Page 3 of Evil Bones
I was thinking about frogs. Specifically, about the one living in the fountain outside my town house.
Every summer, the creature took up residence there. Based on the depth and resonance of its dawn and dusk croaking, I guessed the amphibian was of fairly good size.
Whythere? I wondered. What was the appeal of that tiny basin?
Where did the frog go in winter? Palm Beach? Key Largo? Did it leave at all or just hunker down in leaves somewhere and sleep?
Did the little fellow fear birds? Lawn mowers? Off-leash dogs?
Was it actually the same frog year after year?
I know what you’re thinking. But my office at the MCME was warm and stuffy, encouraging wandering thoughts, and I’d been awakened at sunrise by yet another polliwog serenade.
My sleep-deprived mind was meandering.
Also, the task at hand was beyond tedious.
At the request of my boss, Dr. Samantha Nguyen, Mecklenburg County’s chief medical examiner, I was compiling an inventory of the reports I’d written during the first six months of the year. Every MCME professional was doing this. The pathologists, the odontologist, the radiologist.Moi.
Anannotatedinventory.
Had the case involved a human or an animal? Had the remains been fresh, putrefied, mummified, burned, mutilated, skeletal, or other? Yeah, other. I’ll skip detailing the possibilities.
Had the examination focused on establishing identity? On analyzing trauma? On determining cause or manner of death? On reconstructing the method of body disposal? On estimating postmortem interval—the time that had passed since the victim’s death?
Some entity above Nguyen’s pay grade had requested the data. Maybe the governor’s office. Maybe the chief ME in Chapel Hill. Maybe God.
The questions I was answering could have served as descriptors for my job. I’m a forensic anthropologist, a specialist in the human skeleton. My expertise is requested for cases in which a normal autopsy is impossible, and all observations and conclusions must be derived from the bones.
Primarily, I’m employed by coroners and medical examiners in my home state of North Carolina, and by the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the main medico-legal lab in the province of Quebec.
Charlotte and Montreal.
Long story.
Long commute.
One I’ve been making for decades.
Trust me. I have a mother lode of frequent flier miles.
More on that later.
I love my job and can’t imagine doing anything else. I love giving names to the anonymous dead and providing next of kin with closure. What I don’t love is informing families that the person they’re searching for has died.
I despise doing paperwork. Keyboard work?
That day I was on the Carolina end of my geographically complicated professional arrangement. Finally addressing the chore I’d avoided for weeks.
I’d been staring at a computer screen for hours. My eyes burned and a headache was bullying my frontal lobe.
Resting my elbows on the desktop, I circled the tips of my fingers on my temples. Sighed. A pointlessly theatrical performance given that I was alone in my office.
It was late morning on a Wednesday deep into August. The weather had been low-country hot and muggy for weeks, so I was hoping for abrief getaway soon, a jaunt to the mountains with Ryan, my significant other. Nothing big. A leisurely drive to Asheville, some hiking, a couple of nights at an inn with way too much chintz in the room.
I was clicking open yet another file when I sensed a change in the light filtering in from the hall. I looked up.
A small woman stood framed in the open doorway. Dark, almond-shaped eyes. Olive skin. Black hair gathered into a bun at the nape of her neck.
