His father was Izzy Wallace, a policeman, as Archie had said-and a friend of Frank’s.
Diane dreaded telling Frank. He was so overjoyed at finding Star. Now his friend will have this dreadful news. Izzy Wallace wasn’t one of her favorite people and she certainly wasn’t one of his, but she would wish this on no one. She looked forlornly at the other bones in the trays and set about seeing if she could match them up.
It looked as if most of the bones found along the adjacent grid squares belonged with these wrist bones. But Jin would have to take DNA samples anyway to confirm.
As if reading her mind, Jin spoke. “We’ll have to use mitochondrial DNA on most of these remains. The nuclear DNA will have been too degraded by the fire.”
Diane nodded. “I think for most we’ll have dental records and x-rays to go along with the DNA. There’ll just be a few that we’ll need to rely only on DNA.”
“You know, boss,” began Jin.
“I know, Jin. If we had our own DNA lab, you could have all these done tonight and we’d have everyone’s identity tomorrow.”
“There’s that, but I was going to suggest that since I have to extract these samples when we get back to the lab, why don’t I go out and help Neva and David get all the remains collected. We’ll get done faster.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Jin pealed off his gloves and slipped off his green lab coat. Just as he started out the door, David entered carrying a box.
“We found another body.”
He brought the bones to Diane’s table. His dark eyes sparkled. Diane waited for the other shoe to drop. There was usually another shoe when David looked like that.
“We found him among metal bed slats, and a partially consumed head and footboard,” he said, “so we think he may have been in bed at the time of the fire. And get this. He was shot in the head.”
Chapter 13
“Shot?” said Diane.
Allen Rankin looked up from the cadaver he was examining. “Someone was shot? In the house? Before the fire?” he said. “That puts a different complexion on the whole thing.”
David set the box on an unoccupied gurney near Diane’s table and handed her snapshots of the scene. “I’ll get the official pictures to you when I can,” he said.
Diane took the small photographs of the bones in situ. “This is how you found them?” she asked.
“Just like that. It looks like the bullet went in the left cheek and out the right side of the head,” said David.
Diane opened the box and began setting the bones out on the gurney in anatomical position. Up to this point, the bones recovered from the site had been various shades of gray to black in color, depending on how burned they were. This set of bones were charred and blackened, but they didn’t have any of the lighter shades of gray or white; they were mostly a dark rich brown. Nor did they have any bits of charred flesh attached to them.
Grover came to help Diane lay out the bones. The MEs left their tables to take a look at the murder victim. Like Grover, they wanted to see something that could add a whole new dimension to the investigation. She could see they were as curious as she.
Diane picked up the skull and examined the bullet wound. It apparently hit dead center in the left infra-orbital foramen-a hole under the left orbit for nerves and vessels-and exited through the right side on the lambdoidal suture where the parietal and occipital meet. The bullet’s exit took huge fragments of skull with it.
Diane took off her glove and touched a femur with her fingers.
“This ain’t right, is it?” said Grover.
“Grover, you know your bones, don’t you?” said Diane. She remembered when he cleaned the bones of a murder victim for her how he had packaged the bones with all the correct sides together, even the ribs.
“What?” asked Pilgrim. “What is it that you are seeing?”
“For one thing,” said Diane, “look at the photograph. Look how the bones are arranged.”
“He looks to have been in a super flexed position when he died,” said David. “You think he was tied up and executed?”
“No,” said Diane. She smiled at Grover. “What do you notice about the bones, Grover?”
“They’re mighty brown, Dr. Fallon. Mighty brown.”
“Um huh,” murmured Diane. She picked up several bones and studied each. She examined the skull again and the teeth and surfaces inside the skull.
“The bones are awfully clean,” said Jin.
“Aren’t they, though?” said Diane.
“A dental chart isn’t going to help much on him,” said Rankin. “He has no fillings, and the poor fellow had more than a few bad dental caries in his molars. That one in his incisor looks like it might have been ready to abscess.”
“How old is he-or she?” asked Jin.
“He. The pelvis is clearly male. He was probably in his early twenties.” She showed them the rugged surface of his pubis symphysis-where the two hip bones come together in front. “The older you get, the more worn down it is-among other things. And he’s just getting in his third molars.”
“So, Grover,” said Lynn Webber, “what’s with the brown bones?”
“I believe he’s worn down to his bones in a coffin. Don’t you, Dr. Fallon?” he said.
“I do indeed,” said Diane.
“In a coffin?” said David. “What are you saying?”
“Bones in a coffin often get that very brown color to them. Look,” she handed David back the photograph. “This fellow is far too flexed to have been put that way while he was still fleshed out-even if he were bound tight. Look at how the long bones are all parallel and the smaller bones are all in a pile. I believe the skeleton was in a box under one of the students’ bed. I’ll have to run some tests, but these bones are very old, perhaps a hundred years or more.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Rankin. “I guess his killer’s beyond the likes of us now. But that begs the question, just where did a student get the skeleton of a person who appears to have had a proper burial when he died?”
“Good question. If any of the house’s residents are among the survivors, we can ask if they know,” said Diane. “In the meantime, pack this fellow back up. I’ll take him to the osteology lab and work on him later.”
“All that’s real interesting,” said Archie. He was standing behind Jin, looking over his shoulder. “Never knew you could tell so much from just bones.”
“Oh, she can tell you more than that when she gets to really analyzing him,” said Jin.
“You trying to butter me up, Jin?” asked Diane.
“Every chance I get, Boss.” He grinned at her.
Grover began repacking the bones in his careful way-as if the deceased could feel what was happening to them and he wanted to make sure they were comfortable throughout their journey to the afterlife. Everyone else gravitated back to their respective workstations, except Lynn Webber. She hung back. Jin went with David back to the burned-out house site.
“OK, Grover,” Lynn asked her diener, “how did you know about the bones turning brown in a coffin?”
“Like Raymond was always saying,” he replied, referring to his cousin who had been Lynn’s assistant before him, “there are some questions it’s just best not to ask.” He gave her a rare smile, and Lynn laughed out loud.
Diane got the idea that this was the first joke Grover had ever made.
Diane packaged and labeled the bones, which she had tentatively identified as those of Donald Wallace, pending DNA confirmation. How awful for the parents to have raised a son or daughter to adulthood with all their hopes and dreams for that child, and in just one moment of disaster to have nothing left but a few bones-no face to look upon, nothing to see or hold. She did not envy the people whose job it was to inform the parents that their child’s remains had been identified.
