Time of Departure

by Douglas Schofield

  “The way I heard it, a work party was clearing brush and a survey crew was following behind, shooting in a line of stakes to guide the excavators. You’ve probably seen them yourself on road projects—those flagged stakes that are marked for ‘cut’ or ‘fill.’”

  I hadn’t, but I nodded knowingly so he wouldn’t launch into a mini-lecture on civil engineering. My tactic almost failed, because he stared off into space and muttered, “I wonder why they were doing it the old way.”

  Here we go, I thought. I decided to play along for a second. “What do you mean?”

  “Shooting line and using a level to mark the stakes. Nowadays, they can use GPS for everything, even the z-value.” I held my tongue while he thought it through. Finally, he gave me a eureka look and said, “That must be it!”

  I took the plunge. “What?”

  “Poor communication with the satellites. Maybe a solar flare. I should check that.” He made a move toward his computer.

  “Terry! Could you do that later?”

  “Okay, sorry. So, at one point, the survey guys were skirting along the top edge of an embankment. One of the chainmen pounded in a stake, and the ground on the face of the embankment subsided a bit. The guy didn’t pay much attention, but when his crew chief moved forward for the next setup, he spotted a foot sticking out of the dirt.”

  “A foot?”

  “Well, as in … the skeletal remains of. They stopped work and called it in. That was in the morning. We spent the rest of yesterday and most of last night doing the archaeology. Got the remains moved here about three hours ago. A couple of crime techs are still out there, working the excavation. There was some through-and-through root growth. They’re taking photos and measurements, and taking samples. I’ve lined up one of our botany profs to identify the plants, examine the growth rings, whatever it is they do, to see if he can give us a time line. Not that you’re going to need that evidence.”

  “Because?”

  “Because … well, first, we’re bringing in a forensic anthropologist to give us something more definitive, but I can tell you right now they’re both female—the subpubic angle of the pelvises pretty much gives it away, and the skull indicators are consistent. One was in her twenties and the other … late twenties, early thirties.”

  “Okay. And, second?”

  He pointed at a box of surgical gloves on his desk. I plucked out a pair and snapped them on while he rolled his chair to a small exhibit safe. He spun a combination, opened the door, and reached in. He brought out a pair of plastic cups. Each was covered with a paper lid like the ones provided by expensive hotels for their bathroom glasses. Each bore an exhibit sticker. He set the cups in front of him on his desk.

  “I was too tired last night for logging and bagging.” He removed the lid from one of the cups. “Hold out your hand.”

  I complied. He upended the cup, and a white gold ring rolled out onto my palm.

  “The younger one was wearing that. So obviously robbery wasn’t the motive.”

  It was a woman’s ring—a blue gemstone, accented with small diamonds, in a partial bezel setting. I actually recognized the shape of the stone. It was what jewelers referred to as a cushion cut.

  “I think it’s a topaz,” Terry said. “There’s an inscription inside the band.”

  I located the inscription.

  BD TO AJ 12/25/77

  I looked at Terry.

  “‘Billie Decker to Amanda Jordan.’ She was one of the missing girls. Decker was her fiancé.”

  “You work fast.”

  “Not me. The cops. Lipinski came out to the site. He and that detective who wears those cargo pants—”

  “Geiger.”

  “That’s the one. They arrived just after we found the ring. They wrote down the inscription. Lipinski called me last night. He said the ring was mentioned in an old crime report. So I guess Lipinski gets the credit for working fast.”

  “That’s not exactly his reputation.”

  He smirked. “Hear ya.”

  I dropped the ring back in the cup. I was thoughtful. “Eight girls disappeared. Amanda Jordan was the last one.”

  Terry looked surprised. “You know about this old case?”

  I thought of the eight missing person reports stored in my desk. “Not in great detail, but I’ve read a bit about it.”

  “We can’t be certain it’s the Jordan girl. But the ring was still on her finger, so it’s probably her. We’ll confirm with a dental match or DNA.”

  “Any ideas on the identity of the other body?”

  “Not yet. But this was also found in the grave. It wasn’t clear which body it belonged to.” He passed me the other cup.

  Inside was an enamel locket on a gold chain. I poured it out into my hand. The locket’s face had an exquisite white Tudor rose embossed on the rich cobalt blue enamel background. The enamel itself had an intricate repetitive pattern etched into it.

  “This looks like something from an estate sale.”

  “It’s a Victorian mourning locket. That background pattern is what they call guilloche engraving. It’s a French technique.”

  “You seem to know a lot about jewelry, Terry.”

  “My mother was a collector. That chain’s more modern—what they call a spiga weave. Pretty common and probably harder to trace.”

  “You didn’t happen to find a nice mystery-solving portrait in the locket, did you?” I had already guessed the answer.

  “No such luck. Just a seed.”

  “A seed?”

  “Yeah. Small and red with a black spot. At first I thought it was some kind of handicraft bead—you know, like you’d see on one of those Caribbean tourist necklaces—but I’m sure it’s a seed. I’ll get the botany guy to identify it.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “It’s locked up in the botany lab upstairs. The prof’s away at a conference. He’ll be back tonight.”

  I was quiet for a moment as I mulled over what I’d heard. Then I said, “I’d like to see the remains.”

  “You’ll have to gown up.”

  8

  The university’s autopsy suite was state of the art, engineered to maintain negative pressure during examinations and equipped with three stainless steel pedestal-style downdraft autopsy tables with built-in sinks. The downdraft ventilation feature operated through perforated grid plates on the table’s surface. It was designed to eliminate fumes and bone dust during examinations. Two of the tables were full sized, and they’d certainly seen their share of postmortem gore over the years, but it was the sight of the third table that always wrenched at my heart. It was a shortened version designed for the dissection of children.

  A door in the far wall led to the cold unit, a long room lined along one side by those iconic storage drawers—Terry called them “cabins”—that I’d only seen in a few movies and on television crime shows until I joined the State Attorney’s Office. Since then, I’d visited this facility several times, and even managed to keep down my lunch during the two autopsies—including the one involving the decapitated child—that I’d been dispatched to witness.

  There was no compelling reason for a prosecutor to personally witness a postmortem, but soon after I joined the office, I learned that attendance was viewed as a rite of passage for junior prosecutors in the same way it was for rookie police officers. And, of course, sadistic throwbacks like Perry Standish and my now-deceased predecessor, Roy Wells, had happily anticipated hearing that I’d fainted at the sound of a Stryker saw biting through some departed soul’s skull.

  The bastards had been disappointed.

  Gowned and gloved and wearing a surgical cap, I followed Terry Snead across the suite to a pair of cadaver lifts parked side by side near the door to the cold unit. Each lift was covered by a surgical drape. On the wall just above them was another exemplar of Terry’s outré sense of humor—a sign that read NO LOITERING.

  Terry pulled the drape off the lift on the left. “This one was wearing the ri
ng. Until disproven, I’m calling her Amanda.”

  Meticulously arranged on the lift tray was what appeared to be a complete set of human skeletal remains. The image that immediately came to my mind was that of an archaeological excavation I had visited in Nova Scotia. I’d been a college kid on a summer bicycle trip with two friends, and we were touring an old British colonial fort. A summer dig was under way near the fort’s original sally port, and the archaeologists had just exposed the skeleton of an eighteenth-century soldier. What struck me at the time was the man’s diminutive stature. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and his bones looked too fragile to have carried the musculature necessary for a fighting man. His skull was so delicate it made me think I was looking not at a soldier, but at a long-dead scullery maid.

  Amanda Jordan’s bones—if these were indeed those of that unfortunate woman—were not nearly so discolored as those of the buried soldier, but to my untrained eye, the two skeletons were otherwise indistinguishable.

  “She was quite tiny, wasn’t she?”

  “I ran the regression equation on her femur and tibia. I make her just over five feet. Lipinski says that calculation fits the Jordan girl’s height that was provided in the missing person report.”

  “I missed that.”

  I was too busy getting sick to my stomach.

  “You’ve read that report?”

  “Someone left a copy in my office.”

  He gave me an appraising look. “You took over from Roy Wells, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” I bent closer, examining the remains on the tray. “Did you find anything indicating a cause of death?”

  “No visible trauma. But there’s no doubt about this one.…” He tugged back the drape on the neighboring lift, exposing another neatly arranged skeleton that appeared to be five or six inches longer than the Jordan remains. “This one’s still a Jane Doe. But as you know, they were found in a common grave. Jane here was on top.” He rolled the skull. I found myself staring at a half-dollar-sized hole high on the left side of the cranium.

  “Looks like a bullet exit.” I’d seen photos of headshot exits in other cases.

  “Correct.” He rolled the skull the other way, exposing a small circular perforation near the right temple. “Entry here. I found microscopic traces of powder residue embedded in the bone. She was shot from close range.”

  Heat prickled on the back of my neck. “An execution?”

  “Maybe … or judging by the angle—” He lifted the skull and indicated the slight upward angle from entry to exit. “—it could have been self-inflicted.”

  I felt the perspiration start. To distract myself, I kept the conversation going. “You said this one’s older?”

  “I’d say late twenties to early thirties.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The medial end of the clavicle is almost completely fused to the sternum.” He pointed. “See, here. That usually happens around the age of thirty. But I’m not the expert on age calculation. We’ll bring in an anthropologist to take a read. They can sometimes peg age within two or three years.”

  “I was just thinking … this girl’s older, and she was shot through the head. She might be the reporter. She was investigating the disappearances, and then she went missing herself.”

  “You mean the one with the Scandinavian name?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I read that she was blonde—which fits with the name, I guess—and that she was older than the others, so she didn’t fit the victim profile.”

  “Are you thinking he just killed the reporter because she was getting close?”

  “Something like that.” I looked at him. “What about hair? In the grave, I mean.”

  “We found a hair mat under Amanda’s skull. The color looks right. But there was no hair with this one.”

  “That means—”

  “Right. Her body was moved after significant decomposition.” He paused. “There were other disappearances after the reporter, weren’t there?”

  “One other, and then Amanda Jordan. Over about two months.”

  “Then you have to wonder why he would keep the reporter’s body for two months, and then bury her with the last victim.”

  I stood there, staring at the trays of bones. I was being stalked by that same weird sensation I’d had in my office. I concentrated, trying to stave it off.

  “There is one other thing.…” Terry’s tone carried a faint air of mystery.

  “What?”

  “It’s over here.” He led me to a portable instrument table that was parked against the wall. The only object on the table was a stainless steel tray with a metal cover. “This was located with the remains.” Terry lifted the cover and set it aside.

  I found myself looking at a scattered arrangement of tiny bones, or—more accurately—what appeared to be tiny bone fragments. Their shapes were unrecognizable. I bent to examine them. “It looks like some kind of small animal. Or a bird.” I straightened. “These were in the grave?”

  “Yes. Some of the smaller fragments didn’t show up until the crew started sifting the soil removed from the grave.”

  “Okay. So … what is it?”

  Terry let my question hang for a second. “A fetus,” he said quietly.

  I blinked. “You mean a human fetus?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of them was pregnant?”

  “Jane Doe.”

  “You’re sure it was her and not Amanda?”

  “Positive. The fetal remains were found in her pelvic region.”

  “You said she was significantly decomposed.”

  “In female bodies, the uterus is the last to go.” He looked away. “I wonder if there’s a divine message in that.”

  I ignored his tone-deaf afterthought and asked, “How far along was she?”

  “I couldn’t even begin to tell you. Despite a lot of puffed-up claims in the literature, determining gestational age of fetal skeletal remains—as opposed to dating an intact deceased fetus—is still not an exact science.” Terry pointed at a tiny bone artifact that for all I knew could have been part of a sparrow. “This could be the skull. If so, the fetus was maybe eight to ten weeks old. We’ve got a forensic osteologist coming from Atlanta. We’ll have a better idea after she examines it.”

  I went quiet, thinking. “Assuming Jane Doe was the reporter—”

  “—someone in her family might have known she was pregnant,” Terry finished. “That would be a pointer, but DNA will tell the tale.”

  As I stared down at the collection of tiny bones, a wave of nausea washed over me.

  Terry was watching me. “Seen enough?”

  I nodded, maybe a bit too quickly. “Yeah.”

  We returned to the anteroom, stripped off our protective gear, and dumped it in the bins. Out in the hallway, I walked beside Terry as we headed back to his office. At least, I started out walking beside him. After a few steps, my knees felt weak. I stopped and leaned against the wall.

  Terry turned. “What’s wrong?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. I knew what was coming. “Just give me a minute.” I lurched toward the ladies’ restroom.

  Fifteen seconds later, I lost my breakfast.

  * * *

  When I returned to Terry’s office, he was standing at his light box, examining an X-ray. He swung around when I entered, took one look at me, and hastened to my side. “Claire! What’s wrong?”

  I really must have looked like hell. I let him help me to his guest chair. I could feel the perspiration beading on my forehead. He pulled a handful of tissues out of a dispenser and passed them to me. He watched as I dabbed at my forehead and upper lip. “You should see a doctor. It looks like you’re getting a fever.”

  “I think this will pass. It did last time.”

  “Last time? All the more reason to see an MD!”

  “You’re an MD.”

  “Yeah, bu
t if you end up on my examining table, it’ll be pretty clear you didn’t follow my advice.” He grinned. “Of course, I’d get to see you naked.”

  I managed a wan smile. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  His face flushed. “Of course not, like … you know, under those circumstances.” He stumbled over the words.

  I took pity on him and didn’t come back with the obvious response. I took a few deep breaths while he watched me nervously.

  As I expected, I was starting to feel better.

  “Terry,” I asked casually, “have you ever heard the name Marc Hastings?”

  In exaggerated slow motion, his eyes widened. “He was a cop … twenty-five, thirty years ago. Before my time, but I’ve heard he worked on this case—the missing girls—and then one day he just up and quit the department. Moved away up north somewhere.” He fixed an eye on me. “Funny you’d ask.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Hastings walked in here this morning and asked to see the remains.”

  My head snapped up. “What?”

  “Yeah. Just showed up out of the blue and demanded to see them. Left about a half hour before you got here.”

  “You let him?”

  He shrugged. “I figured, you know, why not? He’d worked the case for years. From what I’ve heard, the whole thing got to him—girls vanishing, no bodies, no clues—screwed up his head and basically ended his career. I told him we had nothing firm on the IDs. He said he understood but he just wanted to take a look. Put his mind at rest, he said.” Terry stopped. He seemed to be pondering something. “Another funny thing…”

  “What?”

  “When I showed him the locket, he got sick. Just like you.”

  9

  “Do you know how spooky this is?”

  I guess I was yelling, because Annie appeared in my doorway, looking alarmed. I waved her off.

  Sam was still in meetings, and I hadn’t had a chance to report to him on my visit to the morgue. I’d been sitting at my desk for more than an hour, staring at a stack of pending files, all marked URGENT. I hadn’t touched them. I’d been too busy mulling over my series of recent encounters with Marc Hastings, turning them over and over in my mind. Suffice it to say, I was pretty wound up when my phone rang and Annie told me Harrison Ford was on the line.