Bones

Still, its nearness was unnerving. Again and again, I found my eyes drawn to it. I tried to force my thoughts along other channels, but before many minutes passed, I was thinking about it and its contents.

Duke, who was whittling a little wooden horse for his grandson, would stop every so often, look toward the long black bag, then return to his carving with a vengeance.

The others, I noticed, often looked toward the body, too.

David started the clowning. It began during dinner, while Ben was on duty near the stretcher. David gave Bingle a command to do a headstand, which — without lifting his hind legs — the dog attempted. The dog not only looked ridiculous, with his head upside down on the ground and his forepaws flattened next to it, he “talked” the whole time he held this position, making a sort of half-howling, half-barking sound. He brought the house down.

David said, “Bien,” and Bingle raised his head up, glancing around the laughing group with that grinning look that dogs sometimes get on their faces, wagging his tail, seeming for all the world to be enjoying the joke with the rest of us.

This set off a round of dog stories, and then a round of cop and forensic anthropologist stories, and next a round of bizarre homicide stories. The humor was often dark, and most of the tales would, I knew, never be repeated around those whom this group thought of as civilians.

I noticed that the stories and jokes never touched on this day’s work or this victim — subjects that by some unspoken agreement were taboo — and that the most any of them got out of Ben was a soft smile.

I called it a night long before most of them were ready to do the same. Now I sat wondering if I would ever get the smell of decay off my hair and skin, wondering if another day or so spent in proximity with the body would permanently mark me with its scent of death.

I heard footsteps in the darkness and gave a start.

“Ms. Kelly.”

I sighed in relief. “You scared the hell out of me, Dr. Sheridan.”

“Oh.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

It must have nearly killed him to say it.

He came a little closer. “Ms. Kelly, you’re married to a homicide detective, right?”

“Yes. Frank Harriman. He’s with the Las Piernas P.D.”

“Then I suppose you understand . . . I suppose you’ve heard him tell stories or make jokes about things . . .”

“Dr. Sheridan, I’ve not only heard him make this sort of joke, I’ve joked with him. If you think I’ll misjudge what’s happening around that campfire, you misjudge me. But, come to think of it, that seems to be a specialty of yours.”

There was a long silence.

“They’re just releasing tension,” I said. “I know that. Under the circumstances, it’s probably one of the healthiest things they could do.”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“I know you think that I’m one of a species other than your own — one of an unfeeling life form that crawled out of the sea a little later than the one that became forensic anthropologists — but miraculously, maybe sometime during the Paleozoic Age, reporters developed a sense of humor, too. Someday I’ll have to sneak you into a newsroom, Ben Sheridan, so that you can hear our own brand of sick humor. We’re getting pretty good at it; you should hear how quickly the jokes start whenever a particularly shocking story comes over the wire. And it works almost as well as it’s working over by that campfire.”

“Well, yes, I just—”

“You just thought I might write that these guys didn’t show proper respect for Julia Sayre. Just thought I wouldn’t understand that this really has nothing to do with her — that I lie in wait for anyone in this group to make a mistake or betray a little human weakness so that I can trumpet it to the world. That I don’t understand the horror and the strain of . . .” I suddenly felt that horror, that strain, and stopped talking.

He didn’t speak or move.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture you,” I said. “And I owe you my thanks.”

“For what?” he asked, and I could hear the surprise.

“At the grave, when I — I kind of lost it there for a little while. I hadn’t expected to see — what I saw.”

“Your reaction was understandable, Ms. Kelly. And you don’t owe me thanks — I owe you another apology. It was cruel of me to ask you to help.”

“I’m not unwilling to help,” I said. “I just wasn’t ready for . . .”

“No one ever is,” he said. “No one.”

He started to walk off, then said, “David will want to keep Bingle with him tonight. Will you be all right?”

“Yes.”

He looked up at the sky. “Better put the rainfly on your tent.”

13

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 17

Las Piernas

When Frank arrived at Phil Newly’s hospital room, he found the lawyer looking disconcerted.

“Bad news about the foot, Mr. Newly?” he asked as he walked in.