Kathy Reichs: Cross bones

I moved to her, squatted, and placed my hand on hers.

“Why Avram?” Choked. “Why my only son? A mother should not bury her son.”

Miriam said something in Hebrew or Yiddish.

“Who is this God? Why does he do this?”

Miriam spoke again, this time with quiet reprimand.

Dora’s eyes rolled up to mine. “Why not take me? I’m old. I’m ready.” The wrinkled lips trembled.

“I can’t answer that, ma’am.” My own voice sounded husky.

A tear dropped from Dora’s chin to my thumb.

I looked down at that single drop of wetness.

I swallowed.

“May I make you some tea, Mrs. Ferris?”

“We’ll be fine,” Miriam said. “Thank you.”

I squeezed Dora’s hand. The skin felt dry, the bones brittle.

Feeling useless, I stood and handed Miriam a card. “I’ll be upstairs for the next few hours. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to call.”

Exiting the viewing room, I noticed one of the bearded observers watching from across the hall.

As I passed, the man stepped forward to block my path.

“That was very kind.” His voice had a peculiar raspy quality, like Kenny Rogers singing “Lucille.”

“A woman has lost her son. Another her husband.”

“I saw you in there. It is obvious you are a person of compassion. A person of honor.”

Where was this going?

The man hesitated, as though debating a few final points with himself. Then he reached into a pocket, withdrew an envelope, and handed it to me.

“This is the reason Avram Ferris is dead.”

THE ENVELOPE HELD A SINGLE BLACK-AND-WHITE PRINT. PICTURED was a supine skeleton, skull twisted, jaw agape in a frozen scream.

I flipped the photo. Written on the back were the date, October 1963, and a blurry notation. H de 1 H. Maybe.

I looked a question at the bearded gentleman blocking my way. He made no move to explain.

“Mr.-?”

“Kessler.”

“Why are you showing this to me?”

“I believe it’s the reason Avram Ferris is dead.”

“So you’ve said.”

Kessler crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. Rubbed palms on his pants.

I waited.

“He said he was in danger.” Kessler jabbed four fingers at the print. “Said if anything happened it would be because of this.”

“Mr. Ferris gave this to you?”

“Yes.” Kessler glanced over his shoulder.

“Why?”

Kessler’s answer was a shrug.

My eyes dropped back to the print. The skeleton was fully extended, its right arm and hip partially obscured by a rock or ledge. An object lay in the dirt beside the left knee. A familiar object.

“Where does this come from?” I looked up. Kessler was again checking to his rear.

“ Israel.”

“Mr. Ferris was afraid his life was in danger?”

“Terrified. Said if the photo came to light there’d be havoc.”

“What sort of havoc?”

“I don’t know.” Kessler raised two palms. “Look, I have no idea what the picture is. I don’t know what it means. I agreed to keep it. That’s it. That’s my role.”

“What was your connection to Mr. Ferris?”

“We were business associates.”

I held out the photo. Kessler dropped his hands to his sides.

“Tell Detective Ryan what you’ve told me,” I said.

Kessler stepped back. “You know what I know.”

At that moment my cell sounded. I slipped it from my belt.

Pelletier.

“Got another call about Bellemare.”

Kessler sidestepped me and moved toward the family room.

I waggled the print. Kessler shook his head no and hurried down the hall.

“Are you ready to release the Cowboy?”

“I’m on my way up.”

“Bon. Sister’s busting her bloomers for a burial.”

When I disconnected and turned, the hall was empty. Fine. I’d give the photo to Ryan. He’d have a copy of the list of observers. If he wanted to follow up, he could get contact information for Kessler.

I pressed for the elevator.

By noon I’d completed my report on Charles Bellemare, concluding that, however strange the circumstances, the Cowboy’s last ride had been the result of his own folly. Turn on. Tune in. Drop out. Or down, in Bellemare’s case. What had he been doing up there?

At lunch, LaManche informed me there’d be difficulty viewing Ferris’s head wounds in situ. X-rays showed only one bullet fragment, and indicated the back of the skull and the left half of the face were shattered. He also informed me that my analysis would be critical since mutilation by the cats had distorted the patterning of metallic trace observable on X-ray.

In addition, Ferris had fallen with his hands beneath him. Decomposition had rendered gunshot-residue testing inconclusive.

At one-thirty I descended again to the morgue.

Ferris’s torso was now open from throat to pubis, and his organs floated in covered containers. The stench in the room had kicked into the red zone.

Ryan and the photographer were there, along with two of the morning’s four observers. LaManche waited five minutes, then nodded a go-ahead to his autopsy tech.

Lisa made incisions behind Ferris’s ears and across his crown. Using scalpel and fingers, she then teased off the scalp, working from the top toward the back of the skull, stopping periodically to position the case label for photographs. As fragments were freed, LaManche and I observed, diagrammed, then gathered them into containers.

When we’d finished with the top and back of Ferris’s head, Lisa retracted the skin from his face, and LaManche and I repeated the procedure, examining, sketching, stepping back for pics. Slowly, we extracted the wreckage that had been Ferris’s maxillary, zygomatic, nasal, and temporal bones.

By four what remained of Ferris’s face was back in position, and Y-shaped stitching held his belly and chest. The photographer had five rolls of film. LaManche had a ream of diagrams and notes. I had four tubs of bloody shards.

I was cleaning bone fragments when Ryan appeared in the corridor outside my lab. I watched his approach through the window above my sink.

Craggy face, eyes too blue for his own good.

Or mine.

Seeing me, Ryan pressed his palms and nose to the glass. I flicked water at him.

He pushed back and pointed at my door. I mouthed “open,” and waved him through, a goofy smile spreading across my face.

Okay. Maybe Ryan isn’t so bad for me.

But I had reached that opinion only recently.

For almost a decade Ryan and I had butted heads in an on-again, off-again nonrelationship. Up-down. Yes-no. Hot-cold.

Hot-hot.

I’ve been attracted to Ryan since the get-go, but there have been more obstacles to acting on that attraction than there were signers of the Declaration.

I believe in the separation of job from play. No watercooler romance for this señorita. No way.

Ryan works homicide. I work the morgue. Professional exclusion clause applies. Obstacle one.

Then there was Ryan himself. Everyone knew his bio. Born in Nova Scotia of Irish parents, young Andrew ended up on the wrong end of a biker’s shattered Budweiser bottle. Switching from the dark side, the boy signed on with the good guys and rose to the rank of lieutenant-detective with the provincial police. Grown-up Andrew is kind, intelligent, and strictly straight arrow where his work is concerned.

And widely known as the squad room Lothario. Stud muffin exclusion clause applies. Obstacle two.

But Ryan sweet-talked the loopholes, and, after years of resistance, I finally jumped through. Then obstacle three roared in with the Yule.

Lily. A nineteen-year-old daughter, complete with iPod, belly ring, and Bahamian mother, a flesh-and-blood memento of Ryan’s long-ago ride with the Wild Ones.