Bones to Ashes

The collie’s ears shot up at the sound of its name.

Hippo rolled his eyes.

“Her name is Mia.” Sylvain was embroidered on the handler’s shirt.

Hippo is famous for loathing what he dubs “hot-shit” technology. It was clear cadaver dogs got the same fish eye as computers, iris scanners, and touch-tone phones.

“Mia didn’t seem overly impressed.” Hippo took a tin from his pocket, thumbed open the lid, and palmed antacid tablets into his mouth.

“The place is full of horseshit.” Sylvain’s voice had an edge. “Throws her off scent.”

“GPR?” I truncated the exchange with a question about ground-penetrating radar.

Hippo nodded, then turned. Ryan and I followed him into the trees. The air smelled of moss and loamy earth. The thick foliage hung undisturbed by even a whisper of movement. Within yards, I was perspiring and breathing deeply.

In thirty seconds we were at the barn. The structure rose from a clearing barely larger than itself, leaning like a ship in an angry sea. Its planks were gray and weathered, its roof partially collapsed. What I assumed had been its main double doors now lay in a heap of rotten lumber. Through the opening, I could see dimness pierced by shafts of dust-filtered sunlight.

Hippo, Ryan, and I stopped at the threshold. Crooking two fingers, I pulled my shirt by the collar and flapped. Sweat now soaked my waistband and bra.

The barn’s interior was ripe with the mustiness of moisture and age. Rotting vegetation. Dust. And something sweetly organic.

The CSU techs looked like astronauts in their masks and white coveralls. I recognized each by movement and body form. The daddy longlegs was Renaud Pasteur. The Demster Dumpster was David Chenevier.

Hippo called out. Pasteur and Chenevier waved, then resumed their tasks.

Chenevier was guiding a three-wheeled apparatus in parallel paths back and forth across the barn floor. A rectangular red box hung below the rig’s main axle, its bottom inches from the ground surface. A small LCD screen rested on the handlebars.

Pasteur was alternating between shooting stills and video, and clearing debris in front of Chenevier. Rocks. Soda cans. A length of rusted metal stripping.

Drew the short straw, I thought, seeing Pasteur pick something up, examine it, then toss it aside.

Forty minutes later Chenevier was covering the last and farthest corner of the barn. Pausing, he made a comment. Pasteur joined him, and the two discussed something on the monitor.

A chill replaced my hotness. Beside me, I felt Ryan tense.

Chenevier turned. “We got something.”

10

R YAN AND I PICKED OUR WAY ACROSS THE UNEVEN GROUND. Hippo zigzagged behind. He was wearing a shirt that could only have been purchased at a discount store. A deep-discount store. Shiny penguins in mufflers and berets. The fabric looked flammable.

Chenevier and Pasteur opened a space to allow us a view of the monitor. A layer cake of colors squiggled across the screen. Reds. Greens. Blues. Centered in the cake was a pale gray hump.

GPR isn’t as complicated as the name implies. Each system includes a radio transmitter and receiver connected to a pair of antennae coupled to the ground.

A signal is sent into the soil. Since a subsurface object or disturbance will have electrical properties different from those of the surrounding dirt, a signal reflecting off that object or disturbance will bounce back to the receiver slightly later in time. A different wave pattern will appear on the monitor.

Think of a fish finder. The thing tells you something’s down there, but can’t tell you what.

“Could be an animal burrow.” Chenevier’s face was soaked with sweat. “Or a trench for old piping.”

“How far down?” I asked, studying the inverted gray crescent.

Chenevier shrugged. “Eighteen or twenty inches.”

Deep enough for a hurried gravedigger.

Mia was summoned and led to the spot. She alerted by sitting and barking once, sharply.

By noon I’d marked off a ten-foot square with stakes and string. Ryan and I started in with long-handled spades. Pasteur shot pics. Chenevier sifted.

Hippo stood to one side, mopping sweat and shifting from foot to foot. Now and then one hand would go into a pocket. The jangle of keys would join the click of Pasteur’s shutter and the hiss of soil trickling through mesh.

The barn floor was rich with organics, easy to dig, easy to sift.

By twelve-thirty we’d exposed an amoeba-like splotch visibly darker than the surrounding earth. Soil staining. A sign of decomposition.

Ryan and I switched to trowels and began scraping dirt, both anticipating and dreading what we’d find beneath the discoloration. Now and then our eyes would meet, drop back to the hollow we were creating.

The first bone turned up in the screen.