Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

“No. But I have these.” He handed her a large tan envelope.

Diane opened the envelope and removed several photographs of the missing girl and flipped through them. One was of her at the beach with her family. Most were portraits. Diane looked at Frank. “Even you know this isn’t a bone from her head. Why the head shots?”

“These are what her parents gave me.” He shrugged. “They’re all I have.”

Diane selected an 8-by-10 studio photograph of the girl wearing a drape, showing a bare, slender neck and shoulders. She turned it over and looked at the back of the photograph, hoping there was a date or an age. It was blank. “How recent is this photo? Do you know?”

“I believe her mother said that one was taken three or four months ago.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen. Her name’s-”

Diane cut off his words. “I don’t want to know her name. How tall is she?”

“Five-four or five-five.”

Diane raised her eyes from the picture to Frank. “Exactly how tall is she?”

He took a notebook from his briefcase and flipped through a few pages, stopping to read his notes. “Five-five and a half,” he said.

Diane took calipers from her drawer and measured the length and breadth of the girl’s face and scribbled numbers on the butcher paper. Knowing the measurements of the image in the photograph and the girl’s actual height, and knowing that bones usually have a standard ratio to each other, she could make a reasonable guess as to what percent smaller the photograph was, compared to the girl herself.

She made three pencil points along the girl’s right collarbone in the picture and measured the distance between each point. “I don’t suppose you know if this is a mirror image of the girl or not?” she asked.

“What?”

“Sometimes when the photographer develops the film he-oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter that much. I don’t even know why I’m doing this.”

“To stop me from asking you questions about why you abandoned your career.”

Diane picked up the bone and turned it over in her hand, ignoring his prodding. “I don’t believe it belongs to her. There’s a good possibility it’s male.”

Frank raised his eyebrows.

“Males have broader shoulders than females. Their clavicles are longer. You guys are also more muscular than us girls. Your collarbones are going to be more robust. The girl in these photographs is relatively small and delicate.”

Diane measured the bone and compared it with the math-altered measurements she made from the photograph. She shook her head. “It’s not a match. Not even close. This bone is much bigger than hers would be.”

Frank leaned forward. “She would be larger than the photograph.”

Diane stared at him for a long moment. “Frank, I took that into consideration.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you work. If I knew how to do this, I would have done it myself.”

The way he grinned, she didn’t know if he was kidding her or not. She shook her head and gave him a lopsided smile, then turned back to the analysis.

“The distal end is broken. It happened antemortem or perimortem and would have been very painful.”

Frank frowned. “What would make a break like that?”

She shook her head. “A fall, like from a horse. Hit with something big like a club. Hit by a truck-any number of things.”

Diane laid a piece of typing paper on her desk and searched in her drawer until she found a long pair of tweezers. Holding the bone under the desk lamp, she pulled a gossamer wad from the small cavity in the shaft.

“What?” asked Frank, leaning forward.

“Spiderweb.”

She put the web in a small wax envelope similar to ones that stamp collectors use. She gently tapped the bone. Tiny dark specks fell from the hollow of the bone to the paper. She examined the detritus with a hand lens. Frank stood and leaned on the desk. The hair on the tops of their heads touched. Diane raised her head and looked directly into his eyes, which were so close to hers she thought she could probably feel the flutter of his eyelashes.

“Bug parts,” she said.

“Bug parts? Is this important?”

“It is, indeed. It tells us that during warm weather when these creatures are up and about, the bone was bare and open for them to take up residence.”

“Died during the warm months, then?”

“Perhaps.”

“How long ago? Can you tell?”

Diane rubbed the tips of her fingers along the shaft of the bone. She was relieved that it was not from the adopted daughter of Frank’s friends. “I’d say this bone hasn’t seen flesh for several years. How long have the girl and her boyfriend been missing?”

“A couple of months.”

“Does anyone know where the boyfriend is?”

Frank shrugged.

“Do you see the roughening of the bone here and here?” Diane touched two areas on the bone.

“Yes.”

“Those are where the neck and shoulder muscles were attached.”

“That would be here-” Frank traced his fingers down Diane’s neck to her collarbone.

“Approximately. Yes.”

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.

“The size and texture of the attachments make me suspect that this was a rather strong lad.”

“Lad?”

She pointed to the proximal end of the bone. “The epiphysis has only begun to unite, which suggests an age of between seventeen and thirty.”

Frank stood up straight. “So that means that at the place they suspect their teenage daughter disappeared, they found the partial remains of possibly a teenage boy who had been hit with enough force to break his collarbone.”

“Yes.”

Frank frowned. “I don’t like that.”

“No. I shouldn’t think you would.”

“What are the odds that it’s just a coincidence that they find the bones of this boy in a place where they were looking for a missing girl?” he said.

“Slim to none.”

Diane put the insect parts in another envelope, inspected the original plastic bag for more debris and handed everything back to Frank. “It looks like you have a serious problem on your hands.”

Diane was craving sleep as she walked up the steps of the converted old Greek revival house containing her apartment. The dark shadow of herself cast by the dim porch light reflected in the glass pane of the outside door. She looked at her watch-2:10 A.M. She counted to herself. Four hours’ sleep, max. She looked up at the sky. Dark clouds backlit by a full moon.

“Don’t rain,” she commanded the sky. “I don’t want to deal with rain tomorrow.”

Her fingers, made tender from assembling the exhibits, hurt as she turned her door key in the lock. As she climbed the stairs leading to the second floor, her back muscles burned and her legs cramped from stooping and lifting all day. She fumbled with her keys and opened her door to a dark apartment. She reminded herself to start leaving a light on.

She was bone tired, and, to top off the long day, she had offended Leonard, one of the security guards, by asking him not to be rude to the workers. From the set of his mouth she could tell he hadn’t liked being told how to act. She’d figure out something to say to him tomorrow. He’d get over it in time. After Milo, she must seem like an intruder to some of the older staff.

Diane would have liked to soak in a tub of warm water for an hour, maybe two, but settled for a quick shower and crawled into bed and dropped off into the unconsciousness of sleep.

Even in the dark, the foliage blazed a brilliant green. The color was blinding and Diane didn’t know how to find her way through it. Fear burned white-hot in her stomach. Off in the distance, a burst of gunfire startled her into full running panic. Everywhere she turned, vines clutched her legs, pulled at her body. Enormous heavy leaves slapped her face. She fought, trying to push them out of the way. Each slap of her hand against the leaves left a bloodred print. The gunfire was deafening-she must be getting closer. Vines grabbed her shoulders, turning into hands, pulling her away from the sound. “No, no!” she screamed, trying to pull the hands off her. The sound of gunfire came so fast it sounded like ringing.