Kathy Reichs: Cross bones

Eight eyes tracked me as I crossed to the deceased. Observer number four reclasped his hands in front of his genitals.

Avram Ferris didn’t look like he’d died last week. He looked like he’d died during the Clinton years. His eyes were black, his tongue purple, his skin mottled olive and eggplant. His gut was distended, his scrotum ballooned to the size of beach balls.

I looked to Ryan for an explanation.

“Temperature in the closet was pushing ninety-two,” he said.

“Why so hot?”

“We figure one of the cats brushed the thermostat,” Ryan said.

I did a quick calculation. Ninety-two Fahrenheit. About thirty-five Celsius. No wonder Ferris was setting a land record for decomposition.

But heat had been just one of this gentleman’s problems.

When hungry, the most docile among us grow cranky. When starved, we grow desperate. Id overrides ethics. We eat. We survive. That common instinct drives herd animals, predators, wagon trains, and soccer teams.

Even Fido and Fluffy go vulture.

Avram Ferris had made the mistake of punching out while trapped with two domestic shorthairs and a Siamese.

And a short supply of Friskies.

I moved around the table.

Ferris’s left temporal and parietal bones were oddly splayed. Though I couldn’t see the occipital, it was obvious the back of his head had taken a hit.

Pulling on gloves, I wedged two fingers under the skull and palpated. The bone yielded like sludge. Only scalp tissue was keeping the flip side together.

I eased the head down and examined the face.

It was difficult to imagine what Ferris had looked like in life. His left cheek was macerated. Tooth marks scored the underlying bone, and fragments glistened opalescent in the angry red stew.

Though swollen and marbled, Ferris’s face was largely intact on the right.

I straightened, considered the patterning of the mutilation. Despite the heat and the smell of putrefaction, the cats hadn’t ventured to the right of Ferris’s nose or south to the rest of the body.

I understood why LaManche needed me.

“There was an open wound on the left side of the face?” I asked him.

“Oui. And another at the back of the skull. The putrefaction and scavenging make it impossible to determine bullet trajectory.”

“I’ll need a full set of cranial X-rays,” I said to Lisa.

“Orientation?”

“All angles. And I’ll need the skull.”

“Impossible.” Observer four again came alive. “We have an agreement.”

LaManche raised a gloved hand. “I have the responsibility to determine the truth in this matter.”

“You gave your word there would be no retention of specimens.” Though the man’s face was the color of oatmeal, a pink bud was mushrooming on each of his cheeks.

“Unless absolutely unavoidable.” LaManche was all reason.

Observer four turned to the man on his left. Observer three raised his chin and gazed down through lowered lids.

“Let him speak.” Unruffled. The rabbi counseling patience.

LaManche turned to me.

“Dr. Brennan, proceed with your analysis, leaving the skull and all untraumatized bone in place.”

“Dr. LaManche-”

“If that proves unworkable, resume normal protocol.”

I do not like being told how to do my job. I do not like working with less than the maximum available information, or employing less than optimum procedure.

I do like and respect Pierre LaManche. He is the finest pathologist I’ve ever known.

I looked at my boss. The old man nodded almost imperceptibly. Work with me, he was signaling.

I shifted my gaze to the faces hovering above Avram Ferris. In each I saw the age-old struggle of dogma versus pragmatics. The body as temple. The body as ducts and ganglia and piss and bile.

In each I saw the anguish of loss.

The same anguish I’d overheard just minutes before.

“Of course,” I said quietly. “Call when you’re ready to retract the scalp.”

I looked at Ryan. He winked, Ryan the cop hinting at Ryan the lover.

The woman was still crying when I left the autopsy wing. Her companion, or companions, were now silent.

I hesitated, not wanting to intrude on personal sorrow.

Was that it? Or was that merely an excuse to shield myself?

I often witness grief. Time and again I am present for that head-on collision when survivors face the realization of their altered lives. Meals that will never be shared. Conversations that will never be spoken. Little Golden Books that will never be read aloud.

I see the pain, but have no help to offer. I am an outsider, a voyeur looking on after the crash, after the fire, after the shooting. I am part of the screaming sirens, the stretching of the yellow tape, the zipping of the body bag.

I cannot diminish the overwhelming sorrow. And I hate my impotence.

Feeling like a coward, I turned into the family room.

Two women sat side by side, together but not touching. The younger could have been thirty or fifty. She had pale skin, heavy brows, and curly dark hair tied back on her neck. She wore a black skirt and a long black sweater with a high cowl that brushed her jaw.

The older woman was so wrinkled she reminded me of the dried-apple dolls crafted in the Carolina mountains. She wore an ankle-length dress whose color fell somewhere between black and purple. Loose threads spiraled where the top three buttons should have been.

I cleared my throat.

Apple Granny glanced up, tears glistening on the face of ten thousand creases.

“Mrs. Ferris?”

The gnarled fingers bunched and rebunched a hanky.

“I’m Temperance Brennan. I’ll be helping with Mr. Ferris’s autopsy.”

The old woman’s head dropped to the right, jolting her wig to a suboptimal angle.

“Please accept my condolences. I know how difficult this is for you.”

The younger woman raised two heart-stopping lilac eyes. “Do you?”

Good question.

Loss is difficult to understand. I know that. My understanding of loss is incomplete. I know that, too.

I lost my brother to leukemia when he was three. I lost my grandmother when she’d lived more than ninety years. Each time, the grief was like a living thing, invading my body and nesting deep in my marrow and nerve endings.

Kevin had been barely past baby. Gran was living in memories that didn’t include me. I loved them. They loved me. But they were not the entire focus of my life, and both deaths were anticipated.

How did anyone deal with the sudden loss of a spouse? Of a child?

I didn’t want to imagine.

The younger woman pressed her point. “You can’t presume to understand the sorrow we feel.”

Unnecessarily confrontational, I thought. Clumsy condolences are still condolences.

“Of course not,” I said, looking from her to her companion and back. “That was presumptuous of me.”

Neither woman spoke.

“I am very sorry for your loss.”

The younger woman waited so long I thought she wasn’t going to respond.

“I’m Miriam Ferris. Avram is…was my husband.” Miriam’s hand came up and paused, as if uncertain as to its mission. “Dora is Avram’s mother.”

The hand fluttered toward Dora, then dropped to rejoin its counterpart.

“I suppose our presence during the autopsy is irregular. There’s nothing we can do.” Miriam’s voice sounded husky with grief. “This is all so…” Her words trailed off, but her eyes stayed fixed on me.

I tried to think of something comforting, or uplifting, or even just calming to say. No words formed in my mind. I fell back on clichés.

“I do understand the pain of losing a loved one.”

A twitch made Dora’s right cheek jump. Her shoulders slumped and her head dropped.