Ghouls

scooped out through that hole. At least I’ve never seen a head trauma like this before; and don’t get me wrong, I’m not a zoological expert, but I couldn’t tell you what kind of animal could bite a hole like this in the cranial vault and then get the brain out so cleanly.” He arched a shoulder, unimpressed at even his own grisly revelations. “We’ll see what the boss says in the morning. If he doesn’t know, he’ll find someone who does.”

Kurt winced one last time at the opened skull. It conjured an image of huge, snapping jaws and teeth. “If this person died more than two days ago, then we know it can’t be Donna Fitzwater. Are you going to be able to give us a time of death?”

Greene leaned casually against a bracketed tray cluttered with clamps, scissors, and smudged scalpels. The light reflected off his glasses in opaque white discs and made him look like a misanthropic cartoon character. “This 81 of yours lacks all of the normal major factors by which we determine time of death. We can’t make muscle pH and glycogen readings because there’s not enough muscle left. No way to measure the extent of gas formation in the blood, no way to measure fixation, temperature, or rigor. We can usually narrow TOD down to two or three hours by graphing the potassium levels in the ocular fluids of the eyes. But as you can see—”

“No eyes,” Kurt said.

“No nothing,” Bard said.

“All I can tell you now is that she hasn’t been dead long. One thing we could measure was the state of H₂O retention in the ligaments and tendon ends, plus the absence of sufficient peroxidation—”

“Wait a minute,” Bard interrupted. “You said she. It’s a fucking skeleton. How do you know it’s a she?”

“Sex-chromatin test?” Kurt ventured.

“No,” Greene said. “What little tissue material is left has already turned karyolytic. But that’s all beside the point. You don’t need any of that for a complete skeleton. Basic osteology proves this is a woman. Broad os coxae. Improminent supercilliary ridge. Wide pelvic inlet… She’s a woman, all right. No bout a doubt it.”

No one laughed at Greene’s quip. Kurt could only stare at the twiglike thing on the table. It had been hollowed out, its bones gnawed. “What about age?” he asked. “Dead end?”

Greene seemed to be losing interest fast; he looked ready to fall asleep. “From this, exact age’ll be impossible to determine. We’ve only got guidelines. The fusion state of the epiphyseal plates indicates she’s older than eighteen, while the marginal fusion of the coronal and sagittal sutures in her orbital dome points out that she’s younger than, say, forty.” He picked up a long bivalving knife and tapped the stripped jaw, as if to test its solidity. “Most important of all is that her back row of molars are coming in, so unless she was subject to several superincumbent nutritional deficiencies, she’s more than likely in her early twenties.”

Kurt glanced glumly to Bard. “The Fitzwater girl was twenty-two.”

“Piss,” Bard said. He was a fat, angry mannequin in the ghastly light. “Piss. Cock.” Then, to Greene: “You’re sure of all this?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Greene said. He seemed amused that his competence had been questioned. “Now for the clincher. The most obvious atypical aspect of this 81 was the definite osteoporosis of the lower extremities. So I ordered some X rays and found positive evidence of complete spinal transection. Severe displacement of the upper lumbar group. Fractured neural arch.”

“In other words,” Kurt said, “she was crippled?”

Greene adjusted his glasses. His biceps made his sleeves look stuffed. “Exactly,” he verified. “But it wasn’t a recent fracture. This back injury occurred years ago, maybe many years. Was Donna Fitzwater paraplegic?”

“Yes,” Kurt droned. By now the fumes were making his eyes water. “Her father said she’d been crippled since she was young.”

“Then there’s no doubt that this is Donna Fitzwater,” Bard concluded, bile in his words.

“Unless you’ve got another missing person who’s a girl in her early twenties with a broken back,” Greene said in a long, laborious breath. “Bring in her dental records for positive ID. The M.E. will examine everything in the morning, but he won’t tell you any different.”

Bard glanced around, then looked into his vomit bag and gulped. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, pawing his gut. “My belly’s doing cartwheels.”

“Thanks for your time, Doc,” Kurt said. “We’ll give you a call tomorrow for the preliminary.”

Greene smiled faintly, shaking his head as Kurt, Bard, and Glen made a swift exit. They took long, nearly ludicrous strides until they were in the darkened lobby, a comfortable distance from Green’s facility.

“Fucking place is like a goddamned lab at Auschwitz.” Bard collapsed into a seat. “And how do you like that meat rack in there? You need a Ph.D. in anatomy just to understand the guy. He might as well be talking fucking Swedish.”

“Yeah, but that meat rack saved us a hell of a lot of time,” Kurt said. “At least we don’t have to rush being confused.” The light in the candy machine continued to flicker and buzz. Kurt couldn’t believe they’d put one this close to the morgue, of all places. He blinked rapidly till the sting in his eyes began to subside. He relished air that was free of fixators, and shortly the sick wooziness cleared from his head.

Bard looked like a limp sack in the seat. “For two days straight I’ve been praying that girl would turn up.” Then his voice roughened. “I should’ve known she’d turn up like that.”

“And how are we going to find out what happened to her?” Kurt drew on the complaint. “Unless we find something at Belleau Wood. We don’t even know the cause of death. How can we get a line on who’s responsible?”

Glen spoke for the first time since they’d entered the morgue. Dark circles under his eyes looked like smudges of soot. His voice was dull as wax. “What makes you think there was even a crime committed? Looks to me like she just got dragged off by some dogs or something. A crippled girl wouldn’t stand a chance against wild dogs, even in front of her own home.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t in front of her own house,” Kurt reminded him. “She wasn’t even outside. Harley Fitzwater said her wheelchair was still by her bed, so even if she wanted to go outside for some fresh air or something, she would have been in the chair. There’s no way this is an accident. Someone entered that trailer and physically removed her.”

Bard and Glen finally surrendered to the conclusion. A drape of silence followed them down the corridor and out into the abandoned parking lot. They walked tilted, like drunks, still slightly warped by the state of affairs in Greene’s shop of horrors.

“I’ll have to call Choate, give him a complete report,” Bard complained. “The fucker’ll have county shirts all over my town.”

Emptiness amplified Glen’s otherwise subdued voice. “Somebody’s going to have to tell Harley Fitzwater that that skeleton back there is probably his daughter.”

“We’ll wait till positive ID is official,” Bard said. “And you’ll have to do some writing for this. County, too.”

“I know,” Glen said, and pulled open his Pinto’s door.

“You log trespassers at Belleau Wood, don’t you?” Kurt interjected.

“Sure.”

“Anything out of the ordinary last night?”

“No. No one on foot, at least.”

“Any smoochers?”

“A few, but that’s not out of the ordinary. I’ll give you the plate numbers tomorrow, and all my logs for the last couple of weeks.”

Kurt and Bard slid into the T-bird. Bard made no attempt to turn the ignition. Instead, he stared past Kurt, out the passenger window. He seemed to be staring at Glen.

“Something’s really starting to smell like a can of shit around here,” the chief said as Glen weaved off the lot.

“Elaborate, huh?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Bard singled out the ignition key in the dark. “A dug-up coffin, a missing cop, and a crippled girl stripped down to the bones. And look what they all have in common.”

“Maybe I’m just naturally stupid this time of the morning,” Kurt said. “So how about telling me what you’re driving at.”