Michael Baden: Remains Silent

Jake got the familiar queasy feeling in his stomach that came with the suspicion of corruption. “Sure. A settler means no fights over Indian burial grounds, no worries about a crime scene. They can just rebury the bones somewhere else and get on with the mall.” He looked at his friend and mentor, feeling the anger in Pete’s bearing. “Do you think it’s a Native American?”

“I found an incisor. It isn’t shovel-shaped. The skull has rectangular eye sockets and a triangular nasal opening. You tell me.”

“Caucasian.”

Harrigan nodded. “And a good thing, too, as far as the mayor’s concerned. He was apoplectic at the prospect of a dispute over native land.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The bones were normal weight and nonporous.”

“Meaning they’re probably less than fifty years old.”

“And they weren’t sticky. The tongue doesn’t lie.”

Jake imagined Miss Crespy’s reaction when Pete touched his tongue to the remains, looking for stickiness caused by porous texture and a lack of organic material. “The death was recent. You told them that?”

“Of course. But with all that lovely tax revenue at stake, they’re hardly inclined to take the word of a bone-licker.”

“That’s why you called me in? To back you up?”

“Partly. And there are practical considerations. My hands and eyes are no longer as sharp as my mind. My heart isn’t getting any stronger. I’d already decided to step down as ME at the end of the year.” He paused. “This may be the last interesting case I ever get. It would be fitting if we did it together.”

He’s pleading with me, Jake thought, struck by a tone he had never heard before. Why? It was easy to remember Harrigan as the vigorous pathologist who had mentored him from the moment they’d met at the morgue at Bellevue Hospital; Jake had still been in medical school and the ME office had used the old Bellevue morgue. Now he studied his friend like the scientist Pete had trained him to be.

What he saw was a man whose hands shook with faint tremors, whose skin had become papery and translucent, whose watery eyes had lost some of their clarity and focus. He’s old. Older and more tired than I’ve ever seen him before.

“Of course I’ll help,” Jake said, feeling deeply moved. “I’m honored.”

Pete snorted. “Jesus, don’t go soft on me. Have some dignity, man.”

“Be polite,” Jake warned, “or you’re not getting your Johnnie Walker Blue.”

Pete’s eyes widened. “Blue?”

“Right there in my overnight bag. A little present from your most ardent admirer.”

“We’re here,” Pete said, stopping the car. “Let’s get this over with quickly so we can go back home and drink it.”

There were already more than a dozen cars parked on the scraggly grass at the edge of the construction site, including the sheriff’s cruiser. Beyond stretched land that had once been forest. Dozens of trees had already been felled, the logs waiting in neat pyramids to be hauled off to the sawmill. Pete and Jake set off toward the backhoe, a mute monster standing at the side of the field, impotent as a child’s toy. Fifteen people were clustered nearby, all men but for one woman, fiftyish and fierce beneath her blue peacoat- indubitably, Jake thought, Miss Crespy. Most of the men were wearing jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots, the universal garb of construction workers. Three more were standing a few yards from the rest, two wearing khakis and open-collared shirts, the other a beer belly and a badge. As soon as she saw Harrigan, the woman joined them.

“The one on the left’s the mayor,” Pete whispered. “Next to him’s the Reynolds foreman. The other’s the sheriff, obviously.”

The group had clearly been waiting for Harrigan to arrive. They looked at Rosen with the suspicion reserved for strangers in a small town.

“This here’s Dr. Jacob Rosen from the New York City medical examiner’s office,” Pete said. “Mayor Bob Stevenson, Sheriff Joe Fisk, Harry King- he’s in charge of construction- and, of course, Miss Crespy.”

All of them shook hands with Jake except Fisk, who turned his back, muttering something Jake couldn’t make out.

“Dr. Rosen is the best there is,” Pete said- too cheerfully, Jake thought. “I’ve asked him to help with the disinterment.”

Mayor Stevenson looked less than thrilled. “Come on, Pete,” he said. “You know the town can’t afford some fancy New York-”

“Dr. Rosen is volunteering his time as a personal favor to me. So let’s not waste our opportunity.”

The group arrived at the edge of the gash the giant machine had made in the ground the previous afternoon. A black tarp had been laid out nearby, bearing two bones and the upper part of a skull. None of the spectators seemed eager to get too close.

Jake crouched next to the tarp and picked up the skull. It was as Pete described: normal weight, nonporous. Clearly less than fifty years old.

Miss Crespy stepped forward. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater under her coat, neat blue jeans, and a pair of L.L. Bean rubber boots, reminding Jake of his first-grade teacher, a woman he had loathed. “It could have been in the ground for ages,” she said peremptorily. “Who can tell?”

“I can,” Jake said, “and so can Dr. Harrigan.”

“We didn’t find any iron nails or decayed coffin wood like you usually find near a settler’s bones,” Pete explained patiently, his voice hoarse. “Besides, these bones are relatively new.”

“I say we let Mr. King get back to work,” the sheriff said, standing over Jake like an overseer with a slave.

Jake looked up into an expression of pure malice. “Not until we examine the bones,” he said. “Right now they represent a puzzle we have to solve.”

“Can you say for sure the bones are new?”

“Not yet. That’s why Dr. Harrigan-” He stopped mid-sentence and pointed to the excavated ground, where a wide swath of topsoil had been removed, revealing the dirt beneath. Most of it was dark brown and compact. But to the left of where the bones had been found, patches of earth were lighter, less firmly packed. “Pete,” he said, “take a look at this.”

Harrigan bent, Jake noted, with some difficulty. “My God,” he breathed.

“What’s this?” Sheriff Fisk asked, exasperated. “What are we playing, Twenty Questions? You’re delaying the most important project ever to come Turner’s way because you found some bones a dog probably dragged here. It’s inexcusable.”

Jake stood, making it a point to ignore him. “When you bury a body, it disturbs the ground. Even after you fill it back in, the earth’s never the same. Even if the grass has grown back, underneath the topsoil it’s still obvious.” He indicated the border between the two shades of earth. “You can see here where the ground has been dug up and replaced.”

“So who gives a damn?” the sheriff snarled.

Jake stared at him coldly. “You will. Judging by the number of disturbed areas, there’s more than one body down there.”

ONE BY ONE, the bones were painstakingly brought from the ground and laid on the tarp. Jake examined each of them, heedless of the increasingly hot sun, his mind electric with excitement. It’s like playing with God’s jigsaw puzzle, he thought, placing the bones together in their anatomical positions. Soon he was working by himself. Pete, weakened by the heat, had gone back to Jake’s car for a rest; the others, quickly bored, decided to drive into town for breakfast. The construction workers had been sent home for the day. The foreman stayed and watched from the construction trailer.

Jake was relieved. The human body was to him magnificent, and its building blocks, its bones, never ceased to enthrall him. There was more beauty in the creation of man than there was in sublime music. He sometimes felt, as he felt now, that the mute bones were eloquent, if only he could fully understand their language. He formed skeletons- three men and, yes, a woman. What stories could they tell? he wondered. Who had brought them to this field and buried them?