P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“Talk to us, Doc,” Bloom said.

“The victim is a woman, probably between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But these bones do not belong to the owner of this dental X-ray,” Ward said, pointing to the screen.

Louis looked at Shockey. He had turned away and was staring at the bones on the steel table.

Ward carefully picked up a long, slender bone. “I was told the Brandt woman had two arm fractures,” he said. “There are no breaks in this humerus or in any of the arm bones.”

Shockey’s eyes closed. “You must be wrong.”

“I am never wrong, Detective,” Ward said. “Not about things like this. Oh, and by the way, the woman you found in the barn was most certainly African-American.”

Louis’s gaze snapped back to the X-ray of the skull.

“A marked alveolar prognathism,” Ward said, pointing to the X-ray. “Flat nasal region, broad nasal aperture, retreating zygoma, somewhat truncated nasal spine and a retreating forehead.”

“All right,” Bloom said. “We get the picture. This is not Jean Brandt.”

“Precisely.”

Louis heard footsteps, and he turned to see Shockey leaving through the double doors. He turned back to Ward. “Can you tell how she died?” he asked.

“As I said, there were no fractures in the arms,” Ward said. “I found one old leg fracture that was well-healed. But I did find six other breaks in the legs and ribs that were all perimortem fractures, meaning they were inflicted minutes or hours before death.”

Ward picked up a plastic container. “Plus there is this. Your techs brought back a dirt sample from the gravesite. It was saturated with blood.”

“The woman was still bleeding when she was put in the grave?” Louis said. “Buried alive?”

“How alive, I can’t be sure,” Ward said. “But dead people don’t bleed.”

Louis closed his eyes.

“So I’m pretty certain this was a homicide,” Ward said.

Bloom let out a grunt. “Well, ain’t this a kick in the nuts,” he said. “We got a missing woman and no body. Got bones and no victim. And on top of all that, she’s a black woman in an area that don’t have but a handful of black folks in it.”

“Maybe it won’t be too hard to find someone who’s been missing, then,” Louis said.

“It may be harder than you think,” Ward said. “You might be looking for a woman who’s been missing for quite some time.”

“What do you mean?” Bloom asked. “How long have these bones been in the ground?”

“Well, there’s no way to know for sure without carbon dating,” Ward said. He picked up the arm bone. “But see how brittle and chalky this is? As bones age, they lose the proteins that make up the matrix that holds the calcium.”

Ward gently pressed a fingernail on the bone. Louis was surprised to see it leave an indentation. “If I were to try to break this humerus in two, instead of splitting like a green twig, it would break and crumble,” Ward said. “So I’m guessing they are quite old.”

Ward set the bone down and picked up a plastic bag, holding it out. “Then there’s this, which-”

Bloom grabbed the bag. “What’s this?”

“A piece of shoe leather with some buttons that the techs found with the bones. The style seems to date back to the mid-eighteen-hundreds.”

Bloom stared at the black clump in the plastic.

“Do you want me to send the bones out for dating?” Ward asked.

Bloom tossed the plastic bag onto the table. “The state’s not paying for that,” he said. “This isn’t a homicide case anymore, as far as I’m concerned.”

“But the shoe doesn’t prove anything for sure,” Louis said. “Don’t we want-”

Bloom cut him off with a raised palm. “I don’t care about a hundred-year-old homicide. And if what Phil here says is true, she was probably just a servant anyway, maybe even a slave.”

“What did you say?” Louis said.

Bloom’s ruddy face colored a deeper red. “Sorry, Kincaid. Didn’t mean it like that. I just meant there wouldn’t even be any records for a woman like that. That’s all.”

“Right.”

“And who the hell has the time to work a case like this, anyway?” Bloom asked. “Where you going to find any damn witnesses?”

Louis looked back at the X-ray, trying to imagine a woman’s face on the skull.

“Well, I’m out of here,” Bloom said. “Kincaid, you tell Sheriff Frye I’d like a word with her before she goes home. I got a bone to pick with her boss, too. If you’ll pardon the pun.”

Bloom left.

“Asshole,” Ward said under his breath.

Louis rubbed his brow, looking down again at the bones. He was concerned about Joe’s job, but he was even more worried about Shockey. He had put everything on the line to get into that barn, and it had been for nothing. Brandt was going to remain free, and they had only eight more days to find a way to keep him away from Amy.

“What kind of cop wouldn’t be interested in something like this?” Ward said.

Louis looked up at him. Ward was holding a second plastic bag. Inside was something that looked like jewelry.

“What is that?” Louis asked.

Ward opened the bag and pulled out a necklace. “This was also found in the grave with her,” Ward said.

“May I see it?”

Ward handed the necklace to Louis. It was a silver chain and what first looked to Louis like a cameo, until he turned it over. It was a plain round silver locket, about the size of a man’s pocket watch. There was no engraving.

He opened it.

Inside was a lock of black hair.

Owen Brandt stood at the gate, staring at the farmhouse. He never should have come back here. Should’ve just stayed in Ohio after he got out, or maybe should’ve headed down to Florida or somewhere where it was warm, at least.

He’d never liked this place, never wanted anything to do with farming, even though his old man, when he started to get sick and old, tried to get him to take over. Like he was going to spend his life getting up before dawn, driving a tractor in the freezing rain, standing in pig shit, and then dying before his time.

Then why did I come back?

Brandt turned up the collar of his denim jacket and started across the yard. He stopped, his eyes fixed on the bright orange foreclosure notice on the front door. He had tried to rip it off once already, but the damn thing was glued onto the glass.

He turned away. A couple of yards from the side porch, he stopped again. Through the window, he could see Margi in the kitchen, taking the groceries out of the bags. After she’d picked him up at the police station, they’d stopped at the Kroger in Howell, spending their last eleven bucks on beer and stealing the rest of what they needed, the bread, baloney, and toilet paper.

The thought of the police made Brandt grind his jaw in anger. They wouldn’t tell him anything about the bones in the barn, but since they’d let him go, he knew they must have somehow figured out they didn’t belong to Jean.

Brandt turned and surveyed the barren, fog-shrouded fields beyond the barn. That meant the bitch was still out there somewhere.

He shoved his cold hands into his pockets, turned away from the house, and began to walk. There was no clear pattern to his path, and he didn’t even know where he was heading. He just felt the sudden need to walk, like maybe it would clear all the shit out of his head somehow and help him think better. He wasn’t thinking too good these days, and that bothered him.

He was back behind the barn now, and his eyes took in every warped board, every rusting piece of machinery lying dead in the weeds.

Why did I come back here?