Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"Good to know." The CBI agent scrawled a line in her notebook. "Nobody notices when the homeless drop out of sight, but there's bound to be a missing-person report on this lady. Can you tell us how these people died?"

"I can't be precise with the Hobbs boy," said the thin man. "Not yet. I'd like some time to differentiate the pre-mortem fractures of a fleshed-out body and the postmortem cracks of drying bones. Burial does its own damage. In the boy's case, no single trauma stands out as the fatal injury."

Now that the bones had been properly matched up, Cable could see that it must have been the woman's torso resting in Josh's coffin. The boy's rib cage was now properly matched up with the rest of him. Most of the ribs were broken, and so were two of the arm bones.

"The woman's cause of death is more obvious." Dr. Brasco turned her skull in his hands to show them the back, where cracked bits of bone bent inward, and lines of breakage spread out from this indent. "One massive trauma with a blunt instrument. It could've been a rock. That's my best guess. I'd rule out any manmade object with a smooth surface. The woman died quickly. And the boy-not so fast. Some of his fractures are consistent with defensive wounds."

"Well, here's one way to look at it." Sally Polk's pen hovered over a page in her notebook. "I see it as a classic bop-and-drop rape. The perp comes up behind the woman and drops her with the rock. But he goes too far, hits too hard. She's dead. And then…" Her eyes turned to the skeleton of the boy. "And then, he turns around-oh, damn-a witness. The boy saw him coming and fought back. That would explain the defensive wounds and all the time it took to kill him."

Dr. Brasco nodded in approval. "Yes, excellent, Sally-if not for the boy's broken fingers." He retrieved a box from the countertop near the table and opened it to show them what appeared to be small reddish sticks caked with dirt. "The excavation team hasn't recovered all of them yet, but I have enough for a working theory." As he laid out the skeletal fingers of Joshua Hobbs, he described a different scene with Josh as the primary target, and the killer as someone with reason to hurt the boy-to drag out his death for hours.

William Swahn shrugged off any connection between himself and Mavis Hardy. "I know her on sight. Everyone does. But we've never spoken." He held the magnifying glass over the small image of the librarian on the contact sheet. "I wouldn't have recognized her in that gown. She cleans up nicely."

"You know the kind of people who go to the ball," said Oren.

"Everybody in town."

"And a lot of Ad Winston's clients-criminals."

"Celebrity criminals." Swahn pointed to another small print. "Here's one of you. I'd say you were twelve the year this shot was taken." He handed Oren the magnifying glass and the contact sheet. "It appears that you only had eyes for one little girl that night."

"Isabelle Winston. You knew she was my second alibi. You gave me Evelyn's name, but not hers. Why?"

"I didn't know… My source told me there were two witnesses. Mrs. Straub was the only one I could verify."

"I've only got your word on that."

"Why would I lie?"

"Maybe you thought the Winston family was tied into a homicide."

"Her father was your lawyer, Mr. Hobbs. That's probably how Belle knew you needed an alibi." Swahn held up the contact sheet with tiny images of a boy and a girl at the birthday ball. "Obviously, she had a crush on you."

"She was only eleven years old in that picture." And, evidently, Ad Winston's daughter was close to this man-as close as Josh-on a first-name basis. "When she was sixteen, she had no reason to lie for me."

"Oh, really?" Swahn groped around in a carton he had brought down yesterday. He plucked out the photograph of two teenagers passing each other by on the sidewalk, each looking the other way. "You and Belle were professional strangers in those days. How old was she when this one was taken? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

Oren opened the red folder and pulled out Isabelle Winston's false statement to the sheriff.

Swahn read it, bemused. "You can't just ask her why she did this, can you? No, you'll never even tell her you read it. What a gentleman." He studied Oren's face, no doubt looking there for signs of hits and misses, and he seemed vaguely disappointed. "I don't think you need to know what happened to Josh."

Encouraged by a flicker of surprise in Oren's eyes, Swahn continued. "It's my impression that this investigation was forced on you. I don't see the passion of a man on a mission. You're in mourning, and it shows. You know what else I see? Guilt. I understand you held the rank of warrant officer. That's not like a job you can apply for, is it? You were hand-selected, the best of the best. It's interesting that you had all this talent in police work, so much experience-and twenty years went by before you investigated your brother's case."

Without a military interest, CID agents were forbidden to participate in civilian investigations, but Oren had a better counterpunch, and now he let it fly. "What about your own case? I know you never saw one shred of evidence against the cops in your old precinct. You just sicked a lawyer on them and grabbed the money."

Swahn only inclined his head a bare inch to acknowledge the truth of this. "Perhaps no one should investigate a case with a personal involvement. No objectivity. Hard, isn't it? Being Josh's avenger and his brother."

"He's always Josh to you. You've known Hannah for years, and you call her Miss Rice. The sheriff is a mediocre cop, but I'm sure he picked up on that. He probably thinks you were on a first-name basis with my brother before he disappeared."

"Before he died," said Swahn, correcting him. "Your housekeeper calls you and Judge Hobbs the kinderlost. Did you know that? It's a word she made up for the ones who get left behind when a child dies. She said the widows and orphans get titles of sympathy, but there was nothing like that for you and your father. So she coined a word to fill that awful void."

"Hannah spent a lot of time here, didn't she?"

"Yes, she used to be able to drink me under the table. These days, her tolerance for alcohol is diminishing. Now, when she stops by, it's less embarrassing."

"She's your friend."

"Yes. And now I think you believe that I didn't kill your brother. Like me, you trust Miss Rice's instincts."

"I need to see the last batch of photographs she gave you, the ones she had developed after Josh went missing."

William Swahn's surprise appeared to be genuine. He splayed his empty hands to say that he did not have any such pictures.

It was late in the day when the CBI agent entered Cable Babitt's office and introduced him to her pet forensic technician, a small man with a pug nose that made him appear ten years old at first glance. "I want this to be a joint investigation," said Sally-he must call her Sally. "So I'm here to share what we've got so far."

Did he believe this? No. At least she had not come to arrest him for tampering with evidence, but that might well be in his future.

She rested one hand on the shoulder of her companion. "This young man has a few details you might find interesting."

Her young man seemed a bit on the sullen side, maybe thinking it was pointless to update him on a crime that no longer belonged to the County Sheriff 's Office. If that had not yet been spelled out, the youngster's attitude made it plain enough.

Cable gestured toward the two chairs in front of his desk, and his visitors sat down.

The woman reached out to the forensics man and lightly thumped the back of his head in the way of prompting an unruly child. On this cue, the technician pulled out his notebook and read from the pages with no inflection, clearly bored by this chore. "A yellow raincoat was found in the grave."