“When we’ve verified what we’re looking at, we’ll pass it on.” Slidell.
Rinaldi picked at a callus on his thumb. Between the spiky hairs, his scalp looked pale and shiny.
Larabee’s voice drifted down from his office.
Slidell held my look. I wondered if he could hang on to it with my boot up his ass.
Rinaldi broke the silence.
“I see no harm in including Dr. Brennan in our thinking.”
Slidell’s eyes rolled to his partner, snapped back to me.
“What the hell.” Slidell sighed. “No skin off my nose.”
“Three, four years back. I can’t precisely recall. An inquiry came across my desk.”
“About a body with no head or hands.”
Rinaldi nodded.
“Where?”
“South Carolina.”
“It’s a big state.”
“Fort Mill. Gaffney. Chester.” Rinaldi flapped a long, bony hand. “Nothing is centralized down there, it’s hard to backtrack.”
Unlike the Tarheel State, South Carolina relies on a coroner system, with practitioners operating independently in each county. Coroners are elected. A nurse, a funeral director, a cemetery owner. Few are trained in medicine, fewer still in forensic pathology. Autopsies are farmed out to local doctors.
“Most South Carolina coroners don’t have the facilities to keep a corpse very long.”
“Got that damn straight,” Slidell snorted. “Gave Michael Jordan’s daddy, what, three days before they smoked him?”
Slidell had the tact of a sledgehammer. But he was right.
“I’ve sent out a query,” Rinaldi said. “I hope to hear back by the end of the day.”
“Was this headless, handless body in good shape?”
“As I recall, the remains were skeletonized. But it wasn’t relevant to anything we were investigating at the time, so I didn’t take much notice.”
“Black or white?”
Rinaldi raised then dropped his shoulders.
“Male or female?”
“Definitely,” Rinaldi said.
When the detectives had gone I phoned the university. A colleague could look at the feathers the following day.
Next I went to the cooler and rolled out the gurney with the animal remains. I packaged everything that looked like bird, and placed the bundle in a sack with Rinaldi’s baggie of feathers.
Exchanging the animal gurney for that holding the privy remains, I spent the next several hours doing as thorough an analysis as possible.
My initial impressions changed little, though I was able to be more precise on the age estimate.
Race: white.
Age: twenty-five to forty years.
Sex: roll the dice.
When I returned to my office, Ryan was leafing through a copy of
“Have a good day?”
“Latta Plantation then Freedom Park.”
“Didn’t know you were such a history buff.”
“Hooch can’t get enough of the stuff.”
“Where is he?”
“The call of Alpo overpowered the call of the wild.”
“Surprised he let you out on your own.”
“When last seen, man’s best friend was investigating the contents of an Oreo bag.”
“Chocolate is bad for dogs.”
“We discussed that. Hooch thought he could handle it.”
“If Hooch guessed wrong, you’re cleaning the carpet.”
