Kathy Reichs - Spider Bones

“Is there anything to indicate why Lapasa was in Nam?” I asked.

Ryan flipped a few pages, read.

“According to the mother, Theresa-Sophia Lapasa, Xander was, quote, pursuing business interests, unquote. That sound kosher?”

“Oh, yeah,” Danny said. “There were plenty of opportunists in-country back then. Knowing the fighting would eventually end, some balls-to-the-wall entrepreneurs went over to establish position for the postwar boom. Several ran bars and restaurants in Saigon.”

“Where was Lapasa from?” Not sure why I asked. Place of residence didn’t really matter. Guess it was my way of personalizing.

Ryan shuffled pages. Read. Shuffled a few more. Then, “Ke aloha nô!”

Danny grinned. I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes.

“Lapasa was a home boy.” Ryan had switched back to English. “Honolulu, Hawaii.”

“Got an address?” I asked.

Ryan read out a street number on Kahala Avenue.

“Cha-ching!” I pantomimed a cash register. Or something.

Ryan looked at me.

“Kahala has some of the priciest real estate in Honolulu.”

Danny’s smile faltered, slowly faded. He looked down, then to his left, as though searching for an answer deep in his memory. Wordlessly, he jotted a note.

“Got antemorts?” I asked.

“Your bailiwick.” Ryan handed me the folder.

The men watched as I leafed through papers.

There were multiple letters from Lapasa’s mother to the army. A couple more photos. Statements from witnesses who’d seen or been with Lapasa before his disappearance. The last was dated January 2, 1968. Lapasa had rung in the New Year at Saigon’s Rex Hotel with one Joseph Prudhomme, a member of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support Agency.

According to Prudhomme, Lapasa planned to travel to Bien Hoa and Long Binh during the month of January. I assumed that was the reason Lapasa came up in Danny’s circle search.

At the very back of the folder was a manila file. I flipped through the contents. Charts. Narrative. A small brown envelope. I peeked inside and saw the little black squares I was hoping for.

“The dentals are here, including X-rays.” I read the final page of the file. “Lapasa’s last dental appointment was on April twelfth, nineteen sixty-five.”

I backtracked. Skimmed.

“Theresa-Sophia Lapasa states in a letter dated November sixteenth, nineteen seventy-two, that medical records can be provided.” I looked up. “Why wouldn’t she just do it?”

“Makes it too real,” Danny said.

I raised questioning brows.

“It’s a form of denial. Sometimes families can’t face the possibility that their loved one really is dead.”

I read a few more of the letters Theresa-Sophia had written over the years.

“The old gal must have faced reality. In two thousand, Mrs. Lapasa expressed her willingness to provide a DNA sample.”

“Did she?”

I looked. Found no lab report. Shook my head.

We all went still, thinking the same sad thought. Had Theresa-Sophia Lapasa died never knowing what happened to her son?

Ryan spoke first.

“Lapasa wasn’t military. How could he have been on that chopper?”

“Civilians hitched rides all the time,” Danny said.

“And your CIL-1968—” Ryan circled a hand in the air.

“1968-979.”

Ryan nodded. “1968-979 was found a quarter mile from the crash site, seven months later, too decomposed for visual ID or fingerprinting, wearing a dog tag but no insignia?”

“The mortuary affairs people at Tan Son Nhut assumed the body had been looted.”

“Like 2010-37,” I said.

Danny nodded. “Apparently it was a problem in that area.”

“Why leave the dog tag?” Ryan asked. “You’d think that was a priority item for looters.”

Good question, I thought.

“Who knows?” Danny said.

“I’m confused,” Ryan said. “Spider Lowery was army. Wasn’t Tan Son Nhut an air base?”

Danny crossed his arms. “Long or short version?”

“Short.”

“First off, army personnel moved through air facilities all the time. That’s how they got there. But beyond that, during the early years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, death rates were low and mortuary services were provided by the air force. A civilian mortician was assigned TDY to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and only preliminary preparation of remains took place in-country. At that time the mortuary at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base consisted of just two rooms.” Danny had clearly given the briefing before.

“By sixty-three the TSN mortuary had a USAF civilian mortician, a U.S. Army graves registration NCO, and a couple of locals. As casualties escalated, the facility was expanded and an embalmer and more graves registration personnel were added.

“In 1966 the air force transferred operational control of the mortuary to the army and procedures changed. In previous wars, temporary cemeteries were established to hold bodies until hostilities ceased. Remains were later disinterred and returned to next of kin, or at the request of next of kin, relocated to permanent U.S. cemeteries overseas. Embalming was done at the cemetery.

“When the army took over in Nam, it phased in a concurrent return program. Remains were processed through collection points to the Tan Son Nhut mortuary or to Da Nang after that one was built. There they were identified, embalmed, and evacuated home. Processing took place in a matter of days, not months or years, as with the old temporary burial system.”

“That’s fast.”

“In most cases a KIA was helicoptered from the battlefield to the nearest collection point in a matter of hours. Within a day the remains were at one of the two in-country mortuaries.”

“I guess you had to move quickly in that climate.”

“You’ve got that right. With so much heat and humidity, skin soon sloughed and corpses swelled and doubled in size. Especially during the monsoons. And scavenging bugs and animals moved in before a body even hit the ground. Thank God refrigeration was available at the collection points and at the mortuaries.”

“But it didn’t help 1968-979.”

“Once you get inland from the coast, a lot of Vietnam is pure jungle,” I said. “The dead weren’t always found right away.”

“And think about the timing,” Danny added. “The revamped TSN mortuary only went online in August of sixty-eight, the month 1968-979 was found.”

“Did you shoot dental X-rays for 1968-979?” I asked Danny.

He lifted a tiny brown envelope from his blotter. “Shall we?”

We were rising when my BlackBerry sounded.

As I answered, Ryan’s mobile chirped the Sesame Street song.

“HI, SWEETIE.” I WAS FOLLOWING DANNY TOWARD A LIGHT BOX located against the left wall of the lab.

“Don’t you dare sweetie me. I can’t believe you made me do this.”

Katy’s tone was pure outrage.

“This vacation was supposed to be fun. Surfing? Diving? Aloha? Remember? Alo- Ha ! I’m a friggin’ taxi service!”

I could hear traffic in the background. Something bluesy blasting from a radio.

“Where are you?”

“Heading home, that’s where I am. After cooling my heels for so long I thought I’d qualify for old-age benefits.”

I checked my watch. Four forty. Obviously the rendezvous had not gone well.

“Where is Lily?”

“No idea. Couldn’t care less.”

“You never connected?”

Behind me I sensed Ryan having essentially the same conversation.