David Wiltse: Bone Deep

It's fun-but it's exhausting. I wish we could just relax and really talk sometimes."

"Maybe the two of you need a break. This is your vacation-why don't you go rock climbing?"

"Don't feel like it."

"You love it."

"I never loved it, I did it because I was afraid of it."

"It looked like enjoyment to me."

"That grin on my face was just a grimace of fear… I don't want to go if you can't come too. It wouldn't be any fun without you."

"John, you have changed so much."

"That's what Tee says."

"Why, do you think?"

"You don't know?" he asked. "It's you. Simple."

"Is it really?"

"You made me talk to you."

"I didn't make you."

"You taught me. Or maybe you just made it safe enough to allow me to talk to you. Maybe our work helped."

"Our work? Being in the Bureau? It doesn't make any of the rest of them talk, God knows."

"I mean, we've been scared together, and we've admitted it. And survived it. Maybe sharing the big fears have made it easier for me to share the smaller ones."

She sat up and put her arms around his neck.

They made love a little earlier than they had expected, and a little longer.

Afterwards, Becker held her in his arms as he drifted off to sleep. His last conscious thought was that after years of inner ton-nent he had found peace at last, and the reason was in his embrace right now. He had loved women before but none of them had released him from himself as much, none had brought him family or permitted him to be an alternate John Becker.

The orthopedic surgeon met Tee and Becker on his tennis court, sweat cleaving his shirt to his stomach. He wore red terry-cloth bands on both wrists and his forehead and looked, Becker thought, like a neophyte's idea of a tennis player. He strode from the court, where he had been dueling in a losing contest with a ball machine, extending his hand heartily.

"Hello, Chief," he said, taking Tee's hand. "Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday, I had to operate. Did arthroscopic on the Baldwin girl, you know her? Super tennis player, really super. Ranked nationally, screwed up her knee pretty bad but we got it working again. Hope you didn't mind coming to my house."

"Not at all."

"Knees are so fragile. You can abuse them just so many times and that's it." He stopped talking long enough to give Becker a head-to-toe survey. "Dr. Stanley Kom," he said, thrusting out his hand again.

"This is John Becker, he's uh-on vacation."

"I know who John Becker is. It's a pleasure."

"Nice to meet you," Becker said.

"You don't look like what I'd expect," said Kom.

"I hear that a lot," said Becker.

"Thought you'd be…" Kom shrugged, unable to explain.

"I left my other head in the car," said Becker.

"Too bad, too," said Tee. "It's better-looking."

"I admire your work. Seriously. Thank God for people like you," said Kom. Becker tried to muster a smile. "Thanks."

"We appreciate your taking time off to help us out here, Doctor," said Tee.

"Happy to do it. What made you call on me, by the way?"

"We usually use Dr. Lando if we have broken bones or anything-I mean living bones, we don't get that many corpses in Clamden-but he was in New York City…"

"Tony Lando's a fine man, fine surgeon. Well, delighted to get a chance to take a turn."

Kom walked to a table set beside the court, where a beach towel was folded in half. He pulled the top half of the towel aside, revealing the bone.

"It's human. The humerus, upper arm." Kom patted his own arm in the appropriate spot. "Connects here and here to the shoulder and the ulna and radius of your forearm. This one belonged to a young adult female, you can tell that by the thickness, the density at the joints, right here, you get an idea of the age by the degree of ossification on the epiphysis."

Kom indicated the points of interest on the bone, looking at the two men to see if they followed his explanation. His tone was slightly bored, as if he had explained basic anatomy too many times.

"How old a female, would you say?" Tee asked.

"Can't be certain. Want an informed guess?"

"Fine."

"Late teens, early twenties… This is the left arm, by the way."

"Anything else you can tell?"

"With the kind of examination I gave it? Not really. You need a pathologist to look for disease, a forensic specialist for anything else. What do they call the forensic people now, criminalists? Anyway, you really need someone with the microscopic facilities of a good medical school, or the FBI… or is that why you're here, John?" Tee looked at Becker, who kept his eyes on the bone. "Did you notice anything else?" Becker asked.

"To me it looks like the healthy bone of a young adult… except for these, of course," Kom continued. He pointed to marks in the bone at either end. "But I assumed you knew about them."

"What can you tell us about them?"

Kom shrugged. "Cut marks, made with a knife, smallish blade. I didn't see any marks except at the joints."

"Do you draw any conclusion from that?" Becker asked. Kom looked at Becker for a moment. "Anything you have in mind?" Kom asked. "Whatever you think."

"Well, forgive me if this seems ghoulish, but I'd say someone was-uh-cutting her up. Cutting her into pieces."

"Christ," said Tee.

"I thought so," said Becker, nodding.

"You two are cool enough about it," Tee said.

"It's our profession," Kom said, smiling at Becker as if to reinforce a complicity.

"Was she dead when he carved her up?" Becker asked. "Jesus," Tee said.

Kom shrugged. "That's beyond my expertise, John. You'd need a specialist. I would certainly hope so… Do you think it might have been done when she was still alive?"

"I've heard of it," Becker said.

"You must have heard just about everything by now," Kom said. "It must be an interesting way of life."

"It's not a way of life," Becker said, not quite concealing his anger.

"It's a job."

"Of course. I misspoke, sorry, no offense intended… Where did you find the bone?"

"It washed up in a woman's yard from the flooding," Tee said. "We don't know where it came from yet. We just started searching today."

A woman stepped out of the house, carrying a tray of glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. She was tall and moved with the studied grace of a model even while crossing the uneven surface of the fieldstone path. The three men watched her come, but she carried herself like a woman who was accustomed to being looked at.

"Isn't she gorgeous?" Kom said proudly, watching his wife approach. She was close enough to hear but appeared to take no notice of the remark.

"Tovah, sweetheart, you know the chief of police."

"Hello, Mrs. Kom."

"How are you, Mr. Terhune?"

"And this is John Becker," Kom said proudly, as if displaying a trophy.

Then, as if showing off another, he added, "My wife."

She put down the tray and offered a cool hand to Becker.

"Tovah Kom," she said. Her lips were painted with a cruel slash of crimson that looked as if it had been applied in anger, and her eyes had been shadowed in gray, giving her a sad and haggard appearance that was belied by her large, robust body. Heavy gold rings fell from her ears, more gold hung around her neck, and her wrists and hands were covered in an ostentatious display of yet more gold encrusted with diamonds. Becker found it hard at first glance to tell if she was a sickly woman dressed to look like a rich man's wife or a beautiful woman trying to pass as the languishing victim of a vampire. He wondered if she herself had decided how she wanted to appear. "I thought you gentlemen might like some iced tea," she said, glancing at the tray, then seeing the bone.

"Do you have to have that lying around?"