Kathy Reichs - Devil Bones

“That’s my take.”

“Did you ask Escriva where Cuervo might be?”

“He claims they’ve had no contact in five years.”

“Did you ask about Asa Finney?”

“Swears he don’t know him.”

“What are you doing now?”

I heard movement, then Slidell’s voice grew muffled, as though he’d covered the receiver with one hand. “Going through Rinaldi’s notes.”

“You still have them?” I was surprised the case notes hadn’t been confiscated by the team investigating the shooting.

“I made photocopies yesterday morning.” Slidell’s words sharpened as he withdrew his lips from contact with the mouthpiece. “Trip to Raleigh ate up the rest of the day.”

Probably a cover. I couldn’t have looked at those notes yesterday, either.

“I need you to make it solid that Susan Redmon is our Greenleaf vic. Be a real pisser if that skull don’t go with the stuff in that coffin.”

I fought down a bitter taste in my throat. I’d be no good in the classroom, but at least I could do that.

“I’m heading to the lab now. I’m sorry about yesterday. Please keep me in the loop.”

Slidell either grunted or belched.

After disconnecting, I splashed cold water on my face, then checked the messages on my cell.

One from Katy. One from Charlie. Three from Slidell. One from Jennifer Roberts, a colleague at UNCC. Everyone said pretty much the same thing. Call me.

I tried Katy, but got her voice mail. Too early? Or had she already gone to work? Or departed Charlotte to work on the project in Buncombe County? I left basically the same message she had left me.

Slidell I would see soon. Talking to Charlie would require some preplanning. Calling Jennifer Roberts would blow my cover at UNCC. She’d have to wait.

Before leaving home, I tried a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

That came up, too.

After brushing my teeth a third time, I gathered my keys and purse and headed out the door.

And nearly fell over a large Dean amp; DeLuca bag sitting on the stoop. A note had been paper-clipped to one handle.

Tempe:

I know this is a rough time. I’m sorry if I offended you, but I was concerned for your safety. Please take this as a token of my sincere apology. And please, please. Eat.

Call when you feel up to turning on the phone.

Charlie

I was mortified. Sweet Jesus. What had Charlie tried to prevent?

Placing the food on the kitchen counter, I grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge, and started for the lab.

The movement of the car. The fumes. The soda. I almost lost it again.

OK. I would suffer until my body returned to normalcy. I would pay the price.

The upside was that the bender had played out at home. I’d harmed no one. I’d engaged in nothing more foolish than a sweaty tryst with an old high school flame.

Sadly, that last assumption would prove to be false.

Remember my comment concerning Mondays at a morgue? Double that for Tuesdays coming off holiday weekends.

All three pathologists were present, and the board showed eight new corpses. Since Rinaldi’s was not among them, I assumed Larabee, Siu, or Hartigan had come in the previous day to perform that autopsy. Given the circumstances, my money was on the boss.

Again, I was overcome with guilt. While I’d been destroying brain cells in a grand mal of self-pity, others had been carrying on doing their jobs.

I went straight to the cooler and pulled out Cuervo’s cauldron skull and leg bones and Finney’s mandible. Since both autopsy rooms were in use, I spread plastic on my office desk, lay the remains on it, and added the teeth that I’d taken from Susan Redmon’s coffin.

In two hours, I was finished. Every tooth fit. Every detail of age, gender, ancestry, and state of preservation matched. The measurements I’d taken in the tomb were compatible with those I’d taken from the skull. Fordisc 3.0 agreed. If needed I could run DNA comparisons, but I was convinced the skull, mandible, and coffin remains belonged to the same individual.

Now and then I saw Hawkins or Mrs. Flowers or one of the pathologists hurry past my open door. Larabee stopped at one point, looked at me oddly, moved on. No one ventured into my office.

I was composing my report on Susan Redmon when Mrs. Flowers rang to announce the call I’d been dreading. Dr. Larke Tyrell, head of North Carolina’s medical examiner system, was on the line from Chapel Hill.

“Could you possibly say that I’m not here?” I asked.

“I could.” Prim.

“I’m a little under the weather today.”

“You look a bit peaked.”

“Perhaps you could suggest that I’ve left early?”

“I suppose you might.”

Grateful, I didn’t ask what she meant.

Returning to the Redmon report proved futile. I couldn’t concentrate sufficiently to string words into meaningful sentences. I needed to stick to tasks that were more concrete. Visual.

For lack of a better idea, I returned to the cooler, withdrew Jimmy Klapec’s vertebrae and the mutilated tissue that had been excised from his chest and belly and set them on the desk beside Susan Redmon’s bones. Then I got out the school portrait of Takeela Freeman and the mug shots of Jimmy Klapec and T-Bird Cuervo and added them to the assemblage.

I was staring at the sad little collection, hoping for some sort of epiphany, when Larabee entered my office without knocking. Crossing to the desk, he loomed over me.

“You look awful.”

“I think I’ve got the flu.”

I could feel Larabee studying my face. “Maybe something you ate.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Larabee knew my history. Knew I was lying. Wanting to hide the guilt and self-loathing, I kept my eyes down.

Larabee continued looming. He was very good at it.

“What’s all this?”

I told him about Susan Redmon.

Larabee picked up the jar and inspected the two hunks of Jimmy Klapec’s carved flesh.

“Slidell’s convinced this all ties together.” I swept a hand over the desk. “Crack this, he says, we’ll crack Rinaldi’s murder.”

“You’re not convinced?”

“He was working the cases.”

“Rinaldi was a cop.”

We both knew what he meant. Disgruntled drug lords. Vengeful inmates. Dissatisfied victims. Most do little beyond fantasizing the settling of perceived scores. A dangerous few take action.

Larabee swapped the excised specimens for the mug shot of T-Bird Cuervo.

“Who’s this guy?”

“Thomas Cuervo, an Ecuadoran santero who rented the Greenleaf property from Kenneth Roseboro. Went by T-Bird.”

“The house with the cauldrons and skulls in the basement?”

I nodded. “Trouble is, Cuervo’s vanished. Either no one knows or no one’s willing to say where he is.”

Larabee studied the mug shot a very long time. Then, “I know exactly where he is.”

LARABEE LED ME THROUGH THE COOLER INTO THE FREEZER, TO A gurney rolled to the far back wall. Unzipping the body bag, he revealed a very icy corpse.

“Meet Unknown 358- 08.”

I studied the face. Though blanched, distorted, and badly abraded, there was no question it belonged to T-Bird Cuervo.

“How long has he been in storage?”

Larabee consulted the tag. “August twenty-sixth.”

That definitely put Cuervo in the clear on Klapec and Rinaldi.

“Why didn’t I know this body was back here?”

“He arrived the day you left for Montreal. The case didn’t call for an anthro consult. By the time you returned, I’d put him on ice.”

And I’d had no reason to venture into the freezer.

“He’s your boy, right?”

I nodded, arms hugging my sides in the cold.

“Poor bastard took on a Lynx. Just south of the Bland Street Station.”