police had found no evidence of foul play, the death had been ruled suspicious. The medical examiner would be performing an autopsy.
I drifted off.
“-worship of Satan right here in the cellars and back rooms of our city. Pagan idolatry. Sacrifice. Bloodletting.”
The voice was baritone, the vowels thicker than sap.
My eyes flew open.
The clip was just ending. Overweight and red-faced, Boyce Lingo was delivering one of his media-grab rants.
“Those who follow Lucifer must be dealt with swiftly and harshly. Their evil must be stopped before it seeps into our playgrounds and schools. Before it threatens the very fabric of our society.”
Preacher turned county commissioner, Lingo was a case study of extremist ideology, pseudo-Christianity, pseudo-patriotism, and thinly veiled white-male supremacy. His was a constituency that wanted the economy unregulated, the welfare state small, the military strong, and the citizenry white, native born, and strictly New Testament.
“You moron!” Had I been holding the remote, it would have gone sailing.
Birdie shot from the bed.
“You boneheaded twit!” My palms smacked the mattress.
I heard soft padding, assumed Birdie was increasing his distance. I didn’t care. Tonight’s grandstanding was typical Lingo. The man had a pattern of attaching himself to anything of media interest for a minute of air time or a half inch of print.
Killing the TV and lamp, I lay in the dark, tense and angry. I tossed, kicked the covers, punched the pillow, thoughts and images kaleidoscoping in my brain. The cauldrons. The putrefied chicken. The human cranium and femora.
The school portrait.
Who was she? Had Skinny’s decision been wise? Or should we be broadcasting the girl’s image?
Had the photo already flashed on TV screens somewhere far away, in a market disconnected from the coverage that entered Charlotte homes? Had some anchor reported a missing teen, vanished while on her way home from a ball game, from having pizza with friends? When? Had it been before the advent of centers for missing children and Amber alerts?
Had her parents made pleas to the camera, Mom crying, Dad steely-voiced? Had neighbors and townsfolk offered solace, inwardly thankful that their own children were safe? That, this time, tragedy had not selected them?
How had the picture ended up in that cauldron? The skull?
And what about the leg bones? Did both come from a single individual?
Did the skull, the femora, and the photo represent one person? Two? Three? More?
My clock radio said 11:40. Twelve twenty. One ten. Out in the garden, a million tree frogs croaked. Erratic gusts scratched leaves across my bedroom window screen.
Why so warm this deep into the fall? It would be cold in Quebec by now. Montreal might even be sporting a dusting of snow.
I thought about Andrew Ryan. I did miss him. But the pragmatist brain cells were definitely right. I had to move on.
I smiled recalling Katy’s postprandial “coincidence.” Her matchmaking had started several years back, intensified with the arrival of Summer. Judd the pharmacist. Donald the veterinarian. Barry the entrepreneur. Sam the what? I never was sure. I refused all offers.
My daughter, the yenta of Dixie.
Now it was Charlie, the public defender.
Katy did have a point. Charlie Hunt was smart, good-looking, available, and interested. Why not give it a try?
Charlie was a 9/11 widower. That meant he carried baggage. Was he ready for a relationship? Was I? I also toted a satchel or two.
Lyrics popped into my head. England Dan and John Ford Coley.
There you go.
Moving in. Moving on.
Good old Pete was moving on.
Pete and Summer.
What was Summer’s last name? Glotsky? Grumsky? I made a note to ask.
Again and again, my thoughts veered back to the cellar.
I remembered the doll with the miniature sword piercing her chest. The knife.
The chicken had been decapitated. Had the goat been slaughtered in a similar fashion?
Had there really been a human sacrifice? Like Mark Kilroy, the college student killed in Matamoros. Lingo insinuated as much, but he was just yapping. He had no information. But then, neither did I.
I resolved to find some.
9
THOUGH I’D SLEPT LITTLE, I AGAIN ROSE AT DAWN. COFFEE AND a muffin, and I was on my way to the MCME.
By eight thirty both femora lay on the counter. So did three other sections of long bone. The latter were sawn, and came from a small mammal. Or mammals. Since no anatomical landmarks remained, the osteology text was of no use. I’d need histology to determine species and numbers.
By ten I’d emptied the large cauldron. The remaining soil produced three more red beads, a segment of antler, probably deer, and a small plastic skeleton.
After photographing the collection, I turned to the human femora.
The two leg bones were similar in size and robusticity. Both were slender and lacked prominent muscle attachment sites. One was a left, the other a right. Both were straight, with little shaft concavity, an African- American more than European trait.
As with the skull, I took measurements. Maximum length. Bicondylar breadth. Midshaft circumference. When I’d completed two sets of nine, I ran the numbers through Fordisc 3.0.
Both bones classified as female. Both classified as black.
I turned my attention to age.
As with the cranium, long bones come with some assembly required. Here’s how it works.
As the tubular part, or shaft, elongates throughout childhood, caps, condyles, crests, and tuberosities form around it. It is the joining together of these fiddly bits to the straight bit, sometime in mid to late adolescence, that gives each bone its characteristic shape.
Union occurs in set sequence, at roughly predictable ages. Elbow. Hip. Ankle. Knee. Wrist. Shoulder.
Both femora exhibited identical patterns. The hip ends were fully adult, meaning full fusion of the heads to the necks, and of the lesser and greater trochanters to the shafts. At the other end, squiggly lines above the joint surface indicated the articular condyles were still wrapping things up at the knee. The picture suggested death sometime in the late teens.
The leg bones came from a young black female. So did the skull.
I felt, what? Relieved? Resigned? I wasn’t sure.
I flashed on the girl in the photo. The very modern photo.
I surveyed the cauldrons and the artifacts they had held. Thought of the chicken, the goat, the statue, the
