David Wiltse - Bone Deep

Hardest of all was that he knew the truth on which all the exaggeration was based. There was no need to exaggerate, Becker thought grimly. The truth was bad enough.

"Naturally we'll be putting names on them when we can make IDs through dental records. Right now, we haven't got a clue."

"That's a poor choice of words for a criminalist," Becker said.

Grone tried to smile. Becker frightened him, not because of his reputation but because of a certain keen concentration that set him apart from the others. It was said that he could look at the evidence and see things with his naked eye that the technicians had missed with their microscopes. Grone did not believe that, he knew it was hyperbole, part of the gentle hazing applied to new men in the lab, and he had said it himself to intimidate rookies, but it was true that Becker looked at things differently. As if he had a contrary understanding of evidence. As if he had the point of view of the one who had created the evidence, not the ones who had discovered it.

"Well, still, the fact is, we have very little to work with here. The bones have been in the ground a long time, the flesh has long since putrefied, some of the nutrients probably taken up by the trees-the roots had penetrated the bags, in some cases they even penetrated the bone, amazing how persistent nature is with growing organisms — Everything soluble has leached out into the soil and all we have left are the bones-and of course, the hair."

"What about the bags?"

"Standard lawn-and-leaf trash bags, buy them in any SUpermarket or hardware store in the country. They are double-bagged in each case, by the way. They'd pretty much have to be if he carried the bodies at all.

There are no fingerprints on any of them, and none on the little wire ties he sealed them with. Johnny was wearing gloves."

"Fibers?"

"A few, very few-fibers don't stick that well to the kind of plastic used in those trash bags, especially after several years underground.

The orchard was on the side of a hill, right? They got runoff water after every rain and a lot of that was percolating over and around and past those bags. I mean, they've been washed and washed and washed."

Becker stared at Grone, waiting for him to finish his excuses. Grone shifted uncomfortably under Becker's scrutiny. He suspected there was something he had missed, something Becker was just waiting to point out to him.

"The fibers we do have are synthetics, the kind used in industrial carpeting. What they call indoor/outdoor, but it's usually indoors. The kind of carpet you'd find in a public place, an entry hall to an office, the interior of a shop, just about anywhere you get a lot of traffic."

"Would you find it in a hotel?" Becker asked.

Grone considered, contorting his lips. "Have to be a pretty cheap hotel, I'd think. This stuff is not high-quality carpeting. I can show you under the scope if you like."

"How about in a cheap hotel? Or a motel?"

"Maybe," said Grone. "I don't spend that much time in cheap motels myself." He tried to grin, immediately regretted it.

"It's not your habits I'm concerned with," said Becker. "He cut them up someplace. He had to put the bag down when he did it. Is this the kind of carpet somebody might put in his basement, his den?"

"You think somebody cut these girls up in his den?"

"Why not?"

"Why not? In his house? Like it was his hobby?"

"You're not new at this job, are you, Grone? Do you think Johnny kills girls for a living? It's his passion, his joy, his greatest thrill. He might very well do it at home. He might do it in the den while the wife and kids are in the living room watching television. What's your passion, Grone? Where do you exercise it?"

"I… don't have a passion. Not like that."

"Johnny's one up on you then, isn't he? At least he knows what his passion is." Becker immediately felt ashamed of himself. He had sensed Grone's fear and been offended by it, and had lashed out at him for it.

It was not the act of the man he had hoped he was becoming. "Sorry," he said. "Hey," said Grone, shrugging, wondering if perhaps Becker was right. "No problem." He wanted to add that he, too, had passions, but he wasn't certain what they were. "We're still working on the manufacturers. If we identify them, they can help us limit things a little bit anyway."

"See if it's used in cars, too."

"Cars, right."

"Cars, trucks, vans, whatever. Especially in trunks. He had to transport them some way." Grone nodded dutifully, took notes.

"So tell me about the bones," said Becker.

Grone had been dreading the question. "Well, first off, we have dated them, rather loosely I'm afraid, according to the degree of microbial damage and the rate of ion exchange with the minerals in the surrounding soil. Number six was in the ground the longest. I'd make it just over six years. Number five is about five years, and the rest all about a year apart down to number one, which has been underground about a year, give or take. If the roots hadn't penetrated the bags and exposed the tissues to water and the microorganisms in the soil, and of course the worms, the beetles, the grubs of various kinds, the deterioration would have progressed much more slowly, of course. I mean, if he'd buried them in a coffin, the process would have been retarded by a factor of many years."

"Don't you suppose he knew that? Whatever else he is, he's not stupid.

He's got six successful murders to prove it."

"Well, that raises a question," Grone said, feeling more comfortably on solid footing for a change. "Was it murder at all? I mean, one assumes it was, but with this extent of decay, with the soft tissue gone, there's no way for me to tell how they died. He didn't shoot them-there are no holes in their skulls, no fractures of the bones. These were healthy young women, there's no sign of disease in the bones that would account for anything fatal. Tuberculosis could show in the bone, for instance. Syphilis, lots of things. One of these broke some ribs-number three, it isyeah, there, you can make it out with the naked eye, but not recently, I mean not prior to her death. Another must have had a problem with her shoulder at some time-that's number five-see that bone spur there? An athletic injury of some kind. Throwing something, serving too many tennis balls. Again, that's not going to kill her.

Number six had a broken leg that had healed, oh, two years before she died, more or less. These are normal childhood traumas, — irls are active athletically these days, None of this could have caused their deaths."

"If they were smothered, for instance, would anything show now?"

"Not unless a vertebra had been cracked during the act."

"If they'd been given lethal injection, bled to death, drowned?"

"Nothing. If they'd been subjected to slow poisoning, that would show up-if I knew what poison to look for."

"It wouldn't surprise me if they died slowly," Becker said. "But not that slowly. What else can you tell me?"

"Well, Johnny likes very clean women. There are traces of soap or detergent in their hair. All of them."

"is that unusual?"

"That depends on how you wash your hair. Usually it takes more than one rinse to get all the detergent from shampoo out. Most people carry around traces of their last shampoo until the next one. You wouldn't expect to find as much as we found after six years though. Especially soap. Soap's organic, you would expect it to be gone after a few months, unless there was a lot of it. In other words, a big lather, a bad rinse. In fact, if you had that much soap in your hair to begin with, you'd probably notice, it would bother you.

"Meaning..

"Well, meaning they didn't put it in in the first place. I think Johnny did, I think Johnny washed their hair just before he killed them."