Bones Are Forever (29 page)

The plastic tub was snugged between mildewed and badly stained pink velvet cushions once marketed as an “eternal-rest adjustable bed.”

King shot more photos.

I transferred the tub to the second gurney.

Courtney watched with very large eyes. She’d yet to say word one to me.

I lifted the lower portion of the casket lid. King offered a flashlight. I checked the coffin’s interior, removing padding and fabric, probing creases and recesses with my fingers.

Found nothing.

I looked at King.

“Let’s pop her,” she said.

I pried off the lid of the tub.

King wasn’t kidding. The fire had left little of Daryl Beck. More likely, those who’d processed the scene hadn’t possessed the skill to recognize or the patience to recover badly burned bone.

The tub held only the thicker, more robust parts of the skeleton. Or those portions protected by large muscle masses. I saw no vertebrae or ribs. No scapula, clavicle, or sternum. Nothing from the face, hands, or feet.

Every element had suffered extensive heat damage. The skull had exploded, then the individual fragments had burned. Only two small bits of mandible remained, each from the area near the angle of the jaw. The ends were missing from the six long bones that had survived. The pelvis consisted of two charred masses, once the hip sockets, and a hunk of sacrum.

I began arranging the bones in anatomical order. Cranium. Right arm. Left arm. Right leg. Left leg. Straightforward. Until I came to the pelvis.

Then I stopped.

Stunned.

Grabbing the lens from the counter, I reexamined each carbonized ilia under magnification.

No way
.

I held them side by side. Reoriented them. Did it again. Again.

No freakin’ way!

“What?” King picked up on my agitation.

I’d left the jaw fragments for last. Ignoring her question, I studied first one, then the other. The gonial angle. The foramen. The mylohyoid groove. The truncated bits of ascending ramus and dental arcade.

No freakinsonofabitching way
!

But there was no question.

Palms sweaty inside my latex gloves, I set one pelvic fragment and one jaw fragment off to the side, then added their counterparts to my reconstruction.

“What does that mean?” King asked.

I pointed to the isolated fragments. “These are portions of jaw and pelvis. Both come from the right side of the body.” I pointed to the corresponding fragments in the partial skeleton I’d created. “These fragments are from identical locations. They also come from the right side of the body.”

“Meaning?” Her expression said she already knew the answer.

“There are two people here.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“How was Daryl identified?”

“Mostly context. It was his house. His bike was there. A neighbor heard him pull in that night, never heard him leave. Said he would have heard, since the bike was noisy as hell.”

“That was it? No dental records?”

“Daryl wasn’t big on oral hygiene. Couldn’t have afforded a dentist if he’d wanted one.”

The lights hummed. The clock ticked.

“So which one is Daryl?” King was staring at the gurney.

“Both are male,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“There’s enough detail.” I lifted the two hunks of ilia. “Both sciatic notches are deep and narrow.” I pointed to a slice of crescent that had survived on each fragment. “These rough areas are the points where these ilia articulated with their respective sacra. Neither surface is elevated; both are flush with the surrounding bone. And neither has a groove along its edge.”

“Male traits.”

“Yes.”

I noticed that Courtney had edged closer. “Would you like to see?” I asked her. She nodded. I showed her the features I’d described.

“There’s a little of the acetabulum left on each fragment. The hip socket. Eyeballing the partial diameters, I can say that one man was larger than the other.”

I got the calipers from the counter. The others watched as I took measurements to confirm my suspicion.

“Can you say anything about age?” King asked.

“A little.” I held a fragment in each hand. “Notice that the larger man’s articular surface is billowy and that the bone looks granular. That of the smaller man appears smoother and denser.” Oversimplified but close enough.

I looked up. King and Courtney were clearly baffled.

I set the fragments on the table, got the flashlight, and killed the overheads. “Watch this.”

I directed the beam horizontally across each surface. The subtle indentations appeared as transverse shadows on that of the larger man.

Courtney spotted the difference first. “The bigger guy has furrows. The smaller guy has none.”

Maybe King saw it, maybe not. “What does it mean?” she asked.

“The bigger man was younger, probably in his twenties. The smaller man was more likely in his forties. These are very rough estimates. This aging technique only allows for broad ranges, and only a portion of each surface is observable.”

“Daryl was twenty-four,” King said. “A six-footer.”

The hopping hand ticked off seconds.

“So who’s the other guy?” King spoke aloud, more to herself than to us.

I raised both palms in a “who knows” gesture.

“Can you determine race?” King asked.

“Very unlikely. When exposed to extreme heat, fluids in the brain expand, causing the skull to explode. Then the fragments burn. That’s what happened here.”

“Did anyone go missing at the time of the fire?”

Good question, Nurse Courtney
.

“You two good here if I leave to check on that?” King asked.

Courtney and I nodded.

“It’s all so black and gray and crumbly.” Courtney was staring at the partial skeleton. “How can you be sure the bones are sorted right?”

Nurse Courtney nails another one. Because of a preconceived mind-set, I’d made the amateur mistake of assuming the remains represented a single individual.

I turned on the lights and studied one jaw fragment under magnification. It was toast. I studied the other.

And felt a little flip in my gut.

“Hot diggety.”

“Zippy whiz bang?”

I looked up. We both smiled.

“This fragment retains about two centimeters of the posterior end of the dental arcade, including two molar sockets. I may see root fragments down in them.”

“Shazam!”

“Nurse Courtney, you’re on for X-ray.”

She did everything but snap a salute.

I got the tray, transferred the jaw fragments, and instructed her on the angles I needed. “While you do that, I’ll reexamine every bone. Then you can shoot films of both individuals.”

The skull fragments were mostly parietal and occipital. All edges and surfaces were fried. Not a single ectocranial or endocranial detail remained. Only DNA would sort them out. I doubted any had survived the fire.

Based on size, I was able to separate what remained of the midshaft portions of the long bones. A femur, tibia, and ulna stayed
with Daryl. A femur and tibia transferred to the smaller man. A humerus went with the unassigned cranial fragments.

I was recording observations in my notebook when Courtney returned, pushing a portable light box. The jaw fragments sat atop small brown envelopes on the lower shelf.

“I think you were right.” Electric with excitement. “And I think the older guy had dental work.”

I slid the films free, clamped the first onto the box, and thumbed the switch. The fragments lit up in shades of gray. The one on the right showed nothing but amorphous trabecular bone. Courtney pointed to it. “That’s Daryl. The younger guy.”

The older man’s fragment had more of the dental arch, including the sockets I’d spotted. They appeared as dark indentations in the spongy gray. Deep in each was a tiny white cone, a root fragment. Running vertically up the center of each cone was a brilliant white filament.

“Those are root canals, right? That could get him identified?”

She was correct. On both points.

That wasn’t what stopped the breath in my throat.

T
HE FRAGMENT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS EXPERIENCING A BLIZ
zard. A cloud of white dots stippled the lower mandibular border. Outliers spread across the angle and up the ascending ramus.

“What is it?” Courtney asked.

“I want you to x-ray every bone.” I kept my voice calm. “First Beck.” I pointed to the partial skeleton. “Then the other man.” I pointed to the pile containing the chunk of ilia, the femur, and the tibia. “Then those.” I pointed to the cranial fragments and the unassigned humerus. “Do them separately. Do not mix them up. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Start with Beck.” I removed Beck’s jaw fragment and placed his other bones on the tray.

When Courtney had gone, I phoned King. She picked up right away.

“The older vic was shot,” I said.

“No way.”

“There was lead snowstorm on the X-ray of his jaw.”

Silence.

“Very fine particles dispersed as a result of a high-velocity rifle round passing through the body,” I explained.

“Like a hunting rifle?”

“That’s my thinking,” I said.

“Got a few thousand of those babies around here. What about Beck?”

“We’re doing a full-body series. I’m also checking the bones I shifted to the older vic. You finding anything?”

“I pulled Beck’s death certificate. DOD is March fourth, 2008. I checked MP reports for that entire year, moving forward from that date. No one fits your profile.”

“The older guy had root canals on a couple of his lower molars, probably the second and third. We should run the film past a forensic odontologist, get it right before coding the dentals into CPIC.”

“You got one on your speed dial?”

“I do. But he’s in Montreal, and it’s the middle of the night there.” And flexibility was not one of Marc Bergeron’s attributes. I didn’t say it.

“Beck’s been dead a while,” King said. “He can wait a while longer.”

Using my iPhone, I took photos of the older man’s dental work, then e-mailed them to Bergeron. He’d have them when I called in the morning.

I looked at my watch. Twelve-ten. It
was
morning.

Figuring Ollie was tied up with Scar’s murder investigation, I called Ryan. He and Rainwater were at a bar on Highway 4, following another lead on Unka. I could hear music in the background, the noise of a lot of people in a small space.

“Rainwater thinks we’re being played.” Ryan sounded as tired as I felt. “He’s ordered a sweep, plans to sweat whoever gets caught in the net.”

I told Ryan about the commingled remains and the lead scatter.

“Both were capped?”

“I’ll know soon. The older vic had a couple of root canals.”

“You plan to call Bergeron?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve sent him pics.”

“Good thinking.”

“Keep me in the loop,” I said.

“Ditto.”

Courtney returned as I was disconnecting. While she x-rayed the rest of the older man, I viewed Beck’s postcranial films.

His femur and pelvic fragment were blizzard all the way. That answered one question. But generated more.

Had Beck and the older man both been murdered? If so, why?

Had one shot the other, then turned the gun on himself? If so, why? And which way around?

Had Beck and his companion fought following a night of drugs, alcohol, or both? Was Snook wrong about her half brother’s new commitment to sobriety?

The murder-suicide scenario wasn’t persuasive. Face-to-face shootings rarely involve a rifle. I made a note to ask if remnants of a weapon had been found at the scene.

Had Beck or the older man torched the house? Had someone else? Was the fire accidental?

Who
was
the older guy? Why had no one reported him missing? Was he not local?

I flipped to a blank page in my notebook and began a time line.

Farley McLeod died in 2007, Daryl Beck in 2008, Annaliese Ruben and Ronnie Scarborough yesterday. All were connected by kinship. Were their deaths connected? How?

Castain was also murdered yesterday. He wasn’t a relative. Where did he fit in?

Castain and Scarborough were taken out in drive-bys. Ruben was shot by a man on foot, almost certainly with a rifle. Beck and his buddy were killed with a hunting rifle.

Had the same weapon been used in all five shootings? Had the drive-bys been by pistol?

McLeod went down in a Cessna. His body was never recovered. Ruben’s body was also missing. Was this coincidental? Significant?

I felt agitated. Too many questions and too few answers. So complicated.

Too
complicated.

And such a high body count. Even excluding the babies.

Courtney returned with the cranial fragments and X-rays.

Snowing on some, not on others. I saw no feature to allow assignment as Beck or non-Beck.

Courtney looked at me, eager for the inside poop.

“Thank you so much for your help.” I smiled an ultra-sincere smile. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Do you have something I can use to keep the bones separated?”