by Kathy Reichs
One of the two desks was new, the brainchild of some chichi designer who’d probably dubbed the style Italian Modern Chic. Slab-of-glass top, stainless-steel legs. I’d found the stark lines jarring at first. Had to admit, the thing was growing on me.
Two pictures hung above the gleaming glass, below the point where the new roof angled down to meet the new wall. Ryan, second from the right top row, taller than most in his police academy graduating class. Ryan in a Sûreté du Québec officer’s dress uniform, arm wrapping the shoulders of his daughter, Lily, now several years dead from a heroin overdose.
Atop the gleaming glass, illuminated by an off-angle slash of daylight, a Canadiens bobblehead signed by Guy Lafleur. Beside the bobblehead, a lamp that looked like a twisted hunk of wing from a Nebulon frigate.
I settled at the other desk, old and familiar, a flea-market find the chichi designer would have labeled Salvation Army Reject. Wiring dangled from the ceiling and jutted from the wall above me, a stark reminder of the electrician, as incompetent and unreliable as the painter. The two phone confrontations that would brighten my Monday.
Diplomas waited on my desktop, ready for hanging. Northwestern University MA and PhD degrees. An American Board of Forensic Anthropology diplomate certificate.
Beside the diplomas, framed photos sat on the patina-glazed oak. Mama and Daddy smiling over two blond-plaited girls in pinafores. Pete and I holding an infant Katy. Ryan and I outside an auberge in the Quebec countryside. Larabee and I on an AAFS panel.
Daddy. Larabee. Both dead. Pete and I, metaphorically so. The chronology of a shattered life?
Christ, Brennan. Give it a rest.
Ryan and Slidell, retired and in partnership. PIs, not cops. Heavner in charge and myself exiled from the MCME. The reconfiguration of my well-ordered world was blowing my arterially compromised mind.
Call it a character flaw. A product of aging. I’d only owned up to the weakness in the past few months.
I dislike change.
Thus, my reluctance to relocate to this new space.
But I was here now. With everything related to the faceless man. New investigation. New era. The rest of my files and documents I would bring up piecemeal.
Goaded by my irritation with Heavner, I opened the laptop, went to Google, and entered the name “Hardin Symes.”
Not much came up. But enough.
There was coverage of the child’s disappearance and the massive search that ensued. The tragic outcome. All reports were consistent on the basics.
Seven-year-old Hardin Symes lived with his mother, grandmother, and two sisters in an apartment on East Indiana Avenue in Bismarck, North Dakota. On August 19, 2012, Hardin was snatched while playing alone on the complex’s front lawn. Neighbors reported seeing a dark-haired man forcing a child into a car. Five days later, Hardin’s decomposing corpse was found by hunters fifteen miles from where he’d lived.
A 2014 article in the Bismarck Tribune reported on the trial of Jonathan Fox, the suspect charged with Hardin’s murder. The defense argued that all the evidence was circumstantial and that public statements made by the ME had prejudiced the defendant. The jury ended up deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.
Of particular interest was a story that appeared on the three-year anniversary of Hardin’s death. Seventeen months before Hardin had been taken, eight-year-old Jack Jaebernin had disappeared from his home in the same neighborhood. Jack’s father said a dark-haired stranger had invited his son to a local park to catch frogs. Though he’d been warned not to go, the boy went anyway. That night, a family out hiking found Jack’s beaten body in a forest twelve miles away. An autopsy showed he’d been strangled or smothered.
The parallels were striking. The two boys had lived just blocks apart. They’d disappeared within a year and a half of each other. They were roughly the same age. Both were dumped in wooded areas at approximately the same distances from their homes. And, most telling, Jonathan Fox had rented a unit in the same apartment complex as Hardin Symes’s family.
Though the Bismarck police were convinced they’d arrested the right guy, Fox was never retried. In 2015, the department’s cold-case homicide squad began sifting through boxes, looking for sufficient evidence to nail the bastard.
I found no follow-up on the investigation. Apparently, nothing had come of reopening the file.
I googled Jonathan Fox. Learned the following.
Fox was a seventh-grade dropout who’d worked in Bismarck as a front-desk clerk at a local motel. After being tried for the murder of Hardin Symes, he moved to Baltimore.
In 2016, Fox was convicted of killing Chelsea Keller. Chelsea was ten years old. She disappeared from the front lawn of her home. Her body was found in a forest eighteen miles away. In 2017, Fox was stabbed to death at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.
I sat back, feeling a sharp warning twist in my gut. The same twist I’d felt when Heavner had run her mouth with Body.
In the end, Fox’s ass had been slammed to the wall. But I’d been right. Heavner’s remarks had been used by Fox’s lawyer at trial. And the strategy had worked.
But the gut twist had been triggered by something more than inappropriate comments about a murdered child.
After checking some old notes in a filing cabinet in the downstairs guest room/study, I googled the name “Nick Body” and got the link to his radio show, Body Language. Once there, I clicked on the Archive button and entered the date I’d just retrieved: September 4, 2012.
Reluctantly, I ponied up the required fee. Answered the nonoptional profile questions. Then I opened the audio file.
The interview was as I remembered. Body queried Heavner about her book, steering the conversation toward cases with the most gore and anguish. Heavner was an enthusiastic participant, her nasal whine almost as nauseating as Body’s gravel-through-a-sieve bark.
Ten minutes in, Body jumped the lane and asked about Hardin Symes. A momentary hesitation, then Heavner hopped on board, revealing details that should never have left the autopsy room. Opining on the depravity of the doer.
Then the betrayal that had shot my outrage into overdrive. Six years on, it still did.
Heavner told the world that Hardin Symes had been autistic. The revelation allowed Body to segue to one of his favorite topics.
Prearranged? Doesn’t matter. The disclosure was wrong, a violation of professional ethics.
Body spent the rest of the broadcast ranting about the evils of vaccination. His reasoning followed the usual two-pronged path of stupidity. He denied there was any scientific proof of a causal connection between vaccines and the reduction or eradication of diseases such as smallpox, polio, measles, or rubella. And he spewed the usual idiocy that vaccination can cause autism.
Heavner, a medical doctor, offered no objection.
Heavner’s disclosure about Hardin Symes was improper and callous. She hurt Hardin’s family. She compromised the prosecution of his killer.
Heavner’s failure to contradict Body’s antivax tirade gave credence to the ludicrous. To the dangerous.
These were offenses I could not accept.
I spoke out.
* * *
Still nothing by four.
Screw it.
Agitated as hell, I grabbed my keys and headed for my car.
The MCME facility is located on Reno Avenue, just west of uptown. Saturday-afternoon traffic was light. I was there in ten minutes.
Upon arriving, I knew that something was up. The parking lot held too many vehicles. A couple of vans had logos for local TV broadcast affiliates.
Neurons sending out a low-level buzz, I swiped my security card and drove through the gate.
4
Margot Heavner was standing on the steps of the MCME building. Steps I’d mounted countless times. I watched her, shocked and dismayed.
Dr. Morgue was dressed in aquamarine surgical scrubs. Fresh from a postmortem? Or for the I-play-a-TV-doc optics?
<
br /> Journalists were thrusting boom and handheld mics at Heavner. Not many, five in all. She was finishing a prepared statement or answering a question.
“… male, five foot eight, medium build, possibly Asian.” Heavner’s hair and makeup looked suspiciously good for someone coming straight from an autopsy.
“Age?” Asked by a bored-looking reporter from WSOC, the local ABC affiliate.
“Not old, not a kid.”
“That describes more than half the population.” Wisecracked by a freelancer who looked like a lizard, if a lizard could squeeze into size-forty short cargo pants. I’d met him. Gerry something.
“The body exhibits advanced putrefaction and severe animal damage.”
“Like what? Rats?” Unlike my paperboy, Gerry wouldn’t be going to Harvard.
“Feral hogs, Mr. Breugger.” Adding, as though fearful she might not be believed, “They’re a huge problem in North Carolina.”
“Feral hogs?” Fessie Green, five minutes out of Clemson and working the Observer crime beat. Green sounded like she’d soon be the color of her surname.
“Pigs gotta eat. These pigs chose to eat a corpse.” Heavner pointed to a chinless elf who weighed maybe twelve pounds.
“What do you mean, possibly Asian?”
“The features are ambiguous.”
“Meaning what?” The elf was persistent.
Heavner’s finger went to a bright young thing from FOX 46.
“Will Dr. Brennan be working the case?”
“My office is in contact with local, state, and federal authorities. Together we will get this unfortunate gentleman identified and returned to his loved ones.”
The adrenal buzz gave way to heat, a flush that crawled up my throat and spread across my cheeks.
“How’d the guy die?” Gerry.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss cause of death.”
“You thinking murder? Suicide?”
“Same answer.”
“You organized this party. What can you discuss?”
“My office will provide further information as it becomes available.” Heavner hesitated, probably for effect. Then, doing earnest and forthright, “In the interest of the soonest possible closure, there are a few details I’m willing to share.”
My fingers tightened on the car keys forgotten in my hand.
“Oddities that might mean something to someone reading or hearing about them.”
Gerry tried to interrupt. Heavner ignored him.
“The man carried no credit cards, license, or any form of identification. He had no wallet, but a roll of cash totaling over two hundred dollars. The only other item in his possession was a can of Swedish chewing tobacco, brand name Göteborgs Rapé. His shoes appear to be of European origin. His clothing is high-end. The shirt is ecru linen with small ivory buttons. The pants are tan, a wool-cashmere blend. The boxers are made of high-quality black silk.”
A pregnant pause. A nuanced gaze.
“The labels had been removed from every garment. The tobacco can yielded not a single print. The roll of cash was made up of both euros and dollars.”
Heavner awaited their eager reaction. They only stared at her, confused. Then the elf launched a somewhat listless volley of questions. Others tagged along.
“The labels were cut off?”
“That appears to be the case.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why no prints on the can?”
“I don’t know. The outer surfaces are smooth, and the can was protected from the elements inside a pants pocket.”
“Did the man die where his body was found?”
“I can’t comment on that at this time.”
“Why not?”
“If the guy was mugged, why leave the two hundred bucks?”
“Why, indeed.”
“How’d he get out to this creek?”
“That, too, is a mystery. Thank you for your patience.” Heavner flicked a wave, turned, and disappeared through the glass doors at her back.
The FOX 46 reporter spoke into a camera, probably handing over to her anchor.
My bullshit monitor was banging like a kettledrum.
Heavner had called a presser. Before I’d arrived, she’d explained where the body was found. Was she really engaging the media in the hope someone would come forward? Was I again being paranoid? Misjudging her motives?
Or were my instincts correct? The grisly allure of feral hogs and a faceless corpse. The high drama of missing labels and strangely absent prints. Was Dr. Morgue at it again? Had her performance been Act I in a limelight-grab leading up to a new book launch?
Screw that.
Ignoring a voice screaming that this was a bad idea, I entered the front door, dropped my purse in my office, threw on a lab coat, and hurried through additional security and down the bio-vestibule to the large autopsy room.
One table was occupied. I crossed to it and drew back the blue paper sheeting covering the body.
The faceless man lay naked on the stainless steel, his flesh jarringly pale under the cruel fluorescents.
Wasting no time, I pulled my iPhone from my pocket and, beginning at his head and working toward his feet, started snapping pics. When I’d finished with the corpse, I moved to the counter and took a series of shots of the man’s clothing and belongings. Then I laid down my phone and pulled on latex gloves.
Hawkins arrived as I was digging a swab kit from a drawer. He looked his usual zombie self—tall and skeletal, with dead-black hair oiled back from a face centering on a bony nose, gaunt cheeks, and wire-thin lips. I couldn’t have guessed his age. Sixty? Eighty? For years, the joke at the MCME was that Hawkins had died in the eighties and no one had noticed.
Cocking one quizzical brow, Hawkins watched without comment as I scraped a sample from the open thorax of the faceless man.
“You really didn’t text me pics of this guy?” I asked, voice low.
“Nope.”
“Any idea who might have sent them?”
Hawkins wagged his head no.
“Who had access to him?”
“A few folks.”
I knew that was true. I’d been running through a mental Rolodex of suspects. An MCME pathologist. Another death investigator. A first responder at the scene. A tech manning the transport vehicle. The kids who discovered the body. But none of those felt right. And the sender had to be someone with access to my mobile number.
“Appears the boss lady’s angling for a spot on Dateline.” Hawkins also spoke mezza voce.
“Not if I can block her.” Placing the swab in a tube.
“Maybe I can smoke out your mole.”
“You’ll ask around?”
“Diplomatically.”
I glanced at Hawkins. “I don’t want to jam you up.”
“Won’t happen.”
I’d barely tightened the vial’s cap when a voice spoke at our backs, nasal and whiny. As I slipped the sealed specimen into my pocket, Hawkins discreetly palmed my mobile from the counter.
We both turned. I forced myself to smile.
“What are you doing here?” Heavner was wearing an expression like she’d just soiled her Gucci’s in dog shit.
“I was driving nearby and caught the start of your press conference.” Not wanting to out whoever had sent the text. “Hearing you had a decomp, I diverted over.”
“My understanding is that you consult to this office only upon specific verbal or written request.”
“Dr. Larabee and I—”
“I am not Dr. Larabee.”
I said nothing.
“Do you seriously think this office cannot function without you, Dr. Brennan? That I am incapable of determining when specialty expertise is required?”
Our eyes met for a long, cold moment.
“Should I require your services, I will contact you. Now, please leave.”
I did, chest burning as though I’d just run a marathon.
As I walked to my car, Paulette Youngman’s words came zinging from long ago. The ant always loses.
* * *
I’d just entered the annex when my landline rang.
After checking caller ID, I picked up the handset.
“Sweetie, are you all right?” Mama, vowels broader and more honeyed than Scarlett at Tara.
“Of course, I’m all right.”
“Why aren’t you answering your mobile?”
“I’m having battery issues.” True, but unrelated to her query.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Are you feeling poorly?”
“Not at all. I’m going out later.” Regretted as soon as the words left my lips.
Surprisingly, Mama didn’t pounce. “Sinitch arrived today.” Mama’s fiancé was named Clayton Sinitch. For some reason, she never used his first name. “He’ll be here until Wednesday.”
“That’s nice.”
“I suppose so.” Wistful, begging me to inquire.
I didn’t. “Do you two have big plans?”
“I must do something about the man’s feet.”
“His feet.”
“They smell like soup made from dirty shorts.”
No way I was touching that.
“I’m thinking I should buy one of those foot-odor products they sell at the grocery. Maybe shake some into his shoes when he’s in the shower. You’d think soap and water should resolve the situation.”
“Mm.”
“He’s in there now, splashing away. One upside to showering is it gets him naked.”
Snapshot image I’ll never unsee.
“Sinitch is a lovely man, but some days I still do miss your daddy.”
“I know, Mama. So do I.”
My early childhood was a happy time. I wasn’t abused, or bullied, or made to adhere to a set of crazy-strict religious mores. I never broke a bone, needed surgery, stitches, or counseling. My sister, Harry, and I got along reasonably well. Mama suffered from what would now be called bipolar swings. She’d disappear into rehab for periods but always came home. Then my baby brother died of leukemia, and it all went to hell. Mama fell into a dark place that she couldn’t escape for years. Daddy turned to drinking hard, ended up dead on a highway in the family Buick. Decades later, I still missed my father terribly.
