Patricia Cornwell: The Bone Bed

“I have no idea,” I confess.

“Whose livelihood was Emma Shubert messing with?”

“All I know is she found a tooth two days before she disappeared,” I reply. “Apparently it’s the first one unearthed in a bone bed that’s a rather recent discovery. She and other scientists had just started digging there a few summers ago.”

“A bone bed that may end up the most productive one anywhere,” Lucy says. “A burial ground for a herd of dinosaurs that died all at once, really unusual, maybe unprecedented. It’s an incredible opportunity to piece together entire skeletons and fill a museum, attract tourists and dino devotees and outdoors lovers from all over the world. Unless the area is so polluted nobody comes.”

One can’t read about Grande Prairie and not be aware of the economic importance of its natural gas and oil production.

“Seventeen hundred miles of pipeline carrying synthetic crude from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries in the Midwest and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” Lucy says, disappearing inside my bathroom, where there are a Keurig and macchinetta on the counter by the sink. “Pollution, global warming, total ruination.”

“Try the Illy MonoDose. The silver box,” I call out to her. “And make mine a double shot.”

“I believe this is a café Cubano kind of morning.”

“The demerara sugar is in the cabinet,” I let her know, as I finish my last sip of cold coffee and select play again.

What is it I’ve missed? Something.

I can’t shake the gut feeling, and I focus again on the overexposed figure whose features are blown out by the glaring sun. The person doesn’t appear to be very large, could be either a woman or a small man or possibly an older child wearing a sun cap with a veil around the sides and a wide brim that he or she appears to be holding with two fingers of the right hand, perhaps to keep the cap from blowing off. But again, I can’t be certain.

I can’t make out a single feature of the darkly shadowed face or what the person is wearing except for a long-sleeved jacket or baggy shirt and the sun cap, and there is a barely noticeable glint near the right temporal area that suggests glasses, possibly sunglasses. But I can’t be sure of anything. I don’t know much more now than I did when the attachment was e-mailed to me some twelve hours ago.

“I’ve heard nothing further from the FBI, but Benton’s arranged a meeting for later today, assuming I’m out of court in time,” I say, above the macchinetta’s steamy blasts. “More of an informal discussion, since nothing’s happened yet beyond the film clip being sent to me.”

“Something’s happened.” Lucy’s voice sounds from inside the bathroom. “Someone’s ear has been cut off. Unless it’s fake.”

three

THE EXTERNAL PART OF THE SEVERED EAR, THE PINNA, appears to have been cleanly excised from the fascia of the temporalis muscle.

I’ve magnified the image as much as I can without its deconstructing into a blur, and the visible edges of the incised wound appear sharp and regular. I see no paleness or any hint that the incised tissue is everted or collapsed, which is what I might expect in a dismemberment that occurs long after death—if the ear was removed from an embalmed body, from a medical school cadaver, for example. What I’m seeing doesn’t strike me as something like that. The ear and the blood on the newspaper don’t look old.

But I can’t know if the blood is human, and ears are difficult. They aren’t particularly vascular, and it’s not inconceivable one could cut off an ear ante- or postmortem and refrigerate it for weeks, and it might look fresh enough in a photograph to make it impossible for me to determine if the injury happened when the victim was alive or dead.

In other words, the jpg is far from adequate for my purposes, I’m explaining to Lucy. I need to examine the actual ear, to check incised edges for a vital response, to run the DNA in the National DNA Index (NDIS), and also the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), in the event the profile is connected to someone with a criminal record.

“I’ve already located fairly recent photos of her, plenty of them on various websites, including a few taken of her while she was working in Alberta this summer,” Lucy says from my office bathroom, as we continue to talk loudly enough to hear each other. “But obviously we can’t do a proper one-to-one. I have to adjust for size, angle it just right, but the good news is the overlay is at least helpful because she’s definitely not a rule-out.”

Lucy explains that she’s been comparing the jpg with photographs of Emma Shubert, attempting to overlay images of her ears with the severed one. We can’t rule out a match, but unfortunately a visual comparison isn’t conclusive, either.

“I’ll send you the file,” she adds. “You can show the comparisons to whoever comes to your meeting.”

“Will you be back around five?”

“I wasn’t aware I was invited.” Her voice sounds over the noise of another espresso brewing.

“Of course you’re invited.”

“Along with who else?”

“A couple of agents from the Boston Field Office. Douglas, I think.” I refer to Douglas Burke, a female FBI agent with a confusing name. “I’m not sure who else. And Benton.”

“I’m not available,” Lucy answers. “Not if she’s coming.”

“It really would be helpful if you’d be there. What’s wrong with Douglas?”

“Something is. No, thanks.”

Banished by both the FBI and ATF in her earlier law-enforcement life, my niece’s feelings about the Feds generally aren’t charitable, which can be awkward for me, since my husband is an FBI criminal intelligence analyst, or profiler, and I have a special reservist status with the Department of Defense. Both of us are part of what she resents and disrespects, the Feds who rejected her, who fired her.

Simply put, Lucy Farinelli, my only niece, whom I’ve raised like a daughter, believes rules are for lesser mortals. She was a rogue federal agent and is a rogue technical genius, and my life would feel shattered and vacant if she wasn’t around.

“We’re dealing with somebody pretty clever.” She emerges from the bathroom carrying two shot glasses and a small steel pitcher.

“That’s not a good sign,” I reply. “You rarely think anyone is clever.”

“Someone cunning who is smart on some fronts but too smug to realize how much he doesn’t know.”

She pours espresso, strong and sweet, with a light brown foamy layer on top, coladas that became a habit when she was with ATF’s Miami Field Office years ago, before she got into a bad shooting.

“The address BLiDedwood is rather obvious.” She sets a shot glass and the pitcher next to my keyboard.

“It’s not obvious to me.”

“Billy Deadwood.” She spells it out.

“Okay.” I let that sink in. “For my benefit?”

Lucy comes around to my side of the desk and taps the granite countertop behind me, waking up the two video displays on it. Screensavers materialize in vivid red, gold, and blue, the CFC’s and AFME’s crests side by side, a caduceus and scales of justice, and playing cards, pairs of aces and eights, the dead man’s hand that Wild Bill Hickok supposedly was holding during a poker game when he was shot to death in 1876.

“The crest for the AFME.” She indicates the dead man’s hand on the computer screens. “And Wild Bill Hickok, or Billy, was murdered in Deadwood , South Dakota. For your benefit? Yes, Aunt Kay. I just hope it’s not someone in our own backyard.”

“Why would you entertain the slightest suspicion that it might be?”

“Using a temporary free e-mail address that self-destructs or deletes itself in thirty minutes?” Lucy considers. “Okay, not all that unusual, could be anyone. Then this person routes the e-mail to you through a free proxy server, this particular one a high-anonymity type with an unavailable host name. Located in Italy.”