Kathy Reichs - Spider Bones

“A long shot is better than no shot at all. I’ll call first thing tomorrow, ask Beasley to poke around.”

Ryan proposed taking Katy and Lily to Pearl Harbor the following day. I wished him luck.

At eleven, we too retired to our separate rooms.

Through my wall, I heard Lily talking on her cell.

THE SUNSHINE SISTERS WERE STILL SLEEPING WHEN I ENTERED the kitchen at eight the following morning. Ryan was lacing on Nikes for a run on the beach. The plan was that he and our daughters would spend the day at Pearl Harbor, visiting the USS Arizona monument and touring the USS Missouri battleship and the USS Bowfin submarine. I wished him luck in dealing with the dim and murky realm of female resentment. Then I was off to the CIL. I thought of the dog tag the whole drive. It just made no sense.

Dimitriadus was on my bumper as I turned in at JPAC. We crossed the lot together. In silence. I wondered how an examiner of unidentified bones could miss a dog tag in a box. Ten feet from the building, he accelerated his pace and shot inside, letting the door slam in my face.

Last night, Lily’s cold shoulder. This morning, Dimitriadus. I was beginning to feel like the class pariah.

Danny was in his office.

“Dimitriadus is acting like I killed his puppy.”

“Come in.” Danny’s smile faded. “Close the door.”

Puzzled, I did.

“We’re cutting Dimitriadus loose.”

“Jesus. The guy’s been here, what, twelve years? Why?”

“A number of reasons. Most recently, he failed his ABFA exam again.” Danny referred to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology examination for certification, a credential essential for qualification in the field.

“The dog tag?”

“The decision was made before that came up, so no.”

“What will he do?”

Danny spread both hands. Who knows?

“That info is for your ears only. So far only Dimitriadus, Merkel, you, and I know.”

I nodded.

A beat passed.

“Today’s good news is that J-2 has Alvarez’s IDPF.”

J-2, the joint command records section, has access to information on deceased personnel going back to World War I.

“I was just about to walk over and pick it up. Jackson asked about you. Come along, make the man’s day.”

“Corporal Jackson? The guy who convinced everyone the phone lines were scheduled for cleaning by a steam blast, and that all handsets had to be sealed in plastic bags for an hour?”

“It’s Sergeant Jackson now.”

“He’s been here a long time.”

“He’s just been reassigned back, actually.”

“I no longer have clearance to J-2.”

“Follow me, little squaw.”

Little squaw?

Danny and I took the corridor past the general’s staff offices to a door at the back of the building and entered a large room furnished with cubicles containing desks, most occupied by civilians I knew to be analysts and historians. At the far end, a second door led to a secure area filled with movable shelving similar to that used for bone storage in the CIL lab. Instead of bones, these shelves held hundreds of small gray filing boxes, each identified by a sequence of numbers. The REFNOs.

At the counter, we chatted a moment with Sergeant Dix Jackson, a black man with mulberry splotches on his face and arms the size of sequoias. Needless to say, no one ever mentioned the splotches.

Jackson and I reminisced, each trying to top the other with recollections of practical jokes from the past. He won with a story involving Danny, a toilet stall, a burning bag, and buckets of water raining down from above.

Feigning annoyance, Danny filled out a request for the file on 1968-979, the unknown recovered near Long Binh in ’68.

Jackson read the form. “When you need this, Doc?”

“Yesterday.”

“You got it.”

Danny signed for and scooped up Alvarez’s IDPF.

We started to leave.

“And, Doc?”

We both turned.

“You feel the urge to do your business, relax. We got no fire drills scheduled this month.”

Back in Danny’s office, we cleared the love seat and coffee table. No banter. We were both very focused on learning everything we could about Spec 2 Alvarez.

Work space readied, we sat. Danny unwound the string, spread the file, and extracted the contents.

I swallowed.

Throughout my years consulting to CILHI, the photos always distressed me more than anything else. Alvarez’s lay smack on top.

The old black-and-white showed a Latino-looking man in his army uniform. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and lashes that were wasted on a Y-chromosomer.

A second photo captured nine soldiers, hair sweat-pasted to their temples and brows. All wore fatigues with the sleeves rolled up. One sported a Tilley hat, fishing lure pinned to a rakishly flipped brim.

The name Alvarez was scrawled in faded blue ink across the chest of the third man from the right. Third kid from the right.

Alvarez wasn’t big, wasn’t small. Of the group, he alone wasn’t looking at the camera. His face was turned, as though a momentary distraction had caught his attention.

What, I wondered? A bird in flight? A passing dog? Movement in the brush?

Had he been mildly curious? Startled? Afraid for his life?

“¡Ay, caramba!” Danny was looking at Alvarez’s induction record. “The gentleman in question was Mexican-American.”

“That fits our profile for 2010-37. Any medical or dental records?”

Danny viewed the stack side-on. “Yep. Let’s save those for last.”

Danny skimmed a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper, the kind kids use for middle school essays.

“A letter from Fernando Alvarez, Luis’s father,” he said. “You read Spanish?”

I nodded.

Danny handed me the paper.

The letter was written in a neat, almost feminine hand. No header indicated the recipient’s name. The date was July 29, 1969. The English stopped after “Dear Sir.”

The message was poignant in its simplicity.

I’d read many. Every single solitary one had touched me deeply.

“What’s he say?” Danny asked. Knowing.

“My son was a hero. Find him.”

Next came clippings from a Spanish-language newspaper. One announced Luis Alvarez’s graduation from high school. The photo showed a younger version of the man in uniform. Mortarboard. Tassel. Somber grin.

One story announced Alvarez’s departure for Vietnam. Another reported his status as MIA.

Danny picked up a telegram. I felt no need to read it. We regret to inform you. Maria and Fernando Alvarez were being notified that their son was missing.

Next came statements from witnesses who saw the Huey go down. A guard on his way from the Long Binh jail to his barracks. A motorist traveling the road to Saigon. A maintenance worker at the helicopter landing pad. One soldier had provided a hand-drawn map.

The file also contained a standard DD form recording the loss incident, and unclassified documents compiled by analysts attempting to determine what had happened to Alvarez.

An hour after leaving the J-2 shop, Danny and I turned to Luis Alvarez’s medical and dental records.

Only to be disappointed.

Nothing in the antemorts positively linked the missing Spec 2 to the bones accessioned as 2010-37. Either Alvarez had enjoyed the best health on the planet or, like Lowery, his records were incomplete.

“Maria Alvarez died in nineteen eighty-seven,” I read aloud. “No other maternal relative provided a DNA sample.”

“We probably won’t get sequencing on 2010-37, anyway,” Danny said.