Guilt

draped over one arm. Her hair had been straightened recently and she wore it loose and long. She saw me, waved, kept going.

Someone must’ve prepped her because she headed straight for the tarp, put on the coat, tied her hair back, gloved up, stooped, and drew the cloth back deftly.

“Oh, look at this poor little thing.”

The bones seemed even smaller, the color of browned butter in places, nearly black in others. Fragile as lace. I could see tiny nubs running along the chewing surfaces of both jaws. Un-erupted tooth buds.

Liz’s lower lip extended. “Buried under the tree?”

I pointed out the hole. Liz examined the blue box.

“Swedish Hospital? Never heard of it.”

“Closed down in ’52. What do you think the box was originally used for?”

“Maybe exactly this,” she said.

“A morgue receptacle?”

“I was thinking something used to transfer remains.”

“The baby died a natural death in the hospital and someone took the body?”

“Bodies don’t stay in hospitals, they go to mortuaries, Alex. After that, who knows? Regulations were looser back then.”

I said, “The box is solid brass. Maybe it was intended to transfer lab specimens and someone thought iron or steel increased the risk of oxidation.”

She returned to the skeleton, put on magnifying eyeglasses, got an inch from the bones. “No wires or drill holes, probably no bleach or chemical treatment, so it doesn’t appear to be a teaching specimen.” She touched the tooth buds. “Not a newborn, not with those mandibular incisors about to come through, best guess is four to seven months, which fits the overall size of the skeleton. Though if the baby was neglected or abused, it could be older … no fractures or stress marks … I’m not seeing any obvious tool marks-no wounds of any sort … the neck bones appear to be intact, so cross out strangulation … no obvious bone malformations, either, like from rickets or some other deficiency … in terms of sex, it’s too young for sexual dimorphism. But if we can get some DNA, we can determine gender and possibly a degree of racial origin. Unfortunately, the backlog’s pretty bad and something this old and cold isn’t going to be prioritized. In terms of time since death, I can do some carbon dating but my gut tells me this isn’t some ancient artifact.”

I said, “The box was out of active use in ’52, those newspaper clippings are from ’51, and the house was built in ’27. I know that doesn’t determine the time frame-”

“But it’s a good place to start, I agree. So rather than go all supertech from the get-go, Milo should pull up real estate records, find out who’s lived here, and work backward. He identifies a suspect, we can prioritize DNA. Unless the suspect’s deceased, which is quite possible if we’re talking a sixty-, seventy-year-old crime. That’s the case, maybe some relative will cooperate and we can get a partial.”

A deep voice behind and above us grumbled, “Milo has begun pulling up real estate records. Afternoon, Elizabeth.”

Liz looked up. “Hi, didn’t see you when I came in.”

Milo said, “In the house making calls.”

And taking the detective walk through the empty space. His expression said that nothing obvious had come up. “So what do you think, kid?”

Liz repeated her initial impressions. “Not that you need me for any of that.”

He said, “Young Moses needs you, I appreciate your input.”

Detective I Moe Reed was her true love. They’d met at a swamp full of corpses.

She laughed. “Moses appreciates me, too. Say hi when you see him, which is probably before I will.”

She stood. “So what else can I do for you?”

“Take custody of the bones and do your wizard thing. If you need the box, you can have it, otherwise it’s going to the crime lab.”

“Don’t need the box,” she said. “But I’m not really sure I can tell you much more.”

“How about age of victim?”

“I’ll get it as close as I can,” she said. “We can also x-ray to see if some sort of damage comes up within the bones, though that’s unlikely. There’s certainly nothing overt to indicate assault or worse. So we could be talking a natural death.”

“Natural but someone buried it under a tree?” He frowned. “I hate that-it.” His shirt had come loose over his paunch. He tucked it in, hitched his trousers.

Liz said, “Maybe covert burial does imply some sort of guilt. And no visible marks doesn’t eliminate murder, asphyxiating a baby is way too easy. And it’s not rare in infanticides.”

“Soft kill,” he said.

She blinked. “Never heard that before.”

“I’m a master of terrible irony.”

CHAPTER 4

Milo and I returned to Holly Ruche. Her husband was gone.

She said, “He had a meeting.”

Milo said, “Accountant stuff.”

“Not too exciting, huh?”

Milo said, “Most jobs are a lot of routine.”

She scanned the yard. “I’d still like to know why a psychologist was called in. Are you saying whoever lived here was a maniac?”

“Not at all.” He turned to me: “You’re fired, Doc.”

I said, “Finally.”

Holly Ruche smiled for half a second.

Milo said, “That woman in the white coat is a forensic anthropologist.”

“The black woman? Interesting …” Her hands clenched. “I really hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those mad-dog serial killer things, bodies all over the place. If that’s what happens, I could never live here. We’d be tied up in court, that would be a disaster.”

“I’m sure everything will turn out fine.”

“Just one little teensy skeleton?” she snapped. “That’s fine?”

She looked down at her abdomen. “Sorry, Lieutenant, it’s just-I just can’t stand seeing my place overrun with strangers.”

“I understand. No reason to stick around, Holly.”

“This is my home, my apartment’s just a way station.”

He said, “We’re gonna need the area clear for the dogs.”

“The dogs,” she said. “They find something, you’ll bring in machinery and tear up everything.”

“We prefer noninvasive methods like ground-penetrating radar, air and soil analysis.”

“How do you analyze air?”

“We insert thin flexible tubing into air pockets, but with something this old, decomposition smells are unlikely.”

“And if you find something suspicious, you bring in machines and start ripping and shredding. Okay, I will leave but please make sure if you turned on any lights you turn them off. We just got the utilities registered in our name and the last thing I need is paying the police department’s electrical bill.”

She walked away, using that oddly appealing waddle pregnant women acquire. Hands clenched, neck rigid.

Milo said, “High-strung girl.”

I said, “Not the best of mornings. Plus her marriage doesn’t seem to be working too well.”

“Ah … notice how I avoided telling her how you got here. No sense disillusioning the citizenry.”