Page 45 of The Bone Code
Radiating impatience from inside his shiny polyester coat, Arbour asked, “Nous sommes prêt? Enfin?” Are we ready? Finally?
Christ on a cracker.
“Let’s do it,” I said, cool but smiling.
Arbour raised and circled one finger, fast and hard.
“Asshole probably has a stiff needs planting,” Gaston mumbled. Or some Quebecois equivalent.
The backhoe operator recapped and set down his thermos. Seconds later, the big yellow brute roared to life. After much maneuvering, the machine stopped, and the front-end loader bucket dropped into position at one end of the northernmost grave.
Arbour repeated the finger thing.
The bucket’s claws dragged backward, scoring the winter-brown lawn. The scent of dead grass and moist soil filled the air.
The boom rose and swung right. The bucket dropped its load, swung back, and repeated the action. Again, and again.
As the wound in the earth deepened, I observed closely, eventually spotted a handful of soggy splinters mixing with the fill.
“Stop!” Raising a hand and shouting to be heard over the grinding.
The boom froze in mid-swing.
To confirm, I squatted at the side of the pit.
“Time for shovels,” I said.
“That will slow us down greatly.” Arbour’s annoyance was evident from ten yards off.
“I’m beginning to see fragments.”
A lumpy shadow fell across the grave. I pointed. The shadow’s hands shot to its hips.
“The remains will be in body bags inside pressed-wood boxes.” Knees protesting the sudden reorientation, I stood. “Those are remnants of a box. We’re close.”
Arbour hand-signaled again. He appeared to enjoy it.
The cemetery workers jumped into the trench and manned their spades. The sun crept higher, warming the chilly air and melting the pale lens of frost tinting the lawn. Eventually, both men shed their jackets.
New sounds filled the void left by the stilled backhoe. Thethunkof shovels gouging the earth. Theshushof soil sliding from blades. Thecrackleof static sputtering from the cruiser’s radio. Occasionally, an optimistic bird threw in a few hopeful notes.
Like autopsies, exhumations don’t make for heart-thumpingdrama. There, too, the process is tedious and slow. To pass the time, I intermittently checked my phone. And my surroundings.
The cemetery remained mostly deserted. Now and then, a car or groundskeeper’s truck passed by. At one point, a woman drove up in a blue Hyundai, got out, and wove through the headstones across the road. She wore a black leather jacket and a long green skirt. Her hair, short and wiry, was a most unfortunate carroty orange. I watched her discreetly, wondering who it was she mourned.
Carrot Hair stopped at a pink granite marker shaped like a cross. Arms crossed, feet spread, she appeared to study the inscription.
“Yo! We can pull her up.” Arbour’s bellowing brought me back.
The diggers had climbed out of the pit. Both were sweating and gulping water from plastic bottles.
I walked past them and looked down.
The burial lay fully exposed. Saturated by percolating groundwater and crushed by the weight of overlying soil, the makeshift coffin had collapsed and now wrapped the body bag like a sodden diaper.
Pulling on gloves, I raised my bandanna from my neck to my mouth, grabbed a trowel, and dropped into the grave. A few minutes of scraping muddy soil exposed the tag. A little thumb action cleared the tag’s surface enough to read the number.
I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. We’d found the child.
