Make No Bones

and Julie planning to pay a working visit to Lavalands National Monument, they wouldn't be seeing each other until late afternoon. They'd had a quick cup of coffee and then walked along the nature trail, a wooded path following the smaller of the two streams that ran through the heart of the old resort and into the woodlands to the north.

It had been a good idea. With the heat wave predicted to continue (John was delighted), the growing but still tolerable early-morning warmth had intensified the sweet, spicy fragrances of the pine forest, so that every breath was thick with cinnamon and vanilla-like scents; markedly different from the cool, cedary aromas of coastal Washington. They had walked hand in hand, quietly, glad to be enjoying the freshness together before the rest of the world had gotten moving. Underfoot, the path lay three inches deep in pine needles as long and golden and pungent as hay. Walking through them made dry, swishing, silky sounds that soothed their ears. And when there was the unexpected, rasping crunch of a hidden pine cone being stepped on, they laughed.

After a quarter of a mile they had stopped and sat down at this pleasant, open spot where the branches filtered the sunlight and the stream lapped at the low bank. They had watched the sparkling water, and sat with their arms around their knees, and chewed wild grass stems, and talked aimlessly about nothing much. It had been too long a time since they'd had a morning like it.

'No,” Julie said, “I don't mean generally speaking, I mean right now; specifically.'

'Specific bones on the brain?” Gideon said lazily, still beguiled by the water. He tossed in another pebble.

Julie got up, walked two steps to the edge of the bank, and crouched, using a twig to probe gently at the root area of a young willow that overhung the stream. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Gideon, I think these are cremains.'

'I wish people wouldn't call...'

'Excuse me, cremated remains. Come look.'

Gideon got reluctantly to his feet and went to her side, leaning over with his hands on his knees. “Yup.'

'But aren't the chunks kind of big? The ones Nellie showed us were almost like powder.'

'Well, it depends on the funeral home. Sometimes they pretty much pulverize what's left, and other times they more or less break it up with a hammer, and you get pieces like these.” He picked up one of the two fragments; a bit of humerus. “But I grant you, these are bigger than usual.

There seem to be only these two pieces. I imagine someone was throwing the ashes into the stream, and these accidentally fell onto the bank. They don't look as if they've been here very—'

'Gideon!'

Julie had continued scanning the nearby ground, and now she was staring at a small tangle of exposed roots that jutted out from the side of the bank, two or three inches above the water and a couple of feet from the bone fragments.

Gideon saw instantly what had seized her attention. He put down the burned piece and kneeled to look more closely at the bright, granular fleck of white caught among the roots. After a few seconds he sat back on his haunches and looked thoughtfully up at her.

'Jasper?” she said.

'Looks like it.'

There wasn't much room for doubt. The fleck was a broken, half-inch-wide particle of white styrofoam; the same kind of plastic that Jasper's remains had been wired to. And, as if the matter needed cinching, there was still a loop of white, plastic-coated wire piercing it, twisted together at one end. It was the loop that had snagged in the roots.

'They must have done it in the dark,” Gideon said, thinking aloud. “After the walk-through at the museum. They wanted to get rid of it in a hurry. They came out here, broke up the display, and tossed everything in the stream.'

'Or thought they did,” Julie said. “It would have been easy for them not to notice they'd dropped a few pieces.” “Yes. But...'

'What?'

'Doesn't this strike you as an odd place to dump these? Right on the nature trail? I mean, if I'd wanted to get rid of them quickly, I would have maybe tossed them out of the car window on the way back from Bend, a piece at a time. No one ever would have found them.'

'Most people didn't go to Bend in their own cars. They went in groups, or took the bus. You couldn't have done it without other people seeing.'

'Well, then, I'd have crushed them after I got back—a couple of blows with a hammer or a rock would have done it—and flushed them down the toilet. Crush-and-flush.'

'You'd have flushed the Styrofoam?'

'All right, that I'd have broken up and tossed in the garbage. Without the bones or one of these wire loops, who would connect it to Jasper? Or maybe I'd have buried it, to be on the safe side. But somewhere out in the woods. I sure wouldn't have left any of it right along the trail like this.'

'I agree, it's strange.'

He nodded and straightened up. “Julie, I'd better get going. I have to be in Bend at seven. Will you let John know about this when we get back to the lodge?'

'Of course.” They began walking back. “What do you make of it, Gideon?'

He shook his head. “I don't know.'

'Still think it's just a prank?'

He looked at her. “No,” he said, “I don't think it's a prank.'

* * * *