When they were inside the shop and it was crowded with more people than usual, I was curious enough about the pathologist that I moved close and listened in as she talked to Inspector Pierce.
“I’d go with human jawbone,” she said.
“Can you guess anything more about it? Age, how long it’s been exposed, et cetera?” Inspector Pierce asked.
“No. I’ll take it back to the lab for some tests, but it’s not a recently … exposed bone. It’s been some time. It wouldn’t be the color it is if it came from someone recently deceased,” she said.
“Did it come from the skull room at the university?”
“I don’t see a marking, but the jawbone isn’t the area that’s usually marked.”
“I’ll look into it,” Inspector Pierce said.
Just another day in an old bookshop in Edinburgh.
“We don’t have anything but the bone,” Inspector Winters said as he came from the back corner of the shop where he’d been talking to a crime scene tech and sidled up next to me as I tried to look like I wasn’t eavesdropping. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything, anyone who you might suspect of leaving such a thing behind?”
“One hundred percent. Rosie didn’t either, and she and Hector were up front the whole time,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone carrying the box, but I’m not sure it would have registered as suspicious anyway.”
“I don’t know the brand of shoe the shoebox is from, but they will, of course, try to look that direction too. Do you know the brand?”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“I have,” Rosie piped up as she joined us too. “It’s a women’s shoe line, not expensive, easy tae find in most department stores.”
“So someone might have grabbed one of their own shoeboxes, put a jawbone in it, and then dropped it in front of the shop? At least I’d use someone else’s shoebox,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” Inspector Winters said. “People don’t think these things through sometimes. In fact, it’s very hard tae get away with a crime. Between cameras and criminals’ egos, we usually catch the bad guy.”
I looked at him and remembered. “Inspector Pierce said he was going to try to get some CC cameras around here, in the close at least.”
“I heard him complaining that it hadn’t happened yet,” Inspector Winters said.
“Darn it.”
The bell above the door jingled.
“Oh boy,” I said quietly when I saw Bridget Carr leaning in.
“She’s an annoying lass,” Rosie said. Hector agreed.
“Who’s that?” Inspector Winters asked.
“Bridget Carr. She’s a reporter,”
“The one who wrote the article about you?”
“Yes.”
“You want me tae send her away?”
“No. Actually, I want to talk to her. Excuse me.”
I guided her out of the bookshop and around one of the crime scene technicians who seemed to be doing nothing more than standing in the space where the box had been. We walked to the corner, away from most of the activity.
“Delaney,” Bridget said with a sly smile. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“How’s that?”
“Bones. Someone’s leaving bones all around the city. That’s an odd turn of events, don’t you think? And, remember when I told you all about the bones supposedly buried over there in the close? What about that plaster-like piece I found?”
“This just happened. I wasn’t holding out, and this doesn’t feel like ‘all around the city.’” I held up my hand to stop her next argument. “Bridget, I’m bothered by this, and I agree with you that it’s strange. What do you want to know?”
I’d surprised her. She wasn’t expecting my cooperation. She worked to recover. “Look, I’m all about the story. ALL about it. It’s what makes me a decent reporter but a less-than-ideal friend.” She blinked at me. “I wish you’d called me.”
“The police have been here. They were the first ones I called.” I paused. “But I see your side a little. I understand you want a story.”
“You see my side?” she said doubtfully.
“I do,” I said convincingly.
“Okay,” she said, seemingly at a loss for any other response.
I continued, “I don’t know about bones all over the city. I know that there was part of a jawbone, human, in a shoebox right over there,” I nodded toward the crime scene tech who was keeping his position, “and I called the police. Finding a bone in a shoebox is weird. I would have called the police even if a murder hadn’t occurred near the shop.”
“Just a jawbone in a shoebox? No other bones in there?” she asked, her demeanor snapping back to professional.
“That was it. Well, it was just half of one. I did overhear the pathologist confirm that it didn’t belong to someone who’d died recently, but you should confirm that before you print it. I didn’t hear an exact age, or even a real guess at one.”
“I will. Thanks.” With a blue-ink pen, she wrote the word “jawbone” on the palm of her hand.
“You don’t have a notebook?”
“I do. Sometimes I just write on my hand or arm, though.”
“Huh.”
She shrugged and said, “I heard there was a bone found outside the building where the murder victim, Mallory, lived.”
“You mean just now, recently?”
“Yes, but no, now I think it was a mistake. I think it was supposed to mean this bone. The message got muddled, and nothing was going on over there. Do you know people who live in her building?”
“Some. Acquaintances.”
“That’s not exactly what I heard, but that’s okay.”
“You continue
