The Bone Yard (Body Farm 6)

So now, as I unwrapped the skull that had caused such a furor at the Tallahassee airport, I handed it to Joanna with a powerful mixture of hope and pessimism. “It’s Caucasian,” I said, “somewhere around age twelve, plus or minus a year or two. Beyond that, I can’t give you much to go on. Might be male, might be female.”

She took the skull from me and cradled it in both hands, turning it this way and that to inspect it from multiple angles. “Where’d it come from?”

“Florida. Somewhere in the woods. A dog brought it home.”

“And the sex is a complete coin toss? You’re not leaning one way or the other?”

I shook my head. “I wish I were. Can you split the difference? Do an androgynous face?”

“Sure, why not? Kids are androgynous, till they’re not. Main difference is how they wear their hair. If I make it vague, a relative should be able to fill in the gender blank.” She looked at the skull again. “I’ve never done a reconstruction on a skull that was missing the mandible. Any suggestions?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, you could just take an educated guess and freehand it, based on what you know about anatomy. But it might be easier if you could borrow a mandible from somebody of the same race and age.” I searched my mental memory banks. “Seems like we have a couple of skeletons in the collection that might be in the right zone. Miranda can search the database by age; I’d try ages ten to thirteen, see what pops up, and use whichever one fits best. Just don’t forget where you got it, and be sure you put it back in the box, once we’ve taken plenty of photos and you’re ready to take the clay back off.”

“Okay. I’ll try to get started on it this afternoon. Assuming I can get this guy’s nose fixed this morning.”

“Great. Any idea when you might be done?”

“Pushy, pushy. Well, usually it takes me two weeks, but I don’t have two weeks this time.”

“Because I’m so pushy?”

“No, because I’m nine months pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed, and my due date is in six days.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “I knew that.” That was mostly true; I did know she was pregnant, of course — she was as big as a barge, and she waddled when she walked — but I’d lost track of how far along she was. “You look terrific. I hope the birth goes really well.”

“Ha. What you mean is, you hope the baby doesn’t come till after I’ve finished this reconstruction for you.”

I laughed. “That, too.”

As I was dashing up the flight of steps from the bone lab to the departmental office, I bumped into Miranda on her way back from the collection room. “So tell me more,” she said. “How was Florida?”

“Interesting. Frustrating. I’m actually going back.”

She blinked. “Going back? When?”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“Well, soon. As soon as I do a little research, and as soon as Joanna finishes the reconstruction.”

“How come?”

“Well, for one thing, I promised to do a report on the skull.”

She frowned and eyed me suspiciously. “So, let me see if I understand this right. You have to go back to Florida to write about a skull that’s here in the bone lab?”

It sounded absurd when she put it that way. “Well, they’re looking for the rest of the bones now, and I’d like to be there when they’re found. Besides, I told Angie St. Claire I’d help her look into her sister’s death. Burt DeVriess has an attorney friend in Georgia who’s helping us get an exhumation order, so I can look at the body. The local coroner says it was suicide, but Angie feels pretty sure the husband did it.”

“So Angie’s freelancing, and you’re freelancing with her?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Are you doing anything else with Angie?”

“How do you mean?”

“Are you falling in love with her?”

“In love? With Angie? Heavens no.” Miranda looked startled by the force with which I said it. “Not that there’s anything wrong with Angie. She’s great. I like Angie — she’s smart, she’s good at her job, and she’s fighting an uphill battle to find out if her sister was murdered. I’d like to help her, that’s all.” Miranda still looked skeptical — and I realized she had reason to doubt my candor. It hadn’t been long, after all, since I’d kept her totally in the dark about my role in an undercover FBI sting, one aimed at shutting down an unscrupulous tissue bank. Miranda had believed I was selling corpses from the Body Farm to the tissue bank, and by the time the truth came out, her faith in me had been shattered. Viewed in the light of that recent history, her current skepticism was understandable. “Okay, there is one other thing,” I said. Her eyes narrowed, and she drew back, on guard now. “The other thing is, it’s… too quiet around here at the moment. UT’s on break, my son and his family have gone to the beach, and unless somebody finds a dismembered body or a mass grave in the next hour or so, I’ll go stir-crazy. I’m going back to Florida because there’s something to do there. Something besides writing this damn sonar article I’ve been avoiding for months.”

Her expression softened, and she let out a big breath. “Okay, I can believe that. But what if all hell breaks loose up here while you’re down there?”

“If you need to work a death scene while I’m gone, call Hugh Berryman or Rick Snow.” Hugh and Rick were former students of mine who were now board-certified as forensic anthropologists. “I called them during my layover in Atlanta. They’ve offered to cover for me the next couple weeks.”

Miranda nodded. “Okay. But if you end up moving to Florida before I finish my PhD, I am going to be so pissed at you.”

I smiled. “Then you’d better start writing that dissertation. And I’d better get going on the experiment I need to do for Angie.” I started up the stairs, but Miranda grabbed me by the arm.

“What experiment?”

I was caught. “You’re not going to like it.”

“If you tell me I’m not going to like it, that means I’m going to hate it.” She’d put on her interrogator face, her inquisitor face. “What experiment?”

“Thing is,” I began, trying to ease into it, “Angie’s sister’s death was ruled a suicide. But suicide by shotgun is rare, especially among women. Angie and I sifted through everything the cleanup crew took out of the house, and in the dirt from the crawl space, I found the dens epistrophei and a piece of the axis. Which makes me think there’s something funny about the angle of the shotgun.”

Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, no. You wouldn’t. Dr. B, tell me you wouldn’t.”

“We’re trying to get an exhumation order to dig up the body. The stronger we can make the case, the more likely a judge is to let us do it.”

“You mean you plan to take one of our bodies and just blow the head off?”

“Not exactly.”