Кэти Райх - A Conspiracy of Bones

The traffic signal changed. I accelerated. The headlights behind me shrank, winged left. Sharon Amity became Sharon Lane. No reason. Ahead, Sharon Lane would T-bone into Sharon Road. Confusing street names are Charlotte’s way of messing with out-of-town drivers.

Shadows skipped across the windshield as I passed under a lattice of willow oaks arching high overhead. Snatches of the evening’s conversation replayed in my head. The same tired conversations as always.

“Your mother looks great!” Meaning not dead.

“The chemo is going well.”

“How’s Pete?” I heard your ex is dating a hot yoga instructor, a brain surgeon, the heiress to an international shipping line.

“He’s good, thanks.”

“Our prayers are with Katy.” Thank God it’s your kid in a war zone, not ours.

“She’s good, thanks.”

“My nephew just finalized his divorce and is moving to Charlotte. You two must meet.” Let me rescue you from your pathetic life.

“I’m good, thanks.”

Tonight new topics had entered in, queries inspired by my current fiasco.

“Are you still teaching at UNCC?” Are you being forced to fall back on your day job?

“A few graduate courses.”

“Dr. Larabee’s death was a terrible tragedy.”

“It was.”

“How do you like the current ME?” Rumor has it you’re embroiled in a shitstorm with your new boss.

“Excuse me, I think Daisy is signaling that she’d like to leave.”

These sessions made me wish I still drank. A lot.

I crossed Wendover. The road narrowed to two lanes. I hit a speed bump, the car bucked, dropped.

My iPhone lit up. No chime. I’d had it on silent during the concert, forgotten to flick the little lever.

I glanced down to where the mobile lay on the passenger seat. A gray box indicated a received text. I figured it was Mama, concerned my embolization had blown. Or that I’d been kidnapped by Somali pirates.

Minutes later, parked in my drive, I tapped the screen and flicked to the Messages app. The text had arrived at 8:34.

I opened the app, the message.

Four images.

A frisson of current sparked under my sternum.

My townhouse was blessedly cool and smelled faintly of plaster and fresh paint.

“Birdie?” Tossing my keys onto the counter.

No response.

“I’m home, Bird.”

Nothing. The cat was still pissed about the renovations. Fine. I had my own issues.

I locked the door, set the alarm, and crossed the kitchen without turning on a light. Passing through the dining room and then the parlor, I climbed the stairs.

Nineteenth-century deeds refer to the tiny two-story structure as the annex. Annex to what? No living soul has a clue. To the mansion, now condos, presiding over the grounds of Sharon Hall? To the converted carriage house beside it?

I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’ve lived in the annex’s Lilliputian rooms for more than a decade, since my separation from the would-be swain of the shipping-line heiress. Throughout my tenancy, I’d changed nothing but light bulbs.

Until recently. And the process—building codes, permits, homeowners’ association hysteria—had been horrendous. And still there were issues. Jammed windows. A lunatic electrician. A no-show painter.

Reaching the top tread, I glanced right toward the door leading into the new square footage. As usual, my chest tightened, just a hiccup, enough to get my attention. The same flinch experienced by victims of home invasion?

I’d made the decision to live with Ryan. We’d agreed to shift between cities, commute as work demanded and freedom allowed. We’d bought a condo in Montreal. I’d agreed to construction of the addition here. Enough space for a roomie.

So why the mental cringe? Why the refusal to actually move into the space? Nothing more fearsome than bad wiring and the wrong shade of gray lay beyond the door. Two desks, two bookshelves, two filing cabinets.

Two toothbrushes in the bathroom. Two kinds of bread in the freezer.

Everything in pairs.

My life subdivided. I’d been there. It hadn’t worked out.

Get a grip, Brennan. Ryan’s not Pete. He’ll never betray you. He’s handsome, smart, generous, kind. And sexy as hell. Why the reluctance to commit?

As usual, I had no answer.

In the bedroom, I threw my purse onto the bureau, myself into the rocker, and kicked off the sandals. Then I plugged in my phone so the damn thing wouldn’t die within seconds.

I view crime-scene and autopsy pics all the time. They’re never pretty. The ashen flesh, the unseeing eyes, the blood-spattered walls or car interiors. Though I’m accustomed, the sad tableaus always affect me. The stark reminders that a human life has ended violently.

These hit me harder than most.

I swallowed.

The first image showed a man lying supine in a body bag, arms straight and tight to his sides. The bag had been unzipped to his waist. I could see nothing beyond his rolled sleeves and belt.

The man had died in a blood-soaked ecru shirt. A pair of shoes was tucked by his head, made of the same rich brown leather that had held up his pants.

Above the bloody collar, the man’s face was a horror show of macerated flesh and bone. The nose and ears were gone, the orbits dark and empty.

Sightless as the dead goose by the garden wall.

The grim flashback elicited another visceral shudder.

The next two images were close-ups of the man’s hands. Or would have been had either survived. His forearms were mangled from the elbows down, the radii and ulnae ending in jagged projections below the point to which the creamy sleeves had been rolled. Severed tendons glistened white in the hamburger mash.

The last image zeroed in on the man’s midsection. The shirtfront had been displaced to one side. His abdomen gaped wide below ribs resembling the bleached wreckage of a boat’s shattered bow. What remained of his viscera was almost unrecognizable. I spotted a few organ remnants, some threads of liver and spleen, nothing positioned where it should have been.

The message was tagged with no name or number, filtered through a spamlike phone exchange. I knew there were apps and websites that would accommodate a texter’s desire for anonymity. Tricks to hide one’s identity using throwaway email accounts. But who would do that? And why? And who would have access to such a mangled corpse? To my mobile number?

Joe Hawkins? Such a breach of protocol seemed way out of character. Joe was the oldest death investigator at the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office. Oldest in every sense. Hawkins was stitching Ys when the MCME had a single pathologist and one assistant. Probably when Custer went down at the Little Big Horn.

If the sender was Hawkins, what was his motive? Yeah, the vic was a mess. But we’d both seen worse. Much worse. Was Hawkins an ally in my current conflict? A neutral leaking intel to a comrade in peril?

Was Hawkins giving me a heads-up? Since the faceless man would be difficult to ID, was he suggesting the case might require an anthropology consult? For years, I’d been the sole practitioner serving the region. In the past, the task would unquestionably have fallen to me.

Until Larabee was killed and Margot Heavner stepped into his scrubs.

Word of explanation. Since North Carolina has a statewide medical examiner system, the hiring decision was made by the chief ME in Chapel Hill. The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office, the facility for which I consult, is one of several subsidiary offices and serves the five counties surrounding Charlotte. Thanks to trigger-friendly gun laws, my fellow state citizens shoot one another with glorious enthusiasm. Therefore, following Larabee’s murder, the chief needed a replacement fast.