Robin Burcell: The Bone Chamber

After a quick scan of the headlines, she perused the flights home, trying to decide between a late morning and an early afternoon flight. She needed to decide how much time she was willing to spend with Scotty, and wondered if she should settle for a red-eye flying out tonight.

What she should have done was accept the free flight home that Griffin offered, then she wouldn’t be sitting here trying to decide, while her stomach protested that she hadn’t had a bite since breakfast. She got up to find something to eat. Just as Carillo guessed, peanut butter and jelly was all Scotty seemed to have in the house. Some things never changed, she thought, staring out the window, absently pulling the crust from her sandwich. A light sprinkle misted the sidewalk and slush piles below, the few pedestrians rushing to their destinations in case it turned into a real rain.

She liked this neighborhood, and for a moment she contemplated the idea of finding an apartment somewhere nearby-once she finally got around to actually looking. She’d lived here a short time with Scotty before they’d broken up, and she missed the area, the older tree-lined street, the Heavenly Java coffee shop on one corner and Raja’s Star of India restaurant on the other. In the summertime, you couldn’t see the sidewalk through the trees, but in the winter, with nary a leaf in sight, there was a clear view up and down the street. Peaceful, she thought, biting into her sandwich as a telephone utility truck pulled up, double-parked in front of the building.

Maybe she could convince Scotty to move, let her have this place. In her selfish dreams, she thought, watching as two workmen got out, placed safety cones on either side of the work truck, then started unloading what looked like phone repair equipment from the back. Losing interest in the view, she returned to the computer, deciding she’d go late morning, sort of a compromise. Just enough time for breakfast and little else.

Absorbed in her search, she heard Scotty’s telephone ring on the desk beside her. “Hello,” she said, noting the number from the caller ID read “Restricted.”

“It’s Zach Griffin.”

“What a surprise.”

“Just wondering how you’re doing.”

She eyed the flight times on the computer screen, looking for late morning. “Well, aren’t you the concerned federal agent. I’m doing great. So why are you really calling?”

“Just wanted to remind you, this case is not for public consumption.”

“And here I was thinking of holding a press conference. Thanks for the reminder.”

She heard his laughter as she disconnected, and she was bothered by something she couldn’t quite place. She stared at the telephone. Scotty’s number was unlisted. She hadn’t given it to Griffin, and he wasn’t FBI, so how’d he get it? He would’ve called her cell phone, should’ve called it. She got up, walked to the window, saw the men in the phone truck packing up. It was either the fastest phone repair in history, or the CIA, or OGA, or whoever the hell they were, had just installed listening devices in Scotty’s building, and Griffin had just called to see if they were working.

Sydney watched until the phone truck disappeared from view, trying to stay calm. To hell with calm. She used her cell phone to call the police department, the traffic investigations unit, asked the particulars on Tasha’s case, discovered there were no leads, nor was there anything that made them think it was anything but a “run-of-the-mill hit-and-run.” If it had been “run-of-the-mill,” why had Griffin not said something about working from the notes because the forensic anthropologist had been killed in a car accident, and the report hadn’t been finished?

Because she and Tasha had been friends? There had to be more to it than that.

She paced the room, told herself that she needed to think logically about this. But there was no logic. Griffin, ergo the government, had gone to great pains to keep Sydney in the dark, allegedly to protect her, even though she was a federal agent, armed and trained, better equipped to handle the dangers of whatever cluster they’d thrust her in the midst of. But what about Tasha Gilbert, a woman whose passion was old bones? What protection had they offered her by keeping her in the dark? If this case was so damned dangerous they couldn’t even let Sydney know what was going on, what business did they have letting an anthropologist walk around unprotected so that she could be hit by a car?

Anger anew over her friend’s death spurred her back to the computer. She had recommended Tasha for this case. Tasha knew her, trusted her. The least Sydney could do was repay that trust and make sure that Tasha’s killers were brought to justice.

Having lost her appetite, she tossed what was left of her sandwich in the trash. The best way to solve Tasha’s murder was to find out who their Jane Doe was. Between the sudden call out, the government involvement and secrecy, the surveillance, and now Tasha’s death, there was no doubt in Sydney’s mind that the murder of this Jane Doe was connected.

She tried looking for the girl’s identity on the Internet, but came up with too many hits of missing young women. A better lead might be trying to figure out the location of that crime scene photo she used in her drawing, where the victim had been found. She tried to remember the details. The girl’s clothing had been unremarkable. No help there. Too bad there hadn’t been more of the building and streetlamp to make an accurate guess of where the crime scene was located, but she doubted that Griffin was about to pull out a full crime scene shot for her benefit.

Everything about the locale had appeared old. Not just old, but historic, right down to the cast-iron lamppost. Plenty of reproductions like that in this area alone, so she doubted that would clue her in. The building definitely had an old feel to it, with the large red blocks of stones, very similar to the brownstones commonly used in the Northeast. She returned to the computer, typed in “red stone buildings” and the first site that came up was titled “A Web Gallery of Stone Buildings and Their Building Stone.”

The site showed not only the photos of the structures, but also close-ups of the stones used. She scrolled down, paused about midway at the description of “red sandstone,” and felt fairly certain the paragraph described the stones in the building she’d seen. At the bottom of the page was a “Related Links” section. She clicked on “Building Stones of Maryland,” a logical guess since she’d been flown to the East Coast to do the drawing, which told her the victim was probably from this area. Or the crime scene was in this area. Tasha’s death had certainly been in this area, she thought, leaning back in her chair and focusing on the screen.

Seneca red sandstone was listed, and she read how that very sandstone had been used in 1847 to build the Smithsonian Institution building in Washington, D.C. She typed “Smithsonian buildings” into the search bar. The official Web site popped up, one announcing their latest displays: Campana collection on loan from the Louvre, and something about the Holy Crusade. Her crusade was a bit different. It wasn’t the collections she cared about. What she wanted to see was the grounds, and she clicked on “Images.” A view of the Smithsonian castle came up, and she searched that site and others for close-up photos. There was one of a grassy area with a black streetlamp, a very old-looking black streetlamp…

“Almost too easy,” she said, because hell if that didn’t look just like the crime scene.

She typed “murder Smithsonian” into the search bar. The only thing that came up was a book someone had written in 1990. Estimating her age, she typed in “murder Washington DC 24 year old woman,” and again ended with so many hits, she gave up. But the Smithsonian was as good a start as any, and she pulled open Scotty’s printer, removing several sheets of paper from the paper tray, then a pencil from his desk. If she was going to figure out what the hell was going on, why her friend was killed, she’d need a fairly good likeness of the Jane Doe she’d sketched in Quantico. And there were two things in her favor. One, she was a good artist. Two, she had an excellent memory of what she’d already drawn. Now all she had to do was complete another sketch of her Jane Doe.