Kathy Reichs - Grave Secrets

ALSO BY KATHY REICHS

Déjà Dead

Death du Jour

Deadly Décisions

Fatal Voyage

Grave Secrets

Kathy Reichs

SCRIBNER

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Temperance Brennan, L.P.

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ISBN 0-7432-4488-5

For the innocents:

Guatemala

1962–1996

New York, New York

Arlington, Virginia

Shanksville, Pennsylvania

September 11, 2001

I have touched their bones. I mourn for them.

Acknowledgments

AS USUAL THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT the help of others.

First and foremost, credit and recognition must go to my dear friend and colleague, Clyde Snow, Ph.D. Clyde, you started it all. I thank you. The oppressed of the world thank you.

I feel tremendous gratitude for the support and hospitality shown me by the members of the Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala, especially Fredy Armando Peccerelli Monteroso, Presidente, and Claudia Rivera, Directora de Antropología Forense. The work carried out by the FAFG is unbearably difficult and tremendously important. Muchas gracias . I hope I can offer more help in the future.

Ron Fourney, Ph.D., Biology, Research and Development, Canadian Police Research Center, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Barry D. Gaudette, B.S., Manager, Canadian Police Research Center, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, explained the intricacies of animal hair analysis.

Carol Henderson, J.D., Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University, and William Rodriguez, Ph.D., Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, provided information on the construction and functioning of septic tanks.

Robert J. Rochon, Deputy High Commissioner to London, Canadian Department of External Affairs and International Trade, answered many questions concerning the diplomatic world.

Diane France, Ph.D., Director, Colorado State University Human Identification Laboratory, supplied inspiration for the use of selective laser sintering in skull modeling. Allan DeWitt, P.E., furnished details on SLS technology.

Sergent-détective Stephen Rudman (retired), Police de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal, explained the workings of internal police investigations in Quebec.

Merci to Yves St. Marie, Directeur, to André Lauzon, M.D., Chef de Service, and to all my colleagues at the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale. Thanks to James Woodward, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Your continued support is greatly appreciated.

Paul Reichs offered many valuable comments on the manuscript. And some stinkers. Paldies.

My daughters, Kerry Reichs and Courtney Reichs, accompanied me to Guatemala. Your presence lightened the load. Paldies.

My amazing editors, Susanne Kirk at Scribner and Lynne Drew at Random House–UK, took a rough manuscript and made it sing.

Last, but far from least, my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, provided a sympathetic ear, a protective firewall, and a kick in the pants when needed. You’re a star, Big J!

If I have forgotten anyone, please let me know. I will buy you a beer, apologize profusely, and thank you in person. We’ve all had a rough year.

In the end, I wrote Grave Secrets. If there are errors, I made them.

Grave Secrets

1

“ I AM DEAD. THEY KILLED ME AS WELL.”

The old woman’s words cut straight to my heart.

“Please tell me what happened that day.” Maria spoke so softly I had to strain to catch the Spanish.

“I kissed the little ones and left for market.” Eyes down, voice toneless. “I did not know that I would never see them again.”

K’akchiquel to Spanish, then reversing the linguistic loop, reversing again as answers followed questions. The translation did nothing to blunt the horror of the recitation.

“When did you return home, Señora Ch’i’p?”

“A que hora regreso usted a su casa, Señora Ch’i’p?”

“Chike ramaj xatzalij pa awachoch, Ixoq Ch’i’p?”

“Late afternoon. I’d sold my beans.”

“The house was burning?”

“Yes.”

“Your family was inside?”

A nod.

I watched the speakers. An ancient Mayan woman, her middle-aged son, the young cultural anthropologist Maria Paiz, calling up a memory too terrible for words. I felt anger and sorrow clash inside me like the thunderheads building on the horizon.

“What did you do?”

“We buried them in the well. Quickly, before the soldiers came back.”

I studied the old woman. Her face was brown corduroy. Her hands were calloused, her long braid more gray than black. Fabric lay folded atop her head, bright reds, pinks, yellows, and blues, woven into patterns older than the mountains around us. One corner rose and fell with the wind.

The woman did not smile. She did not frown. Her eyes met no one’s, to my relief. I knew if they lingered on mine even briefly, the transfer of pain would be brutal. Maybe she understood that and averted her gaze to avoid drawing others into the hell those eyes concealed.

Or perhaps it was distrust. Perhaps the things she had seen made her unwilling to look frankly into unknown faces.

Feeling dizzy, I upended a bucket, sat, and took in my surroundings.

I was six thousand feet up in the western highlands of Guatemala, at the bottom of a steep-sided gorge. The village of Chupan Ya. Between the Mountains. About one hundred and twenty-five kilometers northwest of Guatemala City.

Around me flowed a wide river of green, lush forest interspersed with small fields and garden plots, like islands. Here and there rows of man-made terraces burst through the giant checkerboard, cascading downward like playful waterfalls. Mist clung to the highest peaks, blurring their contours into Monet softness.

I’d rarely seen surroundings so beautiful. The Great Smoky Mountains. The Gatineau, Quebec, under northern lights. The barrier islands off the Carolina coast. Haleakula volcano at dawn. The loveliness of the backdrop made the task at hand even more heartbreaking.

As a forensic anthropologist, it is my job to unearth and study the dead. I identify the burned, the mummified, the decomposed, and the skeletonized who might otherwise go to anonymous graves. Sometimes the identifications are generic, Caucasoid female, mid-twenties. Other times I can confirm a suspected ID. In some cases, I figure out how these people died. Or how their corpses were mutilated.