Kathy Reichs - Bare Bones

I tightened my grip and braced both feet.

“Can you hold him?” I asked.

Without a word, Ryan took the leash.

Heart pounding, I circled the shed, searching for a door.

The radio crackled. Larabee said something.

I found the entrance on the south side, away from the house. Gingerly brushing back spiderwebs, I pulled on the handle.

The door wouldn’t budge.

I looked up and down along the frame. Two nails held the door in place. They looked new compared with the dry, flaky wood around them.

Boyd’s frenzy continued. Ryan held tight to the leash, calling “Hooch,” then “Boyd” to calm him.

Unfolding my Swiss army knife, I gouged out one nail, then the other.

Larabee’s voice sounded small and tinny on the radio, as though emanating from some alien star system.

I depressed the button and reported my position.

When I tried again, the door creaked open, and a fetid, earthy smell drifted out, like dead plants and garbage left too long in the sun. Flies buzzed in agitation.

Cupping a hand across my mouth and nose, I peered in.

Flies danced in threads of light slicing in through gaps in the boards. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dim interior.

“Perfect,” I said. “Picture fucking perfect.”

11

I WAS STARING INTO A PRIVY.

At one time chez toilette offered state-of-the-art comfort in human waste disposal technology: insect control, toilet paper, a spiffy one-seater with a flip-top lid.

All that was gone now. What remained were dried and shriveled pest strips, a rusted flyswatter, two nails driven into a board at sitting height, a pile of splintered wood, and a chipped and flaking wooden pink oval.

A pit approximately two feet square yawned through an opening in the floorboards at the far end of the shack.

The stench was familiar, bringing to mind privies in summer camps, national parks, and Third World villages. This one smelled sweeter, softer, somehow.

My mind added a string of expletives to those Ryan and I had floated during our walkabout with Boyd.

“Crap!” I said aloud for emphasis.

Not three months earlier I’d been up to my elbows investigating debris in a septic tank. I’d vowed never to slog through feces again.

Now this.

“Crap! Crap! Crap!”

“Not very ladylike.”

Larabee craned over my shoulder. I stepped aside. Behind us Boyd continued his frenzy and Ryan continued his attempts to calm him.

“But entirely apropos.” I slapped a mosquito that was lunching on my arm.

Larabee stuck his head into the privy, pulled it back quickly.

“Could be Boyd was just rocked by the smell.”

I scowled at Larabee’s back.

“Could be. But you’re going to want to check it out,” I said. “Make sure no one’s been pissing on Jimmy Hoffa.”

“No one’s been pissing on anyone in here for some time.” Larabee let the door bang shut. “The grand-finale whiz probably took place during the Eisenhower years.”

“Something’s going bad in that pit.”

“Yep.”

“Suggestions?” I backhanded gnats from my face.

“Backhoe,” he said.

“Can we take a look in the house first, try to estimate when Farmer John splurged for the indoor pipes?”

“Find me one human bone, I’ll have CSU shooting close-ups under the sink.”

A metacarpal came up with the seventh scoop.

Joe Hawkins, Ryan, and I had been working the privy for three hours. Bucketful by bucketful, the pit was giving up its treasure.

That treasure consisted of shards of broken glass and china, scraps of paper, chunks of plastic, rusted utensils, animal bones, and gallons of deep, black organic matrix.

The backhoe operator would scoop, deposit, and wait. Hawkins would triage bones to one pile, household debris to another. Ryan would transport buckets of compost to my screen. I’d sieve and rummage.

We were growing optimistic. The skeletal part of the treasure looked strictly nonhuman and purely culinary. And, unlike Boyd’s discovery at the McCranie hedge, the privy bones were devoid of tissue.

These animals had been dead a long time.

The metacarpal turned up at 3:07 P.M.

I stared at it, searching for something to allow me doubt.

There was no doubt. The bone had been part of a thumb. A thumb that could hitchhike, twirl spaghetti, play trumpet, write a sonnet.

I gave in and closed my eyes.

Hearing footsteps, I opened them. Larabee was circling the pile of wreckage that until hours earlier had been the outhouse.

“How’s Boyd doing?” I asked.

“Enjoying a cool one on the front lawn. The chow’s not bad company.”

Seeing my face his smile evaporated.

“Find something?”

I brought my hand up and positioned the metacarpal next to the base of my thumb.

“Damn.”

Ryan and Hawkins joined us at the screen.

“Damn.” Ryan echoed Larabee.

Hawkins said nothing.

The backhoe operator put a boot heel on the control panel, leaned back, and gulped bottled water.

“Now what?” Larabee asked.

“The digger’s got a delicate touch,” I said. “And the pit conforms pretty well to the shape of the shovel. I think we can keep going like this. Whatever’s in there isn’t likely to be damaged.”

“I thought you hated backhoes?”

“This guy’s good.”

We all glanced at the operator. He looked like he could possibly be less interested. But only with the aid of serious pharmaceuticals.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky was now dark and menacing.

“How much longer?” Larabee asked.

“I’ve started seeing sterile subsoil in the last few scoops. We’re close to the bottom.”

“OK,” Larabee said. “I’ll turn CSU loose on the house.”

He straightened.

“And Tim?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“This may be a good time to get homicide on board.”

We finished as drops began sputtering from the sky.

I raised my chin, thankful for the cool wetness on my face.

I was exhausted and incredulous. So much work, and just when I most wanted to be free.

Gran would have been unsympathetic. Born on the auld sod and educated by nuns, the old lady had a unique perspective on sex, particularly sex not sanctioned by the parish priest.

No marriage, no whoopie. In her eighty-nine years on earth, she’d never budged from that position, and to my knowledge, had never condoned exceptions.

Wrapping my arms around my waist, I watched Ryan bundle the animal bones into a Hefty bag.

I watched Hawkins seal the human remains in a plastic tub, pull a body tracking form from a zip valise, and start filling in data.

Address where decedent was picked up.

OK. We had that.

Decedent’s name. Age. Race. Sex. Date of death.

All those lines remained blank.

Body condition.

Skeletal.

To be precise, a skull and mandible, three cervical vertebrae, and bones comprising the better part of a right and left hand.

We’d screened and rescreened, but that’s all that turned up.

Hawkins matched the number on the tag to the number on the form, then dropped the tag into the plastic container.

I looked around. A human being had been killed in this place. The victim’s head and hands had been severed and thrown into the privy, the body dumped elsewhere.

Or had the killing occurred at another location, the head and hands brought to the privy for disposal?

Either case was a common pattern. Ditch the head, ditch the hands. No dentals. No fingerprints.

But on a farm in rural Mecklenburg County?

I closed my eyes and let rain fall on my face.

Who was this victim?

How long had the body parts been in the privy?