Kathy Reichs - Spider Bones

“Two shark vics from the same bay.” Perry’s voice sounded higher than normal.

“That could change the picture.”

“You think?” Perry rounded on Gearhart. “So. Do I close that beach?”

“That’s your call, Doc.”

“Will this fucking fish strike again?”

Gearhart raised both brows and palms.

“Come on. Best guess.”

Gearhart shifted a hip. Bit her lip. Sighed. “If the shark is feeding, not just scavenging, the bastard bloody well might.”

Perry arm-wrapped her waist. Found the maneuver unsatisfactory. Dropped both hands. Turned to me.

“What can you tell me about this second vic?” Chin-cocking the cart.

“This individual is smaller than the first. Beyond that, zilch. There’s not enough to work with.”

Crossing to a wall phone, Perry punched buttons.

Seconds passed.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt the poker game.” Sharp.

I heard the buzz of a muffled response. Perry cut it off.

“Get me the Halona Cove bones. ASAP.”

The handset hit the cradle with a loud crack.

Less than one minute later a bald young man rolled a cart through the door.

“Anything else, Dr. Perry?” Baldy avoided eye contact with his boss.

“Stay in touch.”

Baldy bolted.

On the cart lay the following: proximal and distal portions of a left femur; a fragment of proximal left fibula; two fragments of left tibia, one proximal, the other distal, including the mangled malleolus; a portion of left pelvis extending from the pubic bone out into the blade; the talus, navicular, and third and second cuneiforms from a left foot.

Two large brown envelopes occupied the cart’s lower shelf.

“Double-check,” Perry ordered. “Be sure they’re both lefts.”

I did.

They were.

Despite the raucous hair and makeup, the ME’s face looked pallid.

I could imagine the battle playing out in Perry’s mind. The recession had slammed the Hawaiian economy. Air travel was down, and tourism was in the toilet. Close a beach due to shark attack, hotel bookings would vanish like early morning mist. Go the other way, lose a swimmer, mainlanders would opt for the Shenandoah or Disney World. The consequences would be worse than closing a beach.

Guess right, lose dollars. Guess wrong, lose lives as well as dollars.

And Perry had to act quickly.

My hunch? Honolulu’s flamboyant ME would once again piss people off.

I was rotating the new hunk of leg when I noticed an irregularity centered in the shaft approximately five centimeters above the troublesome malleolus. By scraping back tissue, I was able to see that the defect was a hole with a raised outer rim, too perfectly round to be natural.

“This could be helpful,” I said.

Perry snatched the magnifier and held it where I indicated.

“I’ll be damned. You thinking surgical pin?”

I nodded.

“The placement makes sense. Too bad we don’t have the calcaneous.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Someone going to educate us nonmedical mopes?” Ryan asked.

I kept my finger in place while Perry handed him the lens.

“That tiny hole?” he asked.

“That tiny hole.”

Ryan passed the lens to Gearhart.

“Everyone familiar with traction?” I asked.

Gearhart nodded.

Ryan shrugged. Not really.

“In orthopedics, traction is used for the treatment of fractured bones and for the correction of orthopedic abnormalities,” I explained for Ryan’s benefit. “Traction aligns the broken ends by pulling a limb into a straight position. It also lessens pressure on the bone ends by relaxing the muscles.”

Ryan snapped his fingers. “The old leg-in-the-air trick. Remember the scene in Catch-22 ? The guy’s in traction, covered with plaster, never moves, never speaks—”

I shot a narrow-eyed warning.

Ryan’s face went all innocent. What?

“My nephew got put in traction when he busted his leg.” Gearhart was again peering through the lens. “They drilled a pin right into his femur.”

“Once the hardware is inserted, pulleys and weights are attached to wires to provide the proper pull. Skeletal traction uses anywhere from twenty-five to forty pounds.”

“How long does the pin remain in place?” Ryan now sounded overly proper.

“Weeks, maybe months. This one was removed years ago.”

Gearhart jabbed at her glasses, which had slipped low on her nose. “What’s your take, Doc?”

“I’d guess an unstable tibial shaft fracture. The distal tibia would have been pinned to the calcaneous.”

“Which we don’t have.” Perry.

“Fractured how?” Gearhart asked.

“Skiing? Cycling? Car crash? Without more of the leg it’s impossible to say.”

“Space shuttle wipeout.” Perry began pacing.

“Look,” I said. “We still have potentially valuable information. The vic underwent treatment, was probably admitted as an in-patient somewhere. The cops or one of your investigators can check hospital records for distal tibia surgical implants.”

Perry stopped. “Time frame?”

“What we’re seeing is merely a scar, the result of bony remodeling at the pin site. The injury wasn’t recent. I’d start at least five years back, work farther into the past from there. A more effective shortcut, if you get lucky, would be to run the names from your MP list through local hospitals for matches, or to contact family members for histories of leg fractures.”

Perry gave a tight nod.

“You get any new leads on the first vic?” I asked.

“No, but we got some new MPs. Last January a college kid washed overboard from one of those Tall Ship things. We’re checking that out. A soap salesman disappeared from a Waikiki Beach hotel last summer. Left all his belongings in the room. Could be a suicide, a drowning, a cut-and-run.”

“How old?”

“Thirty-two.”

“I shook my head. “Not likely.”

Perry waggled frustrated hands. “It’s hard to keep the cops interested with thousands of tourists flowing through the islands each year. The medical angle might goose their effort. Or I could just pray for a benevolent god to save us the trouble with a DNA hit.”

Collecting a scalpel from the counter, Perry oriented the leg so that the flesh covering the outer ankle was positioned faceup. We all watched her blade kiss muscle.

Stop abruptly.

Laying the implement aside, Perry shot out a hand.

“Gimme the lens.”

Gearhart offered the magnifier. Perry grabbed it.

A few seconds of observation, then Perry strode to the sink and wet a sponge. Returning to the cart, she gently swabbed the tissue, wiping off any remaining epidermis.

“We may have us a tat.”

Gearhart and I exchanged glances.

A tattoo, I mouthed.

Gearhart’s mouth formed an O.

A bit more cleaning, then Perry gestured us forward with a back-flung arm.

We advanced as one, students gathering around Mr. Wizard.

Perry was magnifying a discoloration barely visible in the glob of flesh I’d retracted from the malleolus. I’d noticed the little blotch earlier, but, distracted by the realization that we had a second victim, I’d ignored it.

“I’ll be damned,” Ryan said

Perry shot photos of the tattoo, then, with intersecting cuts of her scalpel, excised it. Using both palms, she spread and flattened the flap of skin on the stainless steel.

“Get the lights.”

Ryan hit the wall switch.

The room went black.

I heard a drawer open, close. A click.

A blue beam hit the flap of flesh.

Under UV lighting, the tattoo sharpened. I could make out black and red swirls within a half-sickle form. A filigreed strip extended outward from the sickle’s two sides.