Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

Just get in the car, Amarie, please, he said walking up to the limousine that had pulled up to the curb.

Fairbrother watched the limousine pull away and, giving it plenty of space, began to follow. As he tailed the limo, he relayed Amarie’s complaints to Guma, who laughed, I guess she’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Yeah, but what a set of gabonzas, and still looking pretty good for a forty-something Rockette, the detective said. I’d say he didn’t marry her for her ability to balance a checkbook. Let me know when it’s time to pounce.

You’re a good man, Clarke, Guma said. Wish I could be there when you do. Make the cuffs extra tight for me, will ya?

You got it, Ray, Fairbrother answered and left with one of the younger plainclothes cops from the DAO’s investigations unit.

Clarkson then called Marshall over and explained that he had to be careful not to damage any potential evidence beneath the concrete. We just want to crack the concrete and lift it out piece by piece without disturbing anything underneath. Think you can do it?

Marshall reacted like an old platoon sergeant who’d been asked by his commanding officer if he was capable of taking a machine-gun emplacement. He walked over to where he’d leaned his jackhammer against the hot tub and shouldered it like a rifle before returning. I’ll go through this slab so gently it wouldn’t dent a baby’s bottom, he said.

Right along the chalk lines then, Norris, if you please, Swanburg said.

Marshall stood for a moment surveying the slab. He took a moment to flex the muscles in his arms and chest, then like a surgeon preparing for work, he pulled on his work gloves, taking the time to secure the leather over each finger. Dragging out the moment for as long as possible, aware that he had a rapt audience, he placed the business end of the jackhammer on one of the chalk lines. He glanced at Guma, who gave him a nod, and squeezed the trigger.

Cracking the six-inch thick slab took Norris Marshall the better part of two hours, during which he’d stopped on occasion to help the others lift the pieces out and pile them in a corner of the yard. When he was finished, there was a nearly perfect rectangle cut out of the patio.

Beneath the slab was an oblong depression in the soil. Common occurrence, Swanburg explained. When soil is removed, it never goes back in quite as compact. It’s a lot looser with air pockets and such. Over time, gravity and moisture will cause the soil to settle and compact, leaving a depression.

Nice work, Norris, Clarkson said. Not a dent in the dirt. You’re a true artist.

Thank you very much, Norris replied. He would have bowed but his belly prevented anything more than a slight inclination of his massive head forward. We aims ta please. Anything else?

Nope, Clarkson said. I think we can take it from here.

Maybe Jack can, but not you, said a tan, middle-aged woman being escorted through the house by a police officer. Leave an exhumation to a geologist and next thing you know, they’ll be in here with a stick of dynamite and a pickax.

Nothing wrong with a boy who likes things that go boom. It’s only natural. Clarkson pretended to pout, then broke into a smile. Why, it’s the ever-lovely Dr. Charlotte Gates. So glad you could make it, and with your usual impeccable timing.

Just got into LaGuardia about an hour and a half ago, Gates replied, and got over here as fast as I could. I kept seeing you trampling all over my “dig” with those gunboat boots of yours.

Guma stepped forward to shake the hand of the woman he’d heard a lot about but hadn’t yet met. Gates worked at the Human Identification Laboratory at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and hadn’t been at the grilling in Denver. However, he knew that she was one of the top forensic anthropologists in the world.

Gates was a small woman but had an energy about her that made her seem larger. She walked with confidence, like a woman who’d spent twenty-some-odd years trekking about in the deserts of the Southwest, working for law enforcement agencies, as well as her “hobby” of helping Indian tribes locate and preserve ancient sites. She wasn’t especially pretty, but the clarity of her opal green eyes against the mahogany of her face was striking.

She’d brought with her a bundle of white plastic pipes about an inch around and in various lengths. She looked at the hole in the cement, grunted it will do, and began to fit the pieces of pipe together to form a rectangle the same size as the hole, only broken into a half dozen squares. Each section was labeled and corresponded to similarly marked buckets she set on the patio.

Gates was assisted by Mackenzie Lorien, a young graduate student from the University of New Mexico who was studying forensic anthropology. When ready, the pair laid the pipe grid over the depression and then they got to work.

Working from either end, Gates and Lorien each chose a square and began carefully removing the soil and placing it in the appropriate bucket. As a bucket was filled, it was then carried by Clarkson over to a large, wood-framed screen set up on legs. The geologist would dump the bucket on the screen, then he and Swanburg would sift the contents looking for anything out of the ordinary-things that don’t belong in a bucket of dirt.

If they found anything of interest, Swanburg noted it in a log-book, including which grid it had come from and at what depth it had been located. In the meantime, whoever filled the last bucket moved to a different square so that gradually the depression became a hole in the ground and then began to look like a grave.

The anthropologists used garden trowels to dig and even then were careful not to just plunge the blade into the soil, but scraped up each layer gently. When the others saw how the process worked, they started helping out by carrying the buckets so that the two men could sift and the women dig. Even Marshall, who had begged to be allowed to stay, made himself useful by hauling away the debris that piled up under the screen.

They’d been digging for two hours when Gates, who was working again near the top of the depression announced, I just hit something solid. It felt like bone. Lorien stopped what she was doing and crawled over to help her professor while the others gathered around, careful to stay outside the taped area around the grid so as to not contaminate the site.

Gates put her trowel aside and began digging with a spoon while using a small whisk broom to brush the dirt away. She doesn’t want to take a chance that she might leave a mark that could be open to some false interpretation, Swanburg announced for the spectators, such as a nick on the bone that would leave a question of whether it was caused by an anthropologist’s trowel or a murder weapon.

Spoonful by spoonful, brushstroke by brushstroke, Gates worked for another half hour before she stood up to stretch and allow the others to see what she’d been working on. A dome of yellow-white was emerging from the ground that even the laymen among them knew was the top of a skull. Gentlemen, she said quietly, I believe we’ve found what we came here to find. I’d like to ask for a moment of silence to reflect on the fact that these are not just inanimate objects but the remains of someone who was once just like you and me…someone who loved and laughed and didn’t deserve to be forgotten in an unmarked grave.

Gates and Lorien worked steadily as centimeter by centimeter the earth gave up a skeleton, which was lying on its back, the head slightly tilted down with the chin on the chest. At a break in the work, Gates told those who were watching, This is not absolute, mind you, but judging by what I can see now, these are the remains of a female, probably Caucasian and, looking at the teeth, between the ages of, oh, late twenties and forty.