Кэти Райх - A Conspiracy of Bones

The salary isn’t stratospheric, so Heavner had been one of only a handful of applicants. From her perspective, Charlotte’s climate dazzled in comparison to that of North Dakota. From the state’s perspective, she was willing to work cheap and start right away.

Bingo! Dr. Margot Heavner, forensic pathologist, author, and showboat extraordinaire.

Heavner began freezing me out the minute she landed. No pretense at subtlety. From day one, she made it clear that hiring Charlie Manson would be preferable to working with me.

You guessed it. There’s history between us.

Six years back, Heavner published a book titled Death’s Avenger: My Life as a Morgue Doctor . The opus, intended for a general audience, was a collection of case studies, most fairly mundane, intended to paint its creator as the greatest pathologist since the invention of the scalpel. Fair enough. Shine a light on the profession, inspire the next generation.

And shine she did. For a few weeks, Heavner was everywhere. Talk shows, print, sidebar ads, social media. I was good with it. Until Dr. Morgue did a series of interviews with a right-wing sleazeball named Nick Body.

Blogging and podcasting on the internet, and from there onto scores of AM radio stations, Body spews whatever trash he thinks will boost ratings and readership. Antivaccination, government mind control, U.S. military involvement in the Twin Towers and Beirut barracks attacks—everything is fair game, no matter how hurtful or absurd. Ditto any sensationalized tale of violence and personal devastation.

Heavner didn’t restrict her conversations with Body to the topic of her book. In more than one, she discussed the case of a murdered child. A brutal killing for which no perp had been convicted.

I definitely wasn’t good with that.

When asked by a journalist for my opinion of Heavner’s behavior, I was sharp in my criticism. Maybe he was goading me with loaded questions. Maybe it was the fact that I was working three child homicides and feeling overly protective of victims. Maybe I was tired. Whatever the cause, I didn’t hold back.

Heavner was furious. Threatened a lawsuit for slander or libel, or whatever, but didn’t follow through. The feud never went public. No one cares about the bickering of science nerds. But in our little nerd circles, the gossip was rife.

That year, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a colleague in entomology, Paulette Youngman, advised me to let the quarrel go. Was it Dallas? Baltimore? The venues all blur in my mind. Paulette and I were on break from a multidisciplinary workshop on child abuse when Heavner passed in one of her signature Diane von Fürstenberg wraps.

“You’re right,” Youngman had said. “The woman has no scruples.”

“She discussed an open homicide to hawk her damn book.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter if she’s compromised the case and there’s no justice for the child. And he wasn’t the only one. She talked about other missing kids. I could hear Body salivating through the speakers.”

Youngman swirled the ice in her soda, then set down her Styrofoam tumbler. “Ever hear of Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani ?”

“I think I have a colony under my sink.”

“It’s a fungus that grows out of the heads of ants in the Brazilian rain forest. They’re called zombie ants.”

“Sounds like another crackpot Body conspiracy theory.”

“But this is true. The fungus mind-controls the ants.”

“Mind-controls them into doing what? Voting Republican?”

“It takes over the ant’s brain, then kills the host once it’s moved to a location suitable for fungal success.”

“Fiendish.”

“It’s fungus.”

I was lost. “Your point?”

“Heavner’s morality has been hijacked by a need for fame and public adulation.”

“She’s become a zombie pathologist.”

Youngman shrugged.

“So I should just let it drop?”

“In the end, the ant always loses.” Youngman tipped her head, reflecting fluorescent light off the unfashionable black glasses riding low on her nose.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Youngman broke the silence.

“Did Heavner’s book make the New York Times bestseller list?”

“Not even close.” I’d checked.

Youngman grinned.

I grinned back.

In the intervening years, I’ve often thought of that conversation. Assumed the whole ant-fungus metaphor was a by-product of viewing too many projected images of battered children.

But here it was, six years later, and Heavner had found a location where she could flourish. Dr. Morgue was running the MCME. And I was persona non grata, my life in disarray.

I looked at the clock. Almost midnight. Call Hawkins?

Not a chance he’d be awake.

A quick toilette, and I crawled into bed.

Of course, I didn’t sleep.

In the dark, images looped and swirled, denizens of my subconscious begging for attention. Heavner. Hawkins. The faceless man. A defect in my left posterior communicating artery now packed with tiny platinum coils.

At some point, Birdie came and curled at my side.

Didn’t help. My mind was a hazardous-waste dump of doubt, distress, and unanswered questions.

Chief among them: Who was the doomed ant, who the fungus facing a prosperous future?

3

SATURDAY, JUNE 30

I was awakened by a mockingbird doing animated a cappella outside my window. Birdie was gone, presumably off resuming his snit.

The clock said 6:27. The sky was easing from pewter to pearl. The room was a collision of shadows sharpening at the edges.

I tried rolling over.

A conversation sluiced into my drowsy brain. An old woman, voice quavery, as though uncertain of wanting her message delivered. Or terrified.

I still hear the old woman’s words in my head. Bloodsucking trash. Using my sweet baby’s death to glorify her own self. Lord Jesus knows it’s wrong .

Hardin Symes. That was the dead kid’s name.

I later learned that the caller was Bethyl Symes, Hardin’s grandmother. I’d heard of Nick Body, of course, the fiery provocateur. I’d never listened to a Body broadcast or read one of his blogs. I’m not his demographic.

But Bethyl was a regular. And she was incensed that Heavner had made a piss storm, her words, of her grandson’s murder. Exposed her family’s aching heart to the world.

Because of Bethyl, I tuned into the Heavner interview and subsequently launched the missiles that kicked off the feud.

I never heard from Bethyl Symes again.

Agitated, I got out of bed, did some questionable grooming, mostly teeth, then descended to the kitchen. After brewing coffee, I filled the bowl of my judgmental cat. Then I snagged the Observer from the back stoop and settled at the table to scan stories I’d already seen on the internet.

Why the dinosaur approach to news? Loyalty to the kid who’s been tossing papers onto my stoop for the past three years, winging them from his bike with NASA precision. Derek. Derek claims he’s saving up to attend Harvard. Maybe I’m a sucker. The story also gets him a ridiculous holiday tip.

A pileup on I-77 had taken the lives of an Ohio family en route to Charleston for their annual beach week. New condos were going up in South End. The DOJ was opening an inquiry into the finances of a local member of Congress.

Nothing on the faceless man. My real reason for looking.

Another coffee, then I pulled my MacBook Air from my carryall and ran a quick online search. Found no mention of the discovery of human remains near Charlotte.

I puttered until eight. Dishes. Email. A load of laundry. Then, knowing he was a dawn riser, I dialed Hawkins’s mobile. He answered after one ring.