Kathy Reichs: Spider Bones

“You compromised the scene.”

“What scene? The guy was bobbing in a pond.”

“The flies will chip in to buy you a beer. Especially the ladies. They’re ovipositing with glee as we speak.”

“I was trying to help.”

“You broke protocol.”

Bandau’s lips tightened.

“What happened with the prints?”

“I got ridge patterning on all five digits. Someone at the post sent the file to CPIC. From there it went into both NCIC and the New York state system.”

CPIC is the Canadian Police Information Centre, a computerized index of criminal justice information. NCIC is the U.S. equivalent, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.

“Why send the prints south?”

“Being on the border, we get a lot of Americans coming through. And the scooter has a New York plate.”

Not bad, Bandau.

Hearing a car door slam, we both turned.

Ryan was walking toward us. Released for the moment, Gripper was leaning on his pickup, looking uneasy.

Ryan nodded to Bandau, spoke to me.

“What do you think?”

“Guy’s dead.”

“Guy?”

“Based solely on size.”

“How long?”

“Tough to say. Given this week’s warm temperatures, and the shrink-wrap, I’d guess a day or two. There’s some decomp, but not much.” I cast a meaningful glance at Bandau. “That’ll change now that the bugs have been issued a gate pass.”

I told Ryan what Bandau had done.

“What kind of rookie move was that?”

Bandau’s cheeks went raspberry.

“That’s no way to make it up the chain, son.”

Ryan turned back to me.

“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours tracks with the wit’s account. Gripper says he comes out here on his days off, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays. Swears day before yesterday the pond was canoe and corpse free.”

“Algae patterning suggests the body was floating with the head just at or below the waterline,” I said.

Ryan nodded. “According to Gripper, the body was hanging head up in the water, with the booted foot attached to a rock lying on the bottom. He guesses the pond’s about eight feet deep where he found the guy.”

“Where was the canoe?”

“Beside the vic. Gripper says that’s how the rope got tangled in his outboard.”

Ryan spoke to Bandau. “Check for feedback on those prints.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ryan and I watched Bandau lope toward his cruiser.

“Probably DVR’s cop shows,” Ryan said.

“Not the right ones,” I said.

Ryan glanced toward the body, back to me.

“What do you think?”

“Weird one,” I said.

“Suicide? Accident? Murder?”

I spread my palms in a “who knows” gesture.

Ryan smiled. “That’s why I bring you along.”

“The vic probably kept the canoe at the pond and drove the moped back and forth.”

“Back and forth from where?”

“Beats me.”

“Yep. Can’t do without you.”

A wood thrush trilled overhead. Another answered. The cheerful exchange was in stark contrast to the grim conversation below.

As I glanced up, hurried footsteps startled the birds into flight.

“Got him.” Bandau’s aviators were now hanging by one bow from his pocket. “Cold hit in the States. Thirteen-point match.”

Ryan’s brows may have shot higher than mine.

“John Charles Lowery. Date of birth March twenty-first, nineteen fifty.”

“Not bad, Bandau.” This time I said it aloud.

“There’s one problem.”

Bandau’s already deep frown lines deepened.

“John Charles Lowery died in nineteen sixty-eight.”

“HOW’S LOWERY A FLOATER TODAY IF HE CLOCKED OUT FOUR decades back?” Ryan voiced the question I’d been asking myself.

I had no answer.

We were heading north on 15. The coroner’s van was somewhere behind us. Pomerleau and Lauzon would check their soggy passenger into the morgue, where he’d wait in a cooler until I unwrapped him in the morning.

“Maybe the hit was a mistake.”

“Thirteen-point match?” My tone conveyed the skepticism I felt.

“Remember that lawyer in Oregon?”

Brandon Mayfield. The FBI linked him to the Madrid train bombing based on fingerprint evidence. Turned out the match was erroneous.

“That was a fluke,” I said. “You think printing the body on-site will cause blowback?”

“On the good agent, yeah. A bonehead move, but probably little harm done.”

“He meant well.”

Ryan shook his head in disbelief.

For several miles, silence filled the Jeep. Ryan broke it.

“You going home?”

I nodded.

Minutes later we were arcing over the Saint Lawrence on the Champlain Bridge. Below us, the river flowed cold and dark. To one side, tiny gardens and lawns winked nascent green amid the condo and apartment towers on île-des-Soeurs.

Back in the city, traffic moved like mud through a straw. The Jeep lurched and jerked as Ryan shifted between gas and brake.

Kind, yes. Witty, affirmative. Generous, absolutely. Patient, no way. Travel with Ryan was often a trial.

I checked my watch. Five ten.

Normally Ryan would have queried my dining plans by now. Suggested a restaurant. Tonight he didn’t.

Supper with his daughter? Beers with the boys? A date?

Did I care?

I cracked my window. The smell of oily water drifted into the Jeep. Warm cement. Exhaust.

Yeah. I cared.

Would I ask?

No way. Since our breakup we’d established a bimodal new balance. Professional relations: same as always. Social relations: don’t ask, don’t tell.

My choice, really. Though Lutetia was once again history, getting dumped for Ryan’s ex still hurt.

Once burned, twice shy.

And there was Charlie Hunt.

Snapshot image. Charlie on the rooftop deck of his uptown Charlotte brownstone. Cinnamon skin. Emerald eyes. Tall as his daddy, who’d played in the NBA.

Not bad.

I slid a glance toward Ryan.

Sandy hair. Turquoise eyes. Long and lean as his daddy in Nova Scotia.

Not bad either.

Truth be told, after decades of marriage, then a rocky postseparation readjustment, followed by going steady and an undeserved boot to the scrap heap, I was grooving on the nonmonogamy thing.

Except for two teensy details. Ryan hadn’t shared my bed since the previous summer’s split. Charlie Hunt had yet to gain access.

On dual levels it had been a long, cold winter.

The sound of Ryan’s mobile broke into my musings.

I listened as he said a lot of ouis, asked a few questions. From the latter I assumed the call was about John Lowery.

Ryan spoke to me after disconnecting. “Bandau sent a query south. Turns out our boy died in combat in Vietnam.”

“Are you using the Sesame Street theme as your ringtone?”

“Keeping the clouds away,” Ryan sang.

“Got some Big Bird sheets on your bed?”

“Bien sûr, madame.” Big wink. “Want to come check them out?”

“Lowery? Vietnam?”

“Ever hear of an outfit called JPAC?”

“Sure. I used to work with them. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. Used to be called CILHI until two thousand three.”

“Hallelujah. Alphabet soup.”

“Now I’ve said my ABC’s,” I sang.

“Let’s not push the metaphor, Ryan said.

“Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii. JPAC resulted from the merger of CILHI and the Joint Task Force–Full Accounting Commission. JPAC’s lab portion is now referred to as the CIL. It’s the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world.”