Кэти Райх - A Conspiracy of Bones

Of particular interest was a story that appeared on the three-year anniversary of Hardin’s death. Seventeen months before Hardin had been taken, eight-year-old Jack Jaebernin had disappeared from his home in the same neighborhood. Jack’s father said a dark-haired stranger had invited his son to a local park to catch frogs. Though he’d been warned not to go, the boy went anyway. That night, a family out hiking found Jack’s beaten body in a forest twelve miles away. An autopsy showed he’d been strangled or smothered.

The parallels were striking. The two boys had lived just blocks apart. They’d disappeared within a year and a half of each other. They were roughly the same age. Both were dumped in wooded areas at approximately the same distances from their homes. And, most telling, Jonathan Fox had rented a unit in the same apartment complex as Hardin Symes’s family.

Though the Bismarck police were convinced they’d arrested the right guy, Fox was never retried. In 2015, the department’s cold-case homicide squad began sifting through boxes, looking for sufficient evidence to nail the bastard.

I found no follow-up on the investigation. Apparently, nothing had come of reopening the file.

I googled Jonathan Fox. Learned the following.

Fox was a seventh-grade dropout who’d worked in Bismarck as a front-desk clerk at a local motel. After being tried for the murder of Hardin Symes, he moved to Baltimore.

In 2016, Fox was convicted of killing Chelsea Keller. Chelsea was ten years old. She disappeared from the front lawn of her home. Her body was found in a forest eighteen miles away. In 2017, Fox was stabbed to death at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.

I sat back, feeling a sharp warning twist in my gut. The same twist I’d felt when Heavner had run her mouth with Body.

In the end, Fox’s ass had been slammed to the wall. But I’d been right. Heavner’s remarks had been used by Fox’s lawyer at trial. And the strategy had worked.

But the gut twist had been triggered by something more than inappropriate comments about a murdered child.

After checking some old notes in a filing cabinet in the downstairs guest room/study, I googled the name “Nick Body” and got the link to his radio show, Body Language . Once there, I clicked on the Archive button and entered the date I’d just retrieved: September 4, 2012.

Reluctantly, I ponied up the required fee. Answered the nonoptional profile questions. Then I opened the audio file.

The interview was as I remembered. Body queried Heavner about her book, steering the conversation toward cases with the most gore and anguish. Heavner was an enthusiastic participant, her nasal whine almost as nauseating as Body’s gravel-through-a-sieve bark.

Ten minutes in, Body jumped the lane and asked about Hardin Symes. A momentary hesitation, then Heavner hopped on board, revealing details that should never have left the autopsy room. Opining on the depravity of the doer.

Then the betrayal that had shot my outrage into overdrive. Six years on, it still did.

Heavner told the world that Hardin Symes had been autistic. The revelation allowed Body to segue to one of his favorite topics.

Prearranged? Doesn’t matter. The disclosure was wrong, a violation of professional ethics.

Body spent the rest of the broadcast ranting about the evils of vaccination. His reasoning followed the usual two-pronged path of stupidity. He denied there was any scientific proof of a causal connection between vaccines and the reduction or eradication of diseases such as smallpox, polio, measles, or rubella. And he spewed the usual idiocy that vaccination can cause autism.

Heavner, a medical doctor, offered no objection.

Heavner’s disclosure about Hardin Symes was improper and callous. She hurt Hardin’s family. She compromised the prosecution of his killer.

Heavner’s failure to contradict Body’s antivax tirade gave credence to the ludicrous. To the dangerous.

These were offenses I could not accept.

I spoke out.

Still nothing by four.

Screw it.

Agitated as hell, I grabbed my keys and headed for my car.

The MCME facility is located on Reno Avenue, just west of uptown. Saturday-afternoon traffic was light. I was there in ten minutes.

Upon arriving, I knew that something was up. The parking lot held too many vehicles. A couple of vans had logos for local TV broadcast affiliates.

Neurons sending out a low-level buzz, I swiped my security card and drove through the gate.

4

Margot Heavner was standing on the steps of the MCME building. Steps I’d mounted countless times. I watched her, shocked and dismayed.

Dr. Morgue was dressed in aquamarine surgical scrubs. Fresh from a postmortem? Or for the I-play-a-TV-doc optics?

Journalists were thrusting boom and handheld mics at Heavner. Not many, five in all. She was finishing a prepared statement or answering a question.

“… male, five foot eight, medium build, possibly Asian.” Heavner’s hair and makeup looked suspiciously good for someone coming straight from an autopsy.

“Age?” Asked by a bored-looking reporter from WSOC, the local ABC affiliate.

“Not old, not a kid.”

“That describes more than half the population.” Wisecracked by a freelancer who looked like a lizard, if a lizard could squeeze into size-forty short cargo pants. I’d met him. Gerry something.

“The body exhibits advanced putrefaction and severe animal damage.”

“Like what? Rats?” Unlike my paperboy, Gerry wouldn’t be going to Harvard.

“Feral hogs, Mr. Breugger.” Adding, as though fearful she might not be believed, “They’re a huge problem in North Carolina.”

“Feral hogs?” Fessie Green, five minutes out of Clemson and working the Observer crime beat. Green sounded like she’d soon be the color of her surname.

“Pigs gotta eat. These pigs chose to eat a corpse.” Heavner pointed to a chinless elf who weighed maybe twelve pounds.

“What do you mean, possibly Asian?”

“The features are ambiguous.”

“Meaning what?” The elf was persistent.

Heavner’s finger went to a bright young thing from FOX 46.

“Will Dr. Brennan be working the case?”

“My office is in contact with local, state, and federal authorities. Together we will get this unfortunate gentleman identified and returned to his loved ones.”

The adrenal buzz gave way to heat, a flush that crawled up my throat and spread across my cheeks.

“How’d the guy die?” Gerry.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss cause of death.”

“You thinking murder? Suicide?”

“Same answer.”

“You organized this party. What can you discuss?”

“My office will provide further information as it becomes available.” Heavner hesitated, probably for effect. Then, doing earnest and forthright, “In the interest of the soonest possible closure, there are a few details I’m willing to share.”

My fingers tightened on the car keys forgotten in my hand.

“Oddities that might mean something to someone reading or hearing about them.”

Gerry tried to interrupt. Heavner ignored him.

“The man carried no credit cards, license, or any form of identification. He had no wallet, but a roll of cash totaling over two hundred dollars. The only other item in his possession was a can of Swedish chewing tobacco, brand name Göteborgs Rapé. His shoes appear to be of European origin. His clothing is high-end. The shirt is ecru linen with small ivory buttons. The pants are tan, a wool-cashmere blend. The boxers are made of high-quality black silk.”

A pregnant pause. A nuanced gaze.

“The labels had been removed from every garment. The tobacco can yielded not a single print. The roll of cash was made up of both euros and dollars.”