The Devil's Bones

“Notice anything funny?”

I stirred around a bit more, creating another miniature dust storm. Down near the bottom of the box, I glimpsed what appeared to be small, rounded pebbles. “Well, there’s some rocks in here,” I said, “As least they sure look like rocks.”

“Damn right they look like rocks,” he said. “Doesn’t take a Ph.D. in anthropology to tell the difference between bone and pea gravel. Another thing? You wouldn’t have any way of knowing this, of course, but Aunt Jean’s knees aren’t in there.”

“Her knees? How do you know?”

“Because Aunt Jean’s knees were made of titanium. She had both of ’em replaced about five years ago.”

“Crematoriums don’t usually send things like that back to the family, Burt.”

“Uncle Edgar specifically asked for them.”

“Ah. Then that would seem to be a significant omission.”

“They couldn’t have melted and dripped down somewhere in the oven or something, could they?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Those orthopedic devices are made of pretty tough stuff. But let me do a little research on titanium and cremation and get back to you.”

“Could you do more than that, Doc?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s not right here, Doc,” he said. “What’d they do with her knees? What’s that gravel doing in there? And how come those chunks of bone are so big? I scattered my mother’s ashes up in the Smokies after she died, and there weren’t any pieces bigger than rock salt in Mom’s urn.”

“So you want me to do a forensic analysis on this set of cremains?”

“Cremains?” He snorted. “Who the hell came up with ‘cremains’?”

“Not me,” I said. “Some funeral director, probably. Easier to say than ‘cremated human remains,’ I reckon.”

“Cornier, too,” he said. “Listen, I’ll pay your hourly expert-witness rate, for however many hours you need to spend on this.” My rate was two hundred dollars an hour; that meant I’d need to poke around in the cremains for 250 hours to recoup the fifty thousand dollars I’d forked over to Grease a few months earlier. I didn’t want to spend 250 hours breathing the dust of Aunt Jean, but I was intrigued by the case-and impressed that the lawyer had zeroed in on the puzzling things in the mixture.

“I’ll find out everything I can,” I said.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said. “I owe you.”

“Not yet,” I said, “but you will.”

He laughed. “I guess I’d better sell one of the Bentleys,” he said, but we both knew that my bill wouldn’t amount to a fraction of what I’d paid Burt to defend me. He gave me a few more details-his aunt’s date of death, the name of the funeral home and the crematorium, and the phone number of his Uncle Edgar, who lived in Polk County-then signed off, saying “’Preciate you, Doc.”

I dialed the extension for the bone lab, tucked beneath the other end of the stadium, a five-minute walk through curving hallways along the base of the enormous ellipse. “Osteology lab, this is Miranda. Can I help you?”

“I sure hope so,” I said.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

“Try to contain your enthusiasm,” I said.

“Oh, ex-cuse me,” she gushed. “Dr. Brockton, how may I be of assistance?”

“That’s more like it,” I said. “Soon as you finish genuflecting, could I trouble you to dig up the melting point of titanium?”

“I live to serve,” she said. “Elemental or alloy?”

“I’m not sure.”

I heard the rapid clatter of keystrokes. “Well, if you’re talking pure titanium metal,” she said, “the melting point is a toasty nineteen hundred and thirty-three. That’s on the Kelvin scale, which is”- clatterclatterCLATTERclatter-“three thousand and change, Fahrenheit.”

“How’d you find that so fast?”

“The wonders of Google,” she said. “Google also lives to serve.”

“Damn,” I said. “Google, YouTube, MySpace-I feel like a dinosaur, Miranda.”

“Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward change,” she said. “So is that it? You just got curious about the properties of titanium?”

“No, actually, what I’m wondering about is the melting point of artificial knees.”

I heard another flurry of keystrokes. “Looks like most orthopedic implants are made of titanium alloy, cobalt chromium steel, or stainless steel. Also oxidized zirconium-sort of a cross between a metal and ceramic-which is harder than metal but tougher than ceramic.” More keystrokes. “The most common material seems to be titanium- 662, though, an alloy of titanium, aluminum, and vanadium, plus a pinch of this and a dash of that.”

“Vanadium? Is that really an element, or are you just making that up?”

“Making it up? Moi? You cut me to the quick. That would be a violation of the Research Slave Code of Ethics. Besides, if I were going to make up an element, don’t you think I could come up with something better than ‘vanadium’? I think ‘mirandium’ has a nice ring, don’t you? And ‘loveladium’ rolls trippingly off the tongue, too.”

“What was I thinking? You’re right,” I said. “The periodic table really should revolve around you.”

“I’ll let the implication that I’m egocentric pass for the moment, because I’m so delighted to be doing your grunt work. Let’s see, titanium-662…. Melting point is…durn it…a closely guarded military secret, it would appear. Not really, but I’m not getting any Google hits that look like the answer. You want me to call some equally downtrodden peon in Engineering?”

“Nah, hold off for now,” I said. “I wouldn’t think the alloy’s melting point would be a whole lot lower.”

“You know what I think?”

“More often than I’d like,” I said.

“Ha, ha. I think if you’re running a high enough fever to melt your knees, you’re long since toasted.”

“Toasted is right,” I said. “The question is, could a cremation furnace melt a pair of knee implants?”

“I’d say it depends how hot the furnace gets.”

“Really? Amazing. Do the folks who give out the MacArthur genius grants know about you?”

“Don’t get smart with me, boss.”

“Or else?”

“Or else I’ll hang up.”

“Ooh,” I said, “now you’re really scaring me.”

I laughed when the line went dead. I was pretty sure she was laughing, too.

My next call was to Norman Witherspoon, a Knoxville funeral director who’d sent me a half dozen or so corpses during the past decade-people who’d wanted their bodies donated to science but who hadn’t made the arrangements before dying. “Norm, what do you do when somebody asks to be cremated?”

“I say, ‘Sorry, I have to wait until you’re dead.’”

“Everybody’s a comedian,” I said. “Let me rephrase the question. Norm, where do you send bodies to be cremated?”

“East Tennessee Cremation Services,” he said. “Out near the airport. In the Rockford industrial park, off Alcoa Highway.”

“I’ve got a case involving cremated remains. You reckon East Tennessee Cremation would let me come look at their equipment and ask a few questions?”

“Long as the case doesn’t involve them. Does it?”

“No,” I said. “A place down in the northwest part of Georgia-Trinity Crematorium.”

“Oh, that place.”

“Why do you say ‘that place’?”

“Well, that’s where funeral homes send cremations if they want to save a few bucks or a little time.”

“How many bucks is ‘a few’?”