“No. It’s been exposed too long to the elements.”
“So how can you determine if this was a homicide?”
“We have to turn our attention to the other bones. And here we’ll find your answer.” She reached for a small paper bag. Tipping it sideways, she emptied the contents on the table.
Small bones clattered out like gray dice.
“The carpals,” she said. “These are from the right hand. Carpals are quite dense-they don’t disintegrate as quickly as other bones. These were found buried deep and packed in a dense clump of clay, which further preserved them.” She began to shuffle through the carpals like a seamstress searching for just the right button. “Here,” she said, choosing one pebble and holding it up to the light.
The gash was immediately apparent, and so deep it had nearly cleaved the bone in two.
“This is a defense injury,” said Lucy. “This child-let’s call her a girl-raised her arms to defend herself against her attacker. The blade stabbed her in the hand-deeply enough to almost split the carpal bone. The girl is only eight or nine and rather small in stature, so she can hardly fight back. And whoever plunged that knife in is quite strong-strong enough to stab right through her hand.
“The girl turns. Maybe the blade is still lodged in her flesh, or maybe the attacker has pulled it out and is preparing to stab again. The girl would try to run away, but she is pursued. Then she stumbles, or brings her down, and she falls to the ground, prone. I assume it’s prone, because there are cut marks on the thoracic vertebrae, a broad blade, possibly a hatchet, sinking in from behind. There is also the cut mark in the femur-a blow to the back of the thigh, which means she’s lying on the ground now. None of these injuries are necessarily fatal. If she is still alive, she’s bleeding heavily. What happens next, we don’t know, because the bones don’t tell us. What we do know is that she is lying face down on the ground and she can’t run, she can’t defend herself. And someone has just sunk a hatchet or an ax into her thigh.” Gently she placed the carpal bone on the table. It was only the size of a pebble, the broken remnant of a terrible death. “That’s what these bones tell me.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Claire said, softly: “What happened to the other child?”
Lucy seemed to rouse herself from a trance, and she looked at the second skull.
“This was a child of similar age. Many of its bones are missing, and those we do have are severely weathered, but I can tell you this much: he-or she-suffered a crushing and probably fatal blow to the skull. These two children were buried together, in the same coffin. I suspect they died during the same attack.”
“There must be records of it,” said Lincoln. “Some old news account of who these children were.”
“As a matter of fact, we do know their names.” It was Vince talking, the ponytailed grad student. “Because of the date on a coin found in the same soil stratum, we knew their deaths occurred sometime after 1885. I searched the county deed records and learned that a family by the name of Gow owned that entire tract of land extending along the southern curve of Locust Lake. These bones are the mortal remains of Joseph and Jennie Gow, siblings, ages eight and ten.” Vince gave a sheepish grin. “It seems that what we’ve dug up here, folks, is the Gow family cemetery.”
This revelation did not strike Claire as a particularly humorous revelation, and she was disturbed by the fact several of the students laughed.
“Because it was a coffin burial,” explained Lucy, “we suspected this might be a family cemetery. I’m afraid we’ve disturbed their final resting place.”
“Then you know how these children died?” asked Claire. “News accounts are hard to come by, because that particular area was sparsely populated at the time,” said Vince. “What we do have available are the county death records. The Gow children’s deaths were both recorded on the same day: November fifteenth, 1887. Along with the deaths of three other members of their family”
There was a moment of horrified silence.
“Are you saying all five people died on the same day?” asked Claire. Vince nodded. “It appears this family was massacred.”
9
Carrot sticks and boiled potatoes and a microscopic sliver of chicken breast.
Louise Knowlton gazed down at the barren plate she’d just set before her son and she ached with maternal guilt. She was starving her own child. She saw it in his face, in those hungry eyes, the weak slump of his shoulders. Sixteen hundred calories a day! How could anyone survive on that! Barry had indeed lost weight, but at what price? He was but a shadow of his formerly robust 265-pound self, and even though she knew he needed to lose weight, it was clear to her, the one person in the world who knew him best, that her darling child was suffering.
She sat down at her own plate, on which she’d piled fried chicken and buttered biscuits. A solid, healthy meal for a cold night. Looking across the table, she met her husband’s gaze. Mel was silently shaking his head. He couldn’t stand it either, watching their son go hungry.
“Barry, sweetie, why don’t you have just one biscuit?” offered Louise.
“No, Mom.”
“It’s not so many calories. You can scrape off the gravy.”
“I don’t want any”
“Look how flaky they are! It’s that recipe from Barbara Perry’s mom. It’s the bacon fat that makes them so good. One little bite, Barry. Just try one bite!”
She held out a steaming biscuit to his lips. She could not stop herself, could not suppress the impulse, reinforced by fourteen years of motherhood, to feed that pink and needy mouth. This was more than food; this was love, in the shape of a crusty biscuit dripping butter onto her fingers. She waited for him to accept the offering.
“I told you, I don’t want any!” he yelled.
It was as shocking as a slap in the face. Louise sat back, stunned. The biscuit tumbled from her fingers and plopped into the lake of gravy glistening on her plate.
“Barry,” said his father.
“She’s always shoving food at me! No wonder I look like this! Look at both of you!”
“Your mother loves you. Look how you’ve hurt her feelings.”
Louise sat with trembling lips, trying not to cry. She gazed down at the bountiful dinner she had set on the table. It represented two hours of work in the kitchen, a labor of love, and oh how she loved her son! Now she saw the meal for what it was: the wasted efforts of a fat and stupid mother. She began to cry, her tears dribbling into the cream cheese mashed potatoes.
“Mom.” Barry groaned. “Ah geez. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind.” She held up a hand to ward off his pity. “I understand, Barry. I understand, and I won’t do it again. I swear I won’t.” She blotted away the tears with the napkin and for a few seconds managed to regain her dignity. “But I try so hard and-and-” She buried her face in the napkin, her whole body quaking with the effort not to cry. It took a moment for her to realize Barry was talking to her.
“Mom. Mom?”
She gulped in a breath and forced herself to look at him.
“Can I have a biscuit?”
Wordlessly she held out the platter. She watched him take a biscuit, split it open, and slather it with butter. She held her breath as he took the first bite, as the look of bliss rippled across his face. He had craved it all along, but had denied himself the pleasure. Now he gave himself up to it, eating a second. And a third. She watched him take every bite, and she felt a mother’s satisfaction, deep and primal.
Noah leaned against the side of the school building, smoking a cigarette. It had been months since he’d last lit up, and it made him cough, his lungs rebelling against the smoke. He imagined all those poisons swirling into his chest, the ones his mom was always lecturing him about, but in the general scheme of his life in this dreary town, he figured a little poison was hardly worth worrying about. He took another drag and coughed some more, not really enjoying the experience. But there wasn’t much else to do between classes, not since the skateboards were
