Kathy Reichs - Bare Bones

“I’m not following this,” I said.

“Why would someone hide avian plumage with illegal drugs?”

“Maybe the feathers were already in the basement and the coke was accidentally parked on top of them.”

“Maybe.” Rinaldi replaced the feather.

I flashed on the bear bones.

“Actually, there was some kind of bird mixed in with the bears.”

“Tell me more.”

“That’s all I know.”

“Identifying the species might not hurt.”

“You need an ornithologist.”

“Know any?”

“I can make a few calls.” I gave Rinaldi a look that had talons. “But first let’s talk headless bodies.”

Rinaldi’s arms folded across Brooks Brothers linen.

“I don’t like being kept in the dark, Detective.”

“And we don’t like woolly thinking, Doc.” Slidell.

I turned to him.

“Is there something you’re not sharing?”

“Nothing gained by a lot of pointless wheel spinning.” Slidell scowled at me.

I scowled back.

“When we’ve verified what we’re looking at, we’ll pass it on.” Slidell.

Rinaldi picked at a callus on his thumb. Between the spiky hairs, his scalp looked pale and shiny.

Larabee’s voice drifted down from his office.

Slidell held my look. I wondered if he could hang on to it with my boot up his ass.

Rinaldi broke the silence.

“I see no harm in including Dr. Brennan in our thinking.”

Slidell’s eyes rolled to his partner, snapped back to me.

“What the hell.” Slidell sighed. “No skin off my nose.”

“Three, four years back. I can’t precisely recall. An inquiry came across my desk.”

“About a body with no head or hands.”

Rinaldi nodded.

“Where?”

“South Carolina.”

“It’s a big state.”

“Fort Mill. Gaffney. Chester.” Rinaldi flapped a long, bony hand. “Nothing is centralized down there, it’s hard to backtrack.”

Unlike the Tarheel State, South Carolina relies on a coroner system, with practitioners operating independently in each county. Coroners are elected. A nurse, a funeral director, a cemetery owner. Few are trained in medicine, fewer still in forensic pathology. Autopsies are farmed out to local doctors.

“Most South Carolina coroners don’t have the facilities to keep a corpse very long.”

“Got that damn straight,” Slidell snorted. “Gave Michael Jordan’s daddy, what, three days before they smoked him?”

Slidell had the tact of a sledgehammer. But he was right.

“I’ve sent out a query,” Rinaldi said. “I hope to hear back by the end of the day.”

“Was this headless, handless body in good shape?”

“As I recall, the remains were skeletonized. But it wasn’t relevant to anything we were investigating at the time, so I didn’t take much notice.”

“Black or white?”

Rinaldi raised then dropped his shoulders.

“Male or female?”

“Definitely,” Rinaldi said.

When the detectives had gone I phoned the university. A colleague could look at the feathers the following day.

Next I went to the cooler and rolled out the gurney with the animal remains. I packaged everything that looked like bird, and placed the bundle in a sack with Rinaldi’s baggie of feathers.

Exchanging the animal gurney for that holding the privy remains, I spent the next several hours doing as thorough an analysis as possible.

My initial impressions changed little, though I was able to be more precise on the age estimate.

Race: white.

Age: twenty-five to forty years.

Sex: roll the dice.

When I returned to my office, Ryan was leafing through a copy of Creative Loafing, Nikes resting on the edge of my desk. He was wearing the same luau shirt and shorts he’d had on that morning and a Winston Cup cap. He looked like Hawaii Five-O does NASCAR.

“Have a good day?”

“Latta Plantation then Freedom Park.”

“Didn’t know you were such a history buff.”

“Hooch can’t get enough of the stuff.”

“Where is he?”

“The call of Alpo overpowered the call of the wild.”

“Surprised he let you out on your own.”

“When last seen, man’s best friend was investigating the contents of an Oreo bag.”

“Chocolate is bad for dogs.”

“We discussed that. Hooch thought he could handle it.”

“If Hooch guessed wrong, you’re cleaning the carpet.”

“Making progress with privy man?”

“Apt segue.” Tossing the privy case folder onto my desk, I dropped into my chair. “I just finished.”

“That took a while,” Ryan said.

“Toody and Muldoon came by twice today.”

“Slidell and his partner?”

I nodded.

“Aren’t you kind of hard on the guy?”

“Slidell probably needs instructions to make ice cubes.”

“Is he really that stupid?”

I thought about that.

Slidell was not actually stupid. Not in the way that a fern is stupid. Or a wood frog. Slidell was just Slidell.

“Probably not. But he’s off the bell curves for uncouth and annoying.”

“What did they want?”

I told Ryan about Jason Jack Wyatt and the cell phone link to Darryl Tyree.

“The boyfriend of the lady with the dead baby?”

I nodded.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“Here’s another flash. Rinaldi remembers a headless, handless body inquiry a few years back. He and Slidell are tracking it down.”

“Descriptors match your privy guy?”

“Rinaldi’s recollection is a bit vague.”

“ Is yours a guy?”

“I think so.”

Ryan raised his brows in a question.

“There’s not a single cranial feature that’s definitive for gender. I ran every measurement possible through the Fordisc 2.0 program.”

“Let me guess. The skull falls into the overlap range.”

I nodded. “Though closer to the male than the female end.”

“Ditto for measurements on the hand bones?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your gut feeling?”

“Male.”

“A young-adult white person who probably used the little boys’ room. That’s not a bad start.”

“With lousy teeth.”

“Oh?”

“Lots of decay. At least on the teeth we recovered.”

“Missed a few?”

“Yeah.”

“Shitty job.”

“How did I know you would say that?”

“Any dental work?”

I shook my head. “The victim was not a believer in regular checkups.”

“Anything else?”

“Maybe some slight bone demineralization.”

“I think you’ve made an excellent start, Dr. Brennan.”

“Rinaldi also had feathers.”

“Doesn’t seem like his style.”

“They turned up with the coke in the cellar.”

“What kind of feathers?”

“He wants me to find out.”

“Do you know any big birdbrains?”

“I know you, cowboy.”

Ryan made a pistol with his hand and pointed it at me.

“Ready for another field trip tomorrow?”

“Hee-haw.”

This time the finger made a lasso.

We were passing Mrs. Flowers’s desk when the phone rang. She answered, then flapped a hand in my direction.

I waited while she spoke, then placed the call on hold.

“It’s Detective Slidell.”

I felt a sigh elbowing up my chest, but resisted the impulse toward melodramatics.

Mrs. Flowers smiled at me, then at Ryan. When he grinned back, a pink spot blossomed on each of her cheeks.

“He sounds like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

“Not a pretty picture.” Ryan winked.

Mrs. Flowers giggled, and her cheeks went raspberry.

“Do you want to take it?”

Like I wanted Ebola.

I reached for the receiver.

17