specialist for anything else. What do they call the forensic people now, criminalists? Anyway, you really need someone with the microscopic facilities of a good medical school, or the FBI… or is that why you're here, John?' Tee looked at Becker, who kept his eyes on the bone. 'Did you notice anything else?' Becker asked.
'To me it looks like the healthy bone of a young adult… except for these, of course,' Kom continued. He pointed to marks in the bone at either end. 'But I assumed you knew about them.'
'What can you tell us about them?'
Kom shrugged. 'Cut marks, made with a knife, smallish blade. I didn't see any marks except at the joints.'
'Do you draw any conclusion from that?' Becker asked. Kom looked at Becker for a moment. 'Anything you have in mind?' Kom asked. 'Whatever you think.'
'Well, forgive me if this seems ghoulish, but I'd say someone was-uh-cutting her up. Cutting her into pieces.'
'Christ,' said Tee.
'I thought so,' said Becker, nodding.
'You two are cool enough about it,' Tee said.
'It's our profession,' Kom said, smiling at Becker as if to reinforce a complicity.
'Was she dead when he carved her up?' Becker asked. 'Jesus,' Tee said.
Kom shrugged. 'That's beyond my expertise, John. You'd need a specialist. I would certainly hope so… Do you think it might have been done when she was still alive?'
'I've heard of it,' Becker said.
'You must have heard just about everything by now,' Kom said. 'It must be an interesting way of life.'
'It's not a way of life,' Becker said, not quite concealing his anger.
'It's a job.'
'Of course. I misspoke, sorry, no offense intended… Where did you find the bone?'
'It washed up in a woman's yard from the flooding,' Tee said. 'We don't know where it came from yet. We just started searching today.'
A woman stepped out of the house, carrying a tray of glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. She was tall and moved with the studied grace of a model even while crossing the uneven surface of the fieldstone path. The three men watched her come, but she carried herself like a woman who was accustomed to being looked at.
'Isn't she gorgeous?' Kom said proudly, watching his wife approach. She was close enough to hear but appeared to take no notice of the remark.
'Tovah, sweetheart, you know the chief of police.'
'Hello, Mrs. Kom.'
'How are you, Mr. Terhune?'
'And this is John Becker,' Kom said proudly, as if displaying a trophy.
Then, as if showing off another, he added, 'My wife.'
She put down the tray and offered a cool hand to Becker.
'Tovah Kom,' she said. Her lips were painted with a cruel slash of crimson that looked as if it had been applied in anger, and her eyes had been shadowed in gray, giving her a sad and haggard appearance that was belied by her large, robust body. Heavy gold rings fell from her ears, more gold hung around her neck, and her wrists and hands were covered in an ostentatious display of yet more gold encrusted with diamonds. Becker found it hard at first glance to tell if she was a sickly woman dressed to look like a rich man's wife or a beautiful woman trying to pass as the languishing victim of a vampire. He wondered if she herself had decided how she wanted to appear. 'I thought you gentlemen might like some iced tea,' she said, glancing at the tray, then seeing the bone.
'Do you have to have that lying around?'
'It won't bite,' Kom said. 'A lot of things don't bite that you don't want to look at,' she said. She was only slightly taller than her husband but her perfect carriage made her look taller than she was.
With a display of pleasing the little lady, Kom covered the bone with the towel and handed it to Tee.
'You'll be wanting it back,' he said, sounding disappointed.
Tee gently took the cloth-wrapped parcel. 'Do you have any idea how old it might be?'
'Again, outside my area of expertise, I'm afraid. The bones I look at professionally are living. Several years, would be my guess. Listen, if I can be any help when you find the rest of her, let me know. I'm happy to help out in any way I can.'
'We will,' said Tee.
To Becker, Kom said, 'Listen, we should get together and talk sometime.
It sounds like we have a lot in common. Tovah will get in touch with your wife, we can have dinner. '
'That would be nice,' Becker said without enthusiasm.
'Tovah's a hell of a cook,' Kom said.
'He means that in the best way possible,' said Tovah.
Becker smiled. 'I'm sure he does.'
'What does your wife do, Mr. Becker? Does she work?' Tovah indicated Kom with an inclination of her head. 'This one assumes women just sit around waiting for dinner invitations from strangers.'
'What did I say?' Kom asked. He turned his palms skyward, miming bafflement for Tee.
'She's my boss, actually,' Becker said. 'She's the head of my department at the Bureau.'
'Your wife's in it too? Listen, this is great, isn't this great, Tovah?
Both of you in the business. God, I'd love to hear your dinner conversations.'
'As opposed to ours, which don't interest him at all,' Tovah said. She addressed this, as she did many remarks, to no one in particular, playing to a middle distance removed from her auditors, seemingly not caring if she was heard or not.
Kom ignored her. 'So listen, John, why don't you give me your card, Tovah will call your wife. Is there anything you don't like to eat?
Lobster gives me hives. Otherwise… Tovah, you ask him, this isn't my department.' Tovah turned to Becker as if summoned from a distance. A wry smile tugged at her lips and she studied him for a moment before speaking.
'Is there anything you don't like to eat, Mr. Becker? This one doesn't like lobster..
'I like lobster, it just gives me hives,' Kom said.
'Hives aren't contagious,' she said.
Becker took a business card from his wallet and handed it to Kom.
'Anything is fine. I eat anything.'
'How about your wife? Does she eat anything too? That's a silly question, she's a wife, she must be used to eating all kinds of things.
Or is that just doctors' wives?'
Kom chuckled but no one else seemed amused.
It was not until Tee and Becker had driven off that Kom looked at Becker's business card and realized that the only telephone number was the Bureau office in New York.
'It's not that I feel offended or anything, you understand, I is just a lowly policeman and doesn't belong up in de big house wif de quality folks, but shit, was it necessary to invite you fight in front of me?'
'Believe me, Tee, you're better off.'
'I mean, you're probably a fascinating guy, John-I haven't seen it yet in twenty years, but never mind, I can see why somebody might think it would be a hell of a good idea to sit down and eat with you. But Christ, I know which fork to use too.'
'Which one do you use? I've never been clear on that.'
'The one on the left is for salad, the one on the right is for meat, the one in the middle is for soup.'
'That's not soup, that's the finger bowl.'
'See, there you go, that's why I don't get invited out. Maybe you could take me along and show me how to behave.'
'Don't get pissed off at me, I didn't have anything to do with it.'
'Yeah, but you're handy.'
