Bones of the Lost(10)

I moved to a film showing the shoulder and left arm.

“The acromial epiphyses are present on both scapulae, but remain unfused.”

I pointed to the broken humerus.

“The medial epicondyle and the distal composite and proximal epiphyses are in the process of fusing.”

On to the pelvis.

“The iliac crest is present but still separate.” I was referring to a sliver of bone that would eventually form the superior border of the hip bone.

The upper leg.

“The femoral head and trochanter are fused. The distal epiphysis is in the process of fusing.”

Lower leg.

“The proximal and distal epiphyses of the tibiae and fibulae are in the process of fusing.”

The foot.

“The proximal phalanges—”

“So what’s it all mean?” Slidell cut me off.

“She was fourteen to fifteen years old when she died.”

Far too young to catch a hint of what life had to offer. Fifteen years. She should have had eighty.

Rotten teeth. Needle tracks. Semen stains. Fifteen crappy years.

For a full minute the only sounds in the room were the fluorescents overhead and the air whistling in and out of Slidell’s nose.

“Might be I could work the clothing, track down where it was sold.” Slidell shoved his notepad into his jacket. “Boots might be a goer.”

My mind had moved from how to who. Who had left this kid facedown on the asphalt? A drunk too impaired to see her in the dark? Too callous to stop? Or a killer fully intending the result?

“Anything else?” Barely trusting my voice.

Larabee gave a tight shake of his head.

Nodding to Slidell, I returned to my office. Sat at my desk. Antsy. Uneasy.

Slidell was a good cop. But he had a habit of falling captive to defeatist mind-sets. Convinced the girl was undocumented, a prostitute, and a junkie, would he devote sufficient energy to finding her killer?

Yes, he would, I admitted to myself. Druggie hooker or not, the kid turned up dead on Skinny’s patch, and he would look upon it as a personal challenge.

Then why so anxious?

Katy? My abandoned vehicle and purse? The goddamn blisters?

Whatever.

I crossed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. Took a look in the mirror. Assessed the face looking back.

Intense green eyes. Weary, but determined. A few starbust wrinkles at the corners, well earned. Chin and lids holding firm. Dark blond hair yanked into a pony, not having a good one.

“Right, then. Peruvian dogs.”

The image in the glass mouthed the same words. Nodded the same nod.

I bunched and tossed my hand towel and headed out.

While the new MCME facility is immense, the same is not true of my office. Were a realtor to advertise it for rental, she’d use descriptors like “cozy” and “snug.” My desk takes up most of the space. File cabinets, coat tree. If Larabee steps in, it’s crowded. If the visitor is Slidell, forget about breathing.

I’m good with the square footage. It’s mine. No one encroaches. Mostly I use it for writing reports or examining files. Like the one lying on my blotter.

I sat down and opened the cover. On top was a form requesting an anthropology consult. I skimmed the contents.

Case number. Morgue number. Police incident number. Investigating officer, agency. Larabee was the requesting pathologist.

I skipped to the Summary of Known Facts. The brief, hand-scrawled paragraph contained nothing I hadn’t heard from Slidell. Suspicion of smuggled antiquities, objects confiscated at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Dominick Rockett.

I moved on to Description of Specimens. The items in question were identified as mummy bundles. Four in number. Peruvian in origin. Possibly Inca. Likely obtained from a cemetery.

My eyes dropped to the final section: Expertise Requested. The boxes beside “Exhumation,” “Biological Profile,” and “Trauma Analysis” had been left unchecked. Beside the category “Other” were six scribbled words: Analysis and written report. Human remains?

I set the form aside and thumbed through the stack of paper-clipped photos.

In the first three, the bundles lay side by side, wrappings intact. Though desiccated and discolored with age, each seemed in pretty good shape. Fair enough. The Peruvian desert would have provided a reasonably dry environment, a burial context kind to preservation.

The next several photos showed one of the bundles partially unwrapped. I could see what appeared to be a shriveled dog’s head, eyelids closed, fur still covering one flattened ear.

I dug back to my grad-school days, to a course on South American archaeology. And came up with little beyond the basics. Fifteenth century. The Andes Mountains. Machu Pichu. The Quechua language. Inti, the sun god.

I lined up the photos. Stared. A gaggle of brain cells coughed up an article I’d read maybe five years earlier. National Geographic? The Chiribaya, a pre-Inca population living in the Osmore River valley, some five hundred miles southeast of Lima. The Chiribaya had interred their dogs along with their dead.