Kathy Reichs - Spider Bones

“Hot damn.”

“Hot damn.”

The sand was cool underfoot. Waves pounded the shore. It felt glorious to be outside. To taste salt on my lips and feel wind in my hair.

To be with Ryan?

Yeah. OK. To be with Ryan.

He didn’t reach for my hand. I didn’t take his. Still. We both felt it. An enormous elephant plodding beside us up the beach.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing what he has to say.”

Lost in pachyderm reflection, I missed Ryan’s meaning.

“What who has to say?”

“The shark guy.”

“Why?”

“Who knows what may one day prove professionally useful?”

“You work in Quebec.”

“Sharks are devilishly sly creatures.”

Was Ryan’s interest really in sharks? Or in the quirky but fetching Dr. Hadley Perry?

Whatever.

“Sure,” I said. “Come along.”

Dorcas Gearhart was in the lobby when we arrived at the ME’s office. Ryan had erred. The shark guy turned out to be of my gender.

Gearhart had frizzy gray hair swept from her face by pink plastic barrettes, and wire-rimmed specs resting low on her nose. I guessed her height at five feet, her age at somewhere just south of sixty.

We exchanged alohas, names, shook hands. I wondered what comments Katy and Lily would have made on the good doctor’s muumuu, sneakers, and cardigan sweater. I wondered what comments Katy and Lily had exchanged on their drive into the city.

While waiting for Perry, Ryan asked Gearhart how she’d gotten into the fish business.

Based on the woman’s looks, I’d expected grandmotherly speech and deportment. Not even close.

“Fucking bad luck.” Gearhart’s laugh came from deep within her substantial girth. “Or good. Who knows? I applied for med school, got bonged. A prof I was sleeping with recommended the marine bio grad program. Seemed a better option than marrying and popping out kids.”

“Why sharks?” Ryan didn’t miss a beat.

“Some yank-off beat me out for the dolphin fellowship.”

I was about to ask a question when Perry appeared. Today the hair spikes were emerald, the lids chartreuse.

More greetings, intros. I watched Ryan’s face. Discreetly. Perry’s. Neither gave a hint of past history.

Perry said she’d had the remains pulled from the cooler.

We trooped single file to the same autopsy room I’d visited on Tuesday.

A black plastic bag lay on a stainless steel cart. A small one.

Perry, Gearhart, and I gloved. Ryan watched.

Perry opened the bag, slid a glob of bone and tissue onto the cart.

The smell of salt and decaying flesh filled the room.

I lifted and inspected the soggy mass.

One glance told me I was holding a portion of human calf. I could see a fragment of fibula, the slender outer bone of the lower leg. The tibia, or shinbone, was in better shape. Its ankle end was recognizable within a mass of tangled tendons and rotting muscle.

Both bones were covered with shallow cuts, deep gouges, and long grooves. Both terminated in jagged spikes.

I looked up. To six expectant eyes.

“It’s part of a human lower leg. Decomp is consistent with the remains we examined on Tuesday.”

“So’s the shark damage, right?” Perry.

Stepping to the cart, Gearhart nudged me not so gently aside. I moved back.

“Oh, yeah. This was shark.”

“Can you tell what kind?” Perry asked.

“Got a magnifier?”

Perry produced a hand lens.

We all clustered around Gearhart. Her short stature worked in our favor.

“Look here, inside this groove.” Gearhart positioned the glass. “See how fine and regularly spaced the striations are? That means the teeth were ridged, like a serrated knife. I’d say we’re talking Galeocerdo cuvier or Carcharodon carcharias. ”

The collective lack of response was question enough.

“Tiger or white,” Gearhart said.

I couldn’t help it. A few beats of the Jaws theme thrummed in my head.

“White sharks are pretty rare in Hawaiian waters, so I’d put my money on tiger. Based on distance between the striations, I’d say this baby’s probably twelve to fourteen feet long.”

“Jesus.” Ryan.

“Hell, that’s nothing. I once met a twenty-two footer, up close and personal. That mother had to weigh nine hundred kilos.”

Quick math. Nineteen hundred pounds. I hoped Gearhart was exaggerating.

“Do tiger sharks really deserve the nasty Hollywood image?” Ryan asked.

“Ooooh, yeah. Tigers are second only to whites in the number of recorded attacks on humans. And they’re not what you’d call discriminating diners. These buggers’ll eat anything, people, birds, sea turtles, plumbing parts. Generally tigers are sluggish, but tweak the old taste buds, they can really move. You see one, it’s best to haul ass.”

“Where might I see one?” I asked.

“They’re mostly active at night.”

Yep. The opening scene from Jaws.

“—reason tigers encounter humans so often is that they like to enter shallow reefs, lagoons, harbors, places like that. To feed. Mostly after dusk.”

Perry interrupted the nature lesson.

“Can you tell if the vic was alive when the shark bellied up?”

Gearhart played her lens over the remains.

“The random nature of the tooth marks suggests the leg was fleshed at the time of feeding. The tiger’s pattern is to bite down then shake, allowing the serrated teeth to rip through the flesh. The jaw muscles are astounding. Strong enough to slice right through bone, or the shell of a tortoise.”

I was really wishing Katy had gone to the mall with Lily.

“So you can’t determine if the shark killed the kid or just scavenged on his body?” Perry pressed.

“Nope.”

As Perry and Gearhart spoke I studied the leg.

“Can you tell if the kid was killed at Halona Cove, or elsewhere, then regurgitated there?”

“Nope.”

I rotated the sad little hunk of flesh.

“Look, Doc.” Perry’s voice had an edge. “I have to consider whether this presents an issue of public safety. Do I need to close that beach?”

“In my opinion, no. Not based on a single isolated incident.”

Using one finger, I retracted the flesh overlying the distal tibia.

My heart kicked to a tempo that matched the refrain in my head.

“Meaning?” Perry asked.

“You get more than one death, then maybe you’ve got a rogue.”

“A rogue?”

“An opportunist. A shark who’s developed a taste for people.”

I looked up and met Ryan’s eyes. His brows dipped on seeing my expression.

“Bad news,” I said.

“THIS IS NOT THE SAME KID.”

“What do you mean?” Perry strode to the cart.

“Look.” I pointed to a triangular projection on the lower end of the tibia. “That’s the medial malleolus, the bony lump you feel on the inside of your ankle. The malleolus articulates with the talus in the foot, and provides joint stability.”

“So?”

I oriented the limb. “That’s correct anatomical position.”

Perry studied the short segment of calf. Then, “Sonofabitch.”

“What?” Ryan and Gearhart asked as one.

“This is from a left leg,” I said. “Parts of a left leg were also recovered on Tuesday, including a portion of medial malleolus.”

“A freakin’ duplication.” Perry shook her head in disbelief.

Gearhart got it. “A human being does not have two left feet. This has to be from a different person.”

I waited for Ryan to make a bad dancer joke. Mercifully, he didn’t.