Monday Mourning

I had to agree with Pelletier. The owner of the motor home was a sixty-four-year-old white male. The body on the table was wearing the charred remains of a Wonder Bra and handcuffs.

OK. So the guy was kinky.

Nope. X-rays showed a diaphragm center stage in the pelvis.

It was late afternoon when we finally got it sorted.

The fire victim was female, white, and toothless, with healed fractures of the right radius and both nasal bones. She’d been walking the earth thirty-five to fifty years.

Where was Trailer Man? That problem now belonged to the cops.

At three-forty, I washed, changed, and returned topside, grabbing a Diet Coke and two powdered sugar doughnuts on the way to my office.

The phone was flashing like a sale light at Kmart. Bolting from the door, I grabbed the receiver.

Anne. Her flight would arrive at five twenty-five.

Arthur Holliday, the man who would perform the Carbon 14 test. His message asked that I contact him before sending the samples.

Racing to the secretarial office, I checked the mound of outgoing mail. FedEx had yet to collect my package. I dug it out, returned to my office, and dialed the lab in Florida, puzzled as to what the problem could be.

“Tempe, good, good. I called as soon as I got your e-mail. Have you sent off the bone samples?”

“They’re ready, but still here. Is there a problem?”

“No, no. Not at all. Terrific. Good. Listen, do your unknowns have teeth?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Good. Listen, we’ve got a little research project going down here, and we wondered if place of birth might be of interest in your case.”

“I hadn’t considered that angle, but yes, that information might be useful. Can you do that?”

“Is there a lot of groundwater in that basement?”

“No, it’s fairly dry.”

“I can’t promise anything, but we’re getting some pretty good results with our strontium isotope analyses. If you’ll allow us to store the results in our database, then get back to us when your unknowns are eventually identified, I’ll be glad to perform this experimental test on your samples gratis.”

“Gratis?”

“We need to expand our reference database.”

“What should I send?”

He told me and started to expound on the reasons for needing both bone and tooth specimens. The clock said three-fifty. I cut him off.

“Art, could you explain this when we discuss results? If I want these specimens to go out with today’s FedEx pickup, I have to get back to the skeletons and pull the teeth within the next thirty minutes.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. We’ll talk then. Tempe, this may go nowhere, but, well, you never know.”

Disconnecting, I descended to the morgue, cut another plug of bone from the femur of each set of remains, replaced the bone, removed the jaw, returned to my lab, photographed the jaw, removed the right second molar from each, repacked everything, and returned the parcel to the mound of uncollected mail, thankful that I’d already had dental X-rays made.

By four-thirty, I’d resettled in my office.

Crossing my ankles on the window ledge, I sipped diet soda, nibbled my first doughnut, and forced my thoughts to subjects other than the pizza basement girls.

Katy.

What about Katy? I had no idea what my daughter was doing at that moment. Or even her specific whereabouts. Call? I looked at my watch. She was probably out, studying at the library or in class. Right.

Presumably, Katy was diligently attending classes and planning her future beyond university. I was not being kept advised. Had my little girl slipped into an adulthood in which I would play only minor walk-ons?

That smiley-face thought cranked my mind back to the girls who were now skeletons.

Why no single shred of clothing? Had I missed something? Should I have used a finer mesh screen? Had the owner gathered more than buttons? What could explain three girls buried naked in a basement?

Diet Coke. Mental right turn.

Anne.

Why the unexpected visit? What was behind the funny sound in her voice?

With the second doughnut, my mind took another go at the skeletons.

If all three girls died at the same time, why adipocere only with the third set of remains? OK. The wrapping. But why just that one burial?

Nope. New topic.

A sweater I’d seen in Ogilvy’s window. A ratchety noise in my car’s engine. An odd brown spot on my right shoulder.

At the end of the second doughnut, my mind made another hard run at the skeletons.

The bodies had been less than six inches down. Why so close to the surface? Native burials typically lie much deeper. So do historic graves.

What if Art really could tell me where each of the girls had been born? Would that be helpful? Or would his analysis merely indicate that they were locals?

Maybe LaManche had a point. Maybe I was becoming obsessed. I was jumpy and defensive. I wasn’t sleeping well. The case had even entered my dreams.

My mind veered down another alley.

Could work dissatisfaction be at the root of my problem with Ryan? Were anxiety and frustration transferring to him and firing my own destruction in that arena?

Ryan.