Kathy Reichs - Devil Bones

“If Wanda’s clear, then I gotta like Cuervo. Assuming Roseboro’s not taking us for a ride.”

“May I see the mug shot?”

Slidell dug the printout from the folder.

The quality was, indeed, lousy. The man was all teeth and wrinkles, with thick gray hair swept back from his face.

“If Cuervo is Latino, Santería makes sense,” Slidell said. “Or that other one.”

“Palo Mayombe.” I hoped that wasn’t it. If so, I hoped it was not of the Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo variety. “What about Roseboro?”

“I’ll let him cool his heels, then go in for some more face time. Fear has a way of jogging the gray cells.”

“Then?”

“I’ll cut him loose and start looking for Cuervo. Start with his cell phone.”

“And the INS. Cuervo could be undocumented.”

Slidell rolled his eyes at my use of the term. “Him being illegal could explain Roseboro’s desire for cash and carry only.”

“Rinaldi call in?”

Slidell checked his voice mail and mobile, then shook his head.

“I’m going to the ME office,” I said. “Let me know if Rinaldi learns anything. If not, maybe it’s time to put the girl’s face out there. I’ll phone when Larabee and I finish with the Lake Wylie torso.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Slidell said.

We didn’t know that another plan was already unfolding. A plan traveling a deadly collision course with our own.

WEEKENDS MEAN PAYCHECKS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR KNOCKING back booze. Consequently, the number of brawls, batteries, mishaps, and misfortunes swells from quittin’ time on Friday till church on Sunday. Week’s opening can be bedlam at a morgue. Week’s close, on the other hand, is often tranquil.

Such was not the case this Friday morning.

Two blocks out I knew something was wrong. Vehicles filled the few slots fronting the MCME and lined the curbs on College and Phifer.

Drawing close, I could read logos. WBTV. WSOC. WCCB. News 14 Carolina.

Gunning into the lot, I threw the car into park, flew out the door, and raced toward the building. TV crews, print reporters, and photographers blocked the front entrance. Head lowered, elbows winging, I charged into the pack.

“Dr. Brennan,” a voice said.

Ignoring it, I plowed forward, anger tensing every muscle in my body. After much shoving by me and name-calling by others, I finally broke through.

Boyce Lingo was holding court at the top of the steps. As before, Crew-Cut-Squirrel-Cheeks was covering his flank.

“We are a tolerant society.” Lingo’s kindly smile faded to stern. “But now is not a time for indulgence. An attitude that permits devil worship permits every other brand of evil. Drunkenness, adultery, idolatry, homosexuality. All manner of antifamily moral perversion.”

I stepped forward, arms raised like a school crossing guard. “This press conference is over.”

Lenses swiveled in my direction. Microphones shot toward my face.

I heard murmuring. My name. Anthropologist. UNCC.

“Your presence here is hampering our ability to do our jobs.”

Lingo froze, arms V-ed downward, fingers intertwined in front of his genitals.

“You must all leave.”

“Is it true Anson Tyler’s head was cut off?” a reporter called out.

“It is not,” I snapped, immediately regretted being sucked into an answer.

“What can you tell us about the Tyler case?” a woman’s voice asked.

“No comment.” Glacial.

“What about the body found at Lake Wylie?” Yelled from the back of the mob.

“No comment.”

“The commissioner says satanic symbols were carved into the flesh.”

“No. Comment.”

I glared at Lingo, fury firing from nerve ending to nerve ending.

“Why not admit the truth, Dr. Brennan?” Lingo, the concerned activist.

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ass.”

A small, collective gasp. A few nervous giggles.

“The people of Charlotte deserve answers.”

“The people of Charlotte do not deserve you generating baseless fears.” Compared to Lingo’s syrupy baritone, my voice sounded shrill.

Lingo smiled benignly, a loving parent observing an ill-tempered child. I wanted to kick the sanctimonious bastard right down the steps.

“Is it LeVay? Church of Satan?” Shouted.

“Is it true these people are torturing and killing animals?”

“How big is the Charlotte coven?”

“Disperse now or the police will be called to clear the premises.”

My threat was ignored.

“Do the cops have a suspect?”

“Why the cover-up?”

A mike veered close. I slapped it aside. The boom winged back, scraping my cheek.

I lost it.

“There! Is! No! Cover-up! There is no goddamn conspiracy!”

Lenses clicked furiously.

“You are being manipulated!” Stepping forward, I grabbed a television camera and turned it onto the crowd. “Look at yourselves. This is a scalp hunt!”

Behind me I heard the glass door swing open.

“Hit the road!”

Fingers wrapped my wrist.

Yanking free, I made underhanded sweeping gestures with my fingers.

“Quick! Maybe you can find a nun who’s been raped. Or a bludgeoned granny eaten by her poodle.”

“Easy.” Whispered. Turning my shoulders, Larabee nudged me toward the entrance.

Before the door closed, I managed to toss off one last suggestion.

Ten minutes later I’d regained my composure.

“How bad was it?”

Larabee recapped the highlights.

“ Clusterfuck ?”

Larabee nodded.

“The mikes caught it?” A headache knocked at the back of each eyeball.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Oh, God.”

“Him, too. Let’s hope word doesn’t reach the chief.”

North Carolina has a statewide medical examiner system, with the chief ME’s office in Chapel Hill.

“He’ll be pissed.”

“He will,” Larabee agreed.

“What now?”

“You and I autopsy the Lake Wylie kid.”

And that’s what we did.

By three, X-rays glowed from light boxes, fingerprint forms covered one countertop, organ slivers floated in jars, and bone specimens lay in stainless steel bowls. Liver, pancreas, lung, stomach, kidney, and brain for the ME. Clavicular extremities, pubic symphyses, cervical vertebrae, and a two-inch plug of femoral shaft for me.

The pentagram and 666 signs hung ghostly pale in their formalin bath. Gray-pink craters marked the excision sites in the chest and belly.

Normally, when all cutting and weighing and observing is completed, an assistant closes the body, organizes the specimens, and cleans up so the pathologist can proceed to other aspects of the postmortem.

Today, Larabee and I lingered, baffled and frustrated.

“It’s ass backwards.” As Larabee spoke, Hawkins returned organs to the open chest cavity. “There’s more aerobic decomposition than anaerobic putrefaction.”

“As though the body had decomposed from the outside in, rather than the inside out,” I said.

“Exactly. And there’s too little of either, given a minimum PMI of forty-eight hours.”

“Temperatures have been in the eighties all week,” I said. “That stretch of shoreline gets full sun for more than ten hours a day. The corpse was loosely wrapped. Given that combination, things should have headed south fast.”

“Very fast,” Larabee agreed.

“And there should be signs of animal scavenging.”

“Yes.”

Hawkins transferred the liver. It made a soft, wet plop.

“And there’s nothing to indicate this body spent time in the lake.”

“Zip.”

“So what’s going on?”

“Got me.”

Hawkins hooked a short curved needle into the boy’s chest. The skin tugged up as he drew together the edges of the Y incision.