The Blessed Bones

by Kathryn Casey

  All the while, Doc scowled at me. He didn’t look happy that I’d interrupted, so he made a show of shaking his head to be sure we all understood he was displeased, then bent down to get a closer look.

  Across from Doc, Ash Crawford folded his long body and knelt on one knee. Crawford swayed forward. I was about to caution him against touching anything, when he stopped his hand inches above the skeleton’s chest, covered by shreds of a filthy, stained dress that appeared it may have once been some shade of purple. The bones and remaining tissue barely made bumps underneath the rotting fabric. Crawford held his hand palm down, as if hoping to raise the woman from the dead. Then he took his hat off, held it in his hand, and his head dropped, as reverent as if he prayed in a church pew.

  Apparently oblivious, Doc kept busy, examining the body from different angles, but the rest of us stared at Crawford. Max shot me a curious glance, just as Cummings began to wrap his story up: “We’d only gotten down eight, ten inches or so when someone hit something hard and it cracked. That was the skull. We were about to have a heart attack, but we kept digging. I wanted to make sure we had what we thought we did. When we dug a little deeper, we unearthed more bones and I called nine-one-one.”

  At that, Doc’s head shot up. “Where are they?” Cummings didn’t respond, and Doc explained, “Where’d you put the damn bones you dug up?”

  The construction foreman took a deep breath, as if trying to swallow what wouldn’t have been a pleasant response. “I have what we found in a box in my truck. I didn’t want anything to get lost. I was trying to be careful.”

  “We’ll need it all,” Doc said, openly suspicious. “You need to get it.”

  “Of course,” Cummings responded, but then Max put his hand on the guy’s shoulder.

  “Listen, why don’t you and I go to your truck. I’ll get one of the forensic techs to help us, and we can bag the bones for Doc while I ask a few more questions.” Cummings agreed, and the two men turned to leave.

  As they sauntered off, Doc shouted at another of the crime scene guys. “Get a body bag out of my van, will ya?”

  “I’ll get it,” Crawford offered, and he stood and towered over me.

  “I’ll walk you there,” I offered. “We can get out of Doc’s way.”

  Crawford shot me a disapproving glance. We were both seasoned cops. He knew as well as I did that this wasn’t an act of kindness. I’d picked up on something, and I wanted to talk.

  “Sure, Chief,” he said.

  The guy had long legs, big steps, and a kind of crooked gait, and I had to move fast to keep up. We headed toward Doc’s black van with “SMITH COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER” on the side. One door was open, and Crawford stuck his head in and started scouting around. “They’re up there on the shelf,” I said, pointing at a stack of black vinyl body bags.

  Crawford grabbed the one on the top and held it against his chest. I thought he might start back up the slope, but instead he turned to me. One eye closed and the other stared at me, suspicious. “You gonna tell me what’s bothering you, or you just want me to start talking?”

  I gave him a strained look, the kind investigators use to let folks know they aren’t all that confident they’ll be getting the straight story. “You can start talking. But if I’m not hearing what I need, I’ll take over with questions.”

  A bob of the head, and he said, “I’m not a US Marshal anymore. Retired about a year ago.”

  “I didn’t think you were still on the job. I didn’t see a badge, and you let Max introduce you. You didn’t identify yourself as a marshal.”

  “Good catch,” he said with a half snicker.

  “So why are you here?”

  A short huff, like he was thinking about how to answer, and Crawford’s deep voice turned to gravel. “It’s really nothing sinister. I recently settled in the area, on a ranch a way down the mountain. I heard you’d found a body. Got interested. Thought I’d look around.”

  Cops get pretty good at knowing when folks aren’t telling us everything. Watching him, the way he avoided looking directly at me, my suspicions mounted. I felt certain that there was a lot more to this. “How did you hear?”

  “I was talking to someone when she heard that a call about a body had come in over the radio. One of the dispatchers I’ve kept in touch with. I’d been telling her I wanted to help out some, find cold cases to work, keep my hand in the game, and this was close to the ranch, and I—”

  Enough with the camouflage. Something wasn’t right. “Why’d you react like that? Getting down close to the body. For a few minutes, you looked like you were praying over it.”

  Crawford let loose a snort, irritated, implying that I’d gotten it wrong. I wasn’t buying it. I felt pretty sure that I’d struck a nerve. None of this felt normal.

  “I was just giving the victim a little respect, like she deserves.” He smiled at me and crescent grooves folded from each side of his nose around his mouth. For being so tall, he didn’t have much padding on him.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on here,” I started, determined to get to the bottom of it. “But that didn’t look like a cop’s usual reaction to found remains. What you did? That looked a lot more emotional.” He said nothing, just slimmed his eyes down and glared at me.

  “Chief, I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. Why would you—” he started, then stopped dead, mid-sentence.

  I pushed harder. “I need the truth. Because none of this is coming across to me as two cops talking about a case.”

  His eyes flicked an acknowledgment, and I thought he might talk. I felt like I could see the wheels turning, the Rolodex inside his brain skimming through index cards of possible scenarios he could spin, excuses to explain his odd behavior. His lips parted, he paused, and I waited, returning his gaze, not taking my eyes off his. “Well, I—”

  At that moment, Doc shouted down to us. “Clara, come here.”

  I glanced up the slope, and saw he was still crouched down. The pile of dirt around the bones had grown, and it appeared that Doc had been pushing it away, uncovering more of the skeleton.

  “Can it wait a few minutes? We’re discussing something,” I shouted back.

  Doc sounded irritated that I’d asked. “No. You need to see this.”

  Crawford shadowed me on my right as I hurried the short distance back. He still held the body bag, but as we approached Doc didn’t appear as interested in it as when he’d sent us to retrieve it. Instead, he was laser-focused on the grave. The CSI unit’s cameraman snapped shots of the scene, head to foot, while Doc pointed down at the remains, part skeleton, part mummified. “Look at this, right here.”

  When he’d uncovered the body, Doc had made a pile of loose fabric from the dress on a sheet of brown evidence paper. Although the dress was in bad shape, stained and torn on the top, its lower half, waist down, nearly in shreds, it took me a moment to decide what Doc wanted me to look at. Then it stood out. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it: a second skull, a small one. I knelt to get closer. The eye sockets and forehead looked too large for the size of the skull. Some of it remained covered in tissue, but on a patch of bare bone I noticed suture lines and I saw an indentation that I thought might be the soft spot on the top where it would have expanded to accommodate growth. My eyes trailed down from the toothless jaws, and I made out the outlines of bird-bone-size legs and arms, ending in miniature hands that formed fists. The diminutive body was curled into a fetal position.

  I felt Crawford hovering beside me, his breathing as labored as if he’d stopped running mid-sprint, when I whispered, “A baby?”

  “Yup.” Doc nodded.

  “She was pregnant when she died?” Crawford appeared shaken.

  Doc had a curious look when he explained, “Looks like it. And based on the size of the skull, I’d guess that the baby had to be close to full-term.”

  Six

  She screamed as a wave of pain coursed through her. They still came infrequently, but harder. Writhing o
n the bed, she tried to remember what her mothers had done during childbirth. She’d seen only snatches, once when she’d brought in towels for the midwife. She thought that they’d sat up slightly to ease the pressure on their backs, but she couldn’t do that, not tied to the railings as she was.

  “Momma,” she whispered.

  “Did you say something?” the woman asked.

  The girl opened her eyes just enough to see her fiddling with the gauge on the IV. As the pain began to ebb, she caught her breath and whispered, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Me? Doing this to you? I’m not responsible for your condition. You did that on your own.” The girl heard a soft laugh as the woman shuffled out.

  Alone again, her thoughts trailed back to the man at the bus station and then to where he’d taken her. Memories flooded through her, as she recalled that place and those she’d met there.

  It had seemed to the girl that everything changed from her first moments at the home. Even her name. That first evening, Nurse Gantt, the head nurse who also acted as the midwife, looked at her and announced, “Your eyes are the same shade as the violets in my garden. I’m going to call you ‘Violet.’” The name stuck, and the staff, even the other girls referred to her that way. Violet hadn’t objected. After all that had happened, she decided it was better to forget who she’d been before she arrived at the home, because she’d never be that girl again.

  The home had a living room with a television, and on one evening Violet remembered four teenage girls gathered around watching The Bachelor, oohing and aahing at the screen. All wore jeans and big T-shirts, most with pithy sayings on the front: Rock Hard; Sweet As Candy. Under their shirts, their baby bumps bulged. On the TV, the bachelor presented a rose, and one girl grabbed another’s hand, cooing, “Isn’t it romantic?”

  On a table off to the side, Violet played checkers with her friend Samantha. Both girls had discarded the belts from their prairie dresses to make room for their spreading girths. Samantha was younger, only fourteen, but the two girls had become inseparable. They had shared experience, both coming from polygamous towns nestled in the mountains.

  “Your turn,” Samantha had said.

  Violet had reached over the board but then stopped and chuckled.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “My baby is tickling me,” she said, her voice light.

  Just then, the aide walked in the room and made a beeline for them. The name tag on her blue scrubs read “Miss Lori.” A plump woman with long blond hair piled loosely on top of her head, Lori had a round face and thin creases around her lips and eyes.

  “Violet, it’s time for your vitamins,” Miss Lori cooed as she handed the girl one of the small white paper pill cups she carried on an aluminum tray.

  All the girls in the home liked Lori, who hummed old songs as she brought them their meds along with a morning and an afternoon snack. In the quiet moments, Lori talked to them about their pregnancies, comparing them to her own. Sometimes, in the evenings, she hung around after her shift, watched TV and told them stories about her family.

  As Violet gulped down her pills, Lori whispered to Samantha and pointed at a red checker. “You can jump two with that, munchkin!”

  “Cheating!” Violet screamed.

  Lori and Samantha hooted at her.

  At the TV, one of the Gentile girls stood. Near term, she held the small of her back with her hand as if to brace it. “You prairie dressers better stop yapping. We can’t hear!”

  In response, Nurse Gantt’s voice boomed from the hallway: “Girls, be quiet! You hear?”

  A thick-necked, heavy-set woman, she had the manner of a high-school gym teacher ordering her class to run one more lap around the football field. As she shuffled in, she ordered, “None of that noise. We’ve got a girl upstairs ready to deliver any day now. She might be sleeping.”

  Wary, Violet fell silent when Nurse Gantt glanced at her. The teenager didn’t like the woman. Perhaps because the man who’d dropped her off had warned that Nurse Gantt could be tough. “Do what she tells you,” he’d urged. “You don’t want her mad at you.”

  “What’re you looking at?” Nurse Gantt asked, her lips screwed into a tight scowl.

  “Nothing, ma’am,” Violet answered.

  With that, Nurse Gantt lumbered over to the table and snapped at Lori, “If these two have had their pills, it’s time to move on.”

  Lori dropped her head, nodded, and didn’t object, just obediently plopped a pill cup for Samantha on the table and padded over to the Gentile girls. As soon as Lori left, Nurse Gantt placed her hand on Samantha’s swollen abdomen. “Has the baby been kicking today?”

  Samantha gulped the pills down and nodded, but Violet thought that her friend’s smile looked weak around the edges, like it was half of a frown.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Samantha said.

  “You’re getting closer. Pretty soon you’ll be taken upstairs.”

  Violet shifted in her chair. A lot of things about the home bothered her. They didn’t have telephones, except for the ones the staff carried in their pockets. And no visitors ever came. Violet especially didn’t like that the girls were moved to the third floor the month before they delivered. Once they left the main two floors, no one was allowed to visit them and they seemed to disappear.

  Despite what the man had told her about not riling up the head nurse, the thought of losing her friend scared Violet even more. “Nurse Gantt, why does Samantha have to stay upstairs at the end?”

  “Because that’s the way we do it here,” Nurse Gantt said, her mood instantly darkening.

  Across the table, Samantha squirmed, trying to get comfortable. She’d told Violet that the baby’s father was her older brother. He’d been sneaking into her room at night since she’d been a little kid. When her parents found out, they were mad at Samantha, not their oldest son. Violet thought that wasn’t right, but then she considered her own situation; her baby’s father had gone on with his life while she’d been banished from her family. None of it had seemed fair.

  At times, the two friends talked about their babies, how they’d wished they could keep them. But both had signed the home’s admittance form, agreeing that their infants would be put up for adoption. One thing Violet knew for sure: she didn’t want to be separated from her only friend. “Nurse Gantt, Samantha could stay in my room with me. I could help take care of her.”

  At that, Nurse Gantt hunched down and stared at her, eye to eye. Nervous, the teenager slipped her trembling hands under the table. A tremor rippled through her as Nurse Gantt clipped out each word: “You will do as you’re told.”

  “But I—”

  Nurse Gantt’s eyes widened. “Violet, you don’t want to get on my bad side, do you?”

  The girl bit her lip and shook her head. “No ma’am.”

  Her voice rough, the woman growled, “Then follow orders.”

  Seven

  Lieutenant Mueller and Doc Wiley debated how to handle the bodies. Neither one had ever transported a nearly skeletonized corpse of a pregnant woman before. The bones were fragile, and Doc worried that lifting them together could jostle them enough to cause damage. At one point, he examined the corpses and thought he might be able to lift the infant from its mother. Perhaps that way they would be more stable. But enough mummified muscle remained, anchoring the infant inside the mother, that Doc ultimately judged such an approach unwise. “We’ll move them as they are,” he finally announced.

  “You sure?” Mueller prodded, not for the first time. “Could be trouble down the road, that we mixed remains, don’t you think?”

  “We didn’t mix anything. They’re already mixed,” Doc scoffed. “The baby’s still inside the mother.”

  Lieutenant Mueller pulled on his lower lip, thinking about that. “Seems to me, one body per bag. So two bags.”

  Doc glared at him. “Seems to me this is my area of expertise, not yours.”

  I’d spent a good bit of time with Doc s
ince I’d returned to Alber. With his bow ties and lab coats, I’d always thought of him as a grandfatherly sort. Maybe part of it was that going on eleven years ago, he’d been the one who treated my bruised body days before I fled. That day he’d also put a splint on my right arm, to mend a fractured bone.

  Mother had poultices for bruises and broken bones, ones she made by mashing comfrey leaves in hot water, then rolling the mixture inside of cheesecloth. Under other circumstances, I would have gone to her when hurt. But I’d tried to talk to her and to Father before, to tell them of the nightmare my marriage had become. I tried to explain how late at night, when I slept, I’d wake to find my husband sitting in a chair, a mixture of lust and hatred in his eyes.

  “Clara, I’m here.” His next words had turned my blood cold: “And you are my wife.”

  Our encounters never went well. As the years passed, I understood that if I apologized, he grew angry. If I kept quiet, he fumed. If I cried, a blood rage came over him. I cowered below him, his hand above me in a fist, one that came down hard against my chest, my shoulder, my abdomen.

  Seven years into the marriage, I had nowhere to turn. Then came the night that he’d grabbed my arm and twisted it, snapping the bone like a twig.

  In his office that day, Doc had looked over his wire-rimmed glasses at me. “Clara, you didn’t do this in a fall.” He’d sat on the exam table beside me and focused so intently on me that I’d felt as if he could see my soul. “Who did this to you?”

  With my prairie dress sleeves pulled down, no one could see the damage, but when Doc held my broken arm in his hand, I had no way to deny it. I knew that he knew. And I was afraid.

  “I can’t—”

  “You can,” he had stopped me. “We’ll call the police. We’ll stop this.”

  As much pain as I was in that day, as much as my body ached and my arm hurt, I’d smiled at his naivety. He should know better, I’d thought. He should know that no one in Alber, not the police, not even my own parents will protect me.