ege onto Phifer.

We rode in silence. Though the temperature in the car was thirty degrees lower than that outside, the air was thick with its own blend of odors. Old Whoppers and fries. Sweat. Bain de Soleil. The bamboo mat on whichSlidel parked his ample backside.

SkinnySlidel himself. The man smel ed and looked like an “after” shot for an antismoking poster. During the decade and a half I’d been consulting for theMecklenburgCountyME , I’d had the pleasure of working withSlidel on several occasions. Each had been a trip to Aggravation Row. This case promised to be another.

The Bankses’ home was in the Cherry neighborhood, just southeast of I-277,Charlotte ’s version of an inner beltway. Cherry, unlike many inner-cityquartiers,had not enjoyed the renaissance experienced in recent years by Dilworth and Elizabeth to the west and north. While those neighborhoods had integrated and yuppified, Cherry’s fortunes had headed south. But the community held true to its ethnic roots. It started out black and remained so today.

Within minutesSlidel passed an Autobel car wash, turned left offIndependence Boulevard onto a narrow street, then right onto another. Oaks and magnolias thirty, forty, a hundred years old threw shadows onto modest frame and brick houses. Laundry hung limp on clotheslines. Sprinklers ticked and whirred, or lay silent at the ends of garden hoses. Bicycles and Big Wheels dotted yards and walkways.

Slidel pul ed to the curb halfway up the block, and jabbed a thumb at a smal bungalow with dormer windows jutting from the roof. The siding was brown, the trim white.

“Beats the hel outta that rat’s nest where the kid got fried. Thought I’d catch scabies tossing that dump.”

“Scabies is caused by mites.” My voice was chil ier than the car interior.

“Exactly. You wouldn’t have believed that shithole.”

“You should have worn gloves.”

“You got that right. And a respirator. These people—”

“What people would that be, Detective?”

“Some folks live like pigs.”

“Gideon Banks is a hardworking, decent man who raised six children largely on his own.”

“Wife beat feet?”

“Melba Banks died of breast cancer ten years ago.” There. I did know something about my coworker.

“Bum luck.”

The radio crackled some message that was lost on me.

“Stil don’t excuse kids dropping their shorts with no regard for consequences. Get jammed up? No-o-o-o problem. Have an abortion.” Slidel kil ed the engine and turned the Ray-Bans on me.

“Or worse.”

“There may be some explanation for Tamela Banks’s actions.”

I didn’t real y believe that, had spent al morning taking the opposite position with Tim Larabee. ButSlidel was so irritating I found myself playing devil’s advocate.

“Right. And the chamber of commerce wil probably name her mother of the year.”

“Have you met Tamela?” I asked, forcing my voice level.

“No. Have you?”

No. I ignoredSlidel ’s question.

“Have you met any of the Banks family?”

“No, but I took statements from folks who were snorting lines in the next room while Tamela incinerated her kid.”Slidel pocketed the keys. “Excusez-moiif I haven’t dropped in for tea with the lady and her relations.”

“You’ve never had to deal with any of the Banks kids because they were raised with good, solid values. Gideon Banks is as straitlaced as—”

“The mutt Tamela’s screwing ain’t close to straight up.”

“The baby’s father?”

“Unless Miss Hot Pants was entertaining while Daddy was dealing.”

Easy!The man is a cockroach.

“Who is he?”

“His name is Darryl Tyree. Tamela was shacking up in Tyree’s little piece of heaven out onSouth Tryon .”

“Tyree sel s drugs?”

“And we’re not talking the Eckerd’s pharmacy.”Slidel hit the door handle and got out.

I bit back a response.One hour. It’s over.

A stab of guilt. Over for me, but what about Gideon Banks? What about Tamela and her dead baby?

I joinedSlidel on the sidewalk.

“Je-zus. It’s hot enough to burn a polar bear’s butt.”

“It’s August.”

“I should be at the beach.”

Yes, I thought. Under four tons of sand.

I fol owedSlidel up a narrow walk littered with fresh-mown grass to a smal cement stoop. He pressed a thumb to a rusted button beside the front door, dug a hanky from his back pocket, and wiped his face.

No response.

Slidel knocked on a wooden portion of the screen door.

Nothing.

Slidel knocked again. His forehead glistened and his hair was separating into wet clumps.

“Police, Mr. Banks.”

Slidel banged with the heel of his hand. The screen door rattled in its frame.

“Gideon Banks!”

Condensation dripped from a window AC to the left of the door. A lawn mower whined in the distance. Hip-hop drifted from somewhere up the block.

Slidel banged again. A dark crescent winked from his gray polyester armpit.

“Anyone home?”

The AC’s compressor kicked on. A dog barked.

Slidel yanked the screen.

Whrrrrp!

Pounded on the wooden door.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Released the screen. Barked his demand.

“Police! Anyone there?”

Across the street, a curtain flicked, dropped back into place.

Had I imagined it?

A drop of perspiration rol ed down my back to join the others soaking my bra and waistband.

At that moment my cel phone rang.

I answered.

That cal swept me into a vortex of events that ultimately led to my taking a life.

“TEMPEBRENNAN.”

“Pig pickin’!” My daughter gave a series of guttural snorts. “Barbecue!”

“Can’t talk now, Katy.”

I turned a shoulder toSlidel , pressing the cel phone tight to my ear to hear Katy over the static.

Slidel knocked again, this time with Gestapo force. “Mr. Banks!”

“I’l pick you up at noon tomorrow,” Katy said.

“I know nothing about cigars,” I said, speaking as softly as I could. Katy wanted me to accompany her to a picnic given by the owner of a cigar and pipe store. I had no idea why.

“You eat barbecue.”

Bam! Bam! Bam!The screen door danced in its frame.

“Yes, bu—”

“You like bluegrass.” Katy could be persistent.

At that moment the inner door opened and a woman scowled through the screen. Though he had an inch on her in height, the woman hadSlidel hands down in poundage.

“Is Gideon Banks at home?”Slidel barked.

“Who askin’?”

“Katy, I’ve got to go,” I whispered.

“Boyd’s looking forward to this. There’s something he wants to discuss with you.” Boyd is my estranged husband’s dog. Conversations with or about Boyd usual y lead to trouble.

Slidel held his badge to the screen.

“Pick you up at noon?” My daughter could be as unrelenting as Skinny Slidel .

“Al right,” I hissed, punching the “end” button.

The woman studied the badge, arms akimbo like a prison guard.

I pocketed the phone.

The woman’s eyes crawled from the badge to my companion, then to me.

“Daddy’s sleepin’.”

“I think it might be best to wake him,” I jumped in, hoping to defuseSlidel .

“This about Tamela?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Tamela’s sister.Geneva . LikeSwitzerland .” Her tone suggested she’d said that before.

Genevabackhanded the screen. This time the spring made a sound like piano keys.

Removing his shades,Slidel squeezed past her. I fol owed, into a smal , dim living room. An archway opened onto a hal directly opposite our entry point. I could see a kitchen to the right with a closed door beyond, two closed doors to the left, a bath straight ahead at the end.

Six kids. I could only imagine the competition for shower and sink time.

Our hostess let the screenwhrrrrpppto its frame, pushed the inner door shut, and turned to face us. Her skin was a deep, chocolate brown, the sclera of her eyes the pale yel ow of pine nuts. I guessed her age to be mid-twenties.

“Genevais a beautiful name,” I said for lack of a better opening. “Have you been toSwitzerland ?” Genevalooked at me a long time, face devoid of expression. Perspiration dotted the brow and temples from which her hair had been pul ed straight back. The lone window unit apparently cooled another room.

“I get Daddy.”

She tipped her head toward a worn couch on the right wal of the living room. Curtains framing the open window above hung limp with heat and humidity.

“Wanna sit.” It was more a statement than a question.

“Thank you,” I said.

Genevawaddled toward the archway, shorts bunching between her thighs. A smal , stiff ponytail stuck straight out from the back of her head.