Bones to Ashes

badly damaged. I could see spidery filaments deep in the orbits and in what remained of the nasal opening.

The bones felt feather-light as I lifted and arranged them in anatomical alignment. When I’d finished, a small partial-person lay on my table.

I took inventory. Six ribs, most of the finger and toe bones, one clavicle, one tibia, one ulna, and both kneecaps were missing. So were all eight incisors.

“Why no front teeth?” Lisa asked.

“Each has only one root. When the gums go, there’s nothing to hold them in place.”

“There’s a lot of damage.”

“Yes.”

“Peri- or postmortem?” Lisa was asking if the injuries had occurred at the time of or following death.

“I suspect most is postmortem. But I’ll have to study the fracture sites under magnification.”

“It’s young, yes?”

Flashbulb image. A girl in a swimsuit on a Carolina beach. Carrying a small white book with pale green lettering. Reading poetry aloud with an odd French accent.

I pointed to a proximal right humerus, distal right ulna, proximal left fibula, and distal right femur. “See how some long bones look normal on their ends, while these look corrugated and incomplete?”

Lisa nodded.

“That means the epiphyses weren’t yet fused to the shafts. Growth was still ongoing.”

I lifted the skull and rotated the base upward.

Running between dunes. Dark curls dancing wild in the wind.

“The basilar suture is unfused. There are no wisdom teeth, and the second molars show minimal wear.”

I exchanged the skull for an innominate.

“Each hemi-pelvis starts out as three separate bones: ilium, ischium, and pubis. Union takes place around the time of puberty.” I indicated a faint Y trisecting the hip socket. “See that line? Fusion was just wrapping up when she died. Given the teeth, the long bones, and the pelvis, I’d estimate she was around thirteen or fourteen.”

Evangeline Landry, eyes closed, hands clasped, blowing out candles. There were fourteen on the cake.

“And the pelvis shows female?”

“Yes.”

“Was she white?”

“Race is going to be tough since the face is smashed and the palate is history, including the incisors.”

I picked up the skull. And felt a flicker of relief.

“The nasal aperture is wide and rounded. Its bottom edge is broken, but it looks like the nasal spine was small. Those are non-European traits. I’ll know better when I’ve cleaned out the dirt.”

“Why does her head look so”—Lisa floated a palm, searching for the English—“odd?”

“In adolescence, the cranial sutures are still wide open.” I referred to the squiggly gaps between the individual skull bones. “Following brain decomposition, with pressure, the bones can warp, separate, or overlap.”

“Pressure, as in burial?”

“Yes. Although skull distortion can result from other factors, expo sure to sunlight, for example, or to extremes of heat and cold. The phenomenon is very common with children.”

“There’s so much dirt. Do you think she was buried?”

I was about to answer when the desk phone shrilled.

“Can you check the box for anything we might have missed?”

“Sure.”

“How’s it hanging, doc?” Hippo Gallant.

I skipped pleasantries. “Your buddy Gaston’s skeleton arrived from Rimouski.”

“Yeah?”

“My preliminary exam suggests it’s an adolescent female.”

“ Indian?”

“There’s a good chance her racial background is mixed.”

“So it ain’t all that ancient?”

“The bones are dry and devoid of odor and flesh, so I doubt death occurred in the last ten years. Right now that’s about all I can say. She needs a lot of cleaning and it will have to be done by hand.”

“Cretaque. She got teeth?”

“Some. But there’s no dental work.”