by Dale Mayer
She shivered. Let it not be a body part, please.
With that thought uppermost in her mind, she studied the creek carefully. She was relieved when she couldn’t see anything untoward. She found the spot where they’d been on the previous day. With a look toward her neighbor’s fence—completely closed off from the creek and with no knotholes for the neighbor to see through—Doreen crouched beside the creek. She could see the indent where the ivory box had been, but the creek bed was slowly filling it back up again. She pulled her sleeve higher and reached into the icy-cold water.
All she found was rock and sand. Moving slightly to the side, she checked where the ring had been. And again found nothing unusual. Frowning, she widened her search and kept on digging. Again nothing.
She sat back on her heels and glared. “I was so sure something would be here,” she muttered.
“Well, it serves you right.”
She gave a squawk. And Thaddeus squawked in her ear. She lost her footing, desperately tried to catch her balance but ended up in the creek. She let out a shriek as the cold water soaked her jeans. She twisted to glare at Mack standing there with a grin on his face.
He struggled not to laugh out loud, but he lost the battle. Still chuckling, he stepped forward and reached out a hand.
She stared at it suspiciously. “So why would you want to help me now?” She frowned at him. “You’re the one responsible for the predicament I’m in.”
He gave her a look of sheer astonishment. “What did I have to do with anything? I didn’t push you in. You’re the one who fell in.” He reached down, grabbed her under her arms, and plucked her up so she stood in the creek.
She glared at him again as he noted her soaking-wet clothing and smirked. “Do you have any idea how cold this is?”
He shrugged. “I had my hand in there yesterday. But I can’t say I’m ready to go for a swim. It is a bit too cold for that yet.”
“So you think this is funny?” she muttered.
He nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
She shook her head, then wrung some excess water out of her pants. “You know what? I’m so fed up with everybody laughing at me. Even Thaddeus laughed.” At that point Thaddeus was no longer on her shoulder. “Damn bird flew away. Probably to stay dry.” She turned to look for him, finding him in the middle of the creek, stuck on a big rock. “Thaddeus, hold on. I’m coming.”
He tilted his head to the side.
When he went to open his mouth, she said, “Don’t you say it.”
“Body in the water. Body in the water. Body in the water.”
She groaned. “You just had to say that, didn’t you?” She extended her hand for Thaddeus to walk up her arm, and he grabbed onto her wrist and slowly made it to her shoulder. By now her shoes were pretty well ruined, and she was knee-deep in icy-cold water. She slowly turned to make it back to the shore, where Mack waited.
Mugs was there, watching the show. She saw with disgust that Goliath had even arrived. Suddenly Goliath took several pounces to the left and raced up to the bank on one of the jutting-out pieces. There was a fallen tree branch, which he hopped on and sped down the end toward the water.
“Goliath, don’t,” she cried out. But the cat wasn’t listening.
Expecting the worst—that he would head into the water himself—she raced over, trying hard not to fall with the current and the slippery rocks. But, as she got closer, he stared at something intently in the water.
“Mack, please tell me nothing is down there that I won’t want to see.”
“Shouldn’t be anything there. My team checked out this area pretty thoroughly the other day,” Mack said. “He probably just sees a minnow or a frog.”
“A minnow?”
“Sure, the creek is alive with all kinds of wildlife. Goliath is a predator at heart.”
Given the look in Goliath’s gaze, she figured Mack had to be right. But she wouldn’t be happy until Goliath was back away from the water. Cats hated water, so she didn’t understand why Goliath was so darn close to the stuff. As she stepped closer, her gaze caught sight of something white in the creek. She froze, her mind cataloguing what it was. She shook her head. “It can’t be.”
Mack raced toward her. “What?”
She turned to look up at him. “Please tell me it’s not so?”
Mack quickly shifted until he stood on an outcropping from the creek, staring into the water. “I can’t see anything.”
She judged the distance from the tree branch that had fallen into the creek. It was a good six feet from where he stood. “I’m not sure you can see it from there. But I don’t think that branch will hold you. Wait.” She took another step forward and almost fell as the rock underneath her foot gave way. She gasped as she partially went down. Thaddeus opened his wings, hitting her in the face. “Calm down, Thaddeus. Calm down. I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Mack asked.
At least he wasn’t laughing at her anymore. She tried to grasp the branch to get upright again. “It’s definitely deeper here,” she said, as if something had created a pool beneath the branch in the outcropping. She studied the creek bed for a long moment, looking for whatever it was that had caught her eye. It was small—at least she thought it was. With her steps into the area, she had created a surge of silt rising up, dirtying the water. “I saw it right here.”
Mack crouched down using the branch for support, the two of them only four feet apart now as they stared into the creek around her. “Any idea what it was?”
“Small and white,” she said briskly.
“That covers a lot of things.”
She shifted the branch off her slightly and thought she saw something white pop to the surface. She reached out and snagged it. “Got it.” Mack held out his hand, and she just glared at him. “You can see it after I take a look,” she snapped. “There’s got to be some benefit for me being soaking wet and freezing cold.”
She opened her hand and eyed the item in the flat of her palm. Her stomach knotted. She slammed her fist closed and held it out for Mack.
He had to stretch most of the way across the four feet separating them, using the branch for support.
Part of her really wanted to see the branch give away and watch him fall on his face into this ice-cold creek. But, given what was in her hand, that was not a good idea. She dropped the thing into his outstretched palm and waited for his thoughts.
“What the heck?”
She gave him a terrified look. “It’s human, isn’t it?”
He frowned. “I can’t say that it is for sure. It could be all kinds of things.”
But she knew. Inside she knew. “You have to get it tested. And did you hear back from what we found in your mom’s garden?” She looked down at the area where she’d seen the white thing originally. Now that the creek bed was a little clearer, she could see more. And what she saw wasn’t exactly awe inspiring. “You want to get my shovel for me?”
He stood. “Are you saying there’s more?”
She gave him a grim look. “Get the shovel, and let me see what this is.”
He headed to the garden, and she waited, figuring out the best way to get this up without destroying anything. She was not sure exactly what she had found.
When he returned, he took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. He stepped around the area they were looking at until he came beside her. She pointed downward and heard him whisper under his breath.
“Shit, that better not be what I think it is.” He shifted to the side. “Move out of the way, will you?”
She moved to the other side of the branch, just in case something shifted enough to float down creek. The last thing she wanted to do was catch any more pieces, but the alternative could be much worse.
He maneuvered the shovel under the item and gently lifted it to the surface. As it broke free, there was no doubt. It was a set of bones. Almost completely skeletonized. Slightly misshapen but unmistakable.
“It�
�s a hand,” Doreen said. She wanted to throw up in the creek but knew Mack would yell at her for contaminating the scene, not to mention no one down creek would appreciate her addition to the water flow. However, it was just too much to consider. When she’d found a man drowned in the creek, that was one thing. But this was a hand, just a hand.
“I think something else is here too.” He lifted the shovelful of hand bones and gently put them on dry land. When he reached back in the water, something floated away. He lifted up two small bones, each about eight to ten inches long. He raised them gently and put them on the creekbank too. “We’ll search this whole area. I shouldn’t even move those, but I was afraid the current would take them away.”
“What are they?”
“Arm bones. Looks like we found another arm.”
She stared at him. “What’s the chance that the second arm came from a different person?”
He shot her look. “What’s the chance of you finding another murdered body within a week?”
That shut her up—for a moment. “It’s her bones, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “It’s way too early to guess. I hope it is more of her. Because to think we found a second dismembered body is too ugly to contemplate.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and organized his team.
She looked at her clothes, completely covered in creek water, knowing this place was about to be overrun with law enforcement. She took a step back, forgot about the deeper hole, and fell in. She cried out, causing Mack to turn toward her as she floated ever-so-slightly downstream. She grabbed hold of the branch to stop from going farther. And damn if the branch didn’t shift, and a whole mess of the bank fell away.
“Stop,” Mack roared. “We have to preserve what we can.”
She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “It’s amazing that those bones—if they are Betty’s—have been here for thirty years. So what are the odds that anything else could possibly be left here? Wouldn’t it have floated downstream with the late spring flooding each year?” she asked, regaining her footing.
She left the branch where it was but knew chances were good that the branch wouldn’t shift any more, especially as she wasn’t tugging on it. But she had set the water to churning. Then she thought of the silt screen she’d found in the back of her garden. She stumbled to the shore farther ahead, crawled out, and walked the few feet to her garden, squelching mud and water with every step. Grabbing the silt screen, she went a little farther downstream—a good six feet from the fallen tree branch near where they’d seen the hand—and placed the screen in the stream. So, if anything had come loose, it should be trapped by the screen.
He looked at her in surprise and then nodded approvingly. “That’s a great idea.”
“It could be too late for anything now. I should have thought of it first.”
“Yeah, sure, when you went in the first time or the second?” And then he laughed.
She glared at him. “You’re the only one I know who can laugh over dead bodies.”
He wiped away his smile and gave her a clipped nod. “You’re right. That’s completely inappropriate to laugh about.”
The river swirled around them, and she glanced at the hand bones. “I wonder how long it’s been here.” She was sorry for pricking his humor. He wasn’t laughing at the dead body—he certainly had respect for the situation. He’d been laughing at her. And, for once, she didn’t mind in the least. “Any chance I can go home and stay out of this?” she asked with hope.
He slid her a sideways look and gave a very definitive headshake.
Her shoulders sagged. “How about I go home and get changed?” In the distance she could hear emergency vehicles. She groaned. “It’ll put me on the front page of the paper again, won’t it?”
“Well, you do live in an area with a dubious past.”
“I had nothing to do with this,” she cried out. “Anybody could have found that ivory box. And you found the ring.”
“And then you had to come back and take another look, even though I told you that I had a team coming.”
She pointed upstream. “But that’s where the box and the ring were. Would you have found this?”
He looked in the distance and then said, “I would hope so. But maybe, when you fell in, you dislodged the dirt and brought the bones to the surface.” He shrugged. “No way to know.”
“Right. So, in other words, I’m not in trouble. You just wish I wasn’t here at all.”
“I wish you would follow orders for once.”
“You could tell me to go inside and get changed,” she said brightly. “I promise I’ll follow those directions.”
He glared at her. “If I have to stand in here and freeze because of you, then you can stand in here and freeze too,” he declared. “Besides the water is warming up. The sun is out, and it’s a nice spring afternoon.”
“I don’t care how warm it is outside. This is still glacier-fed creek water.”
He grinned. “Very true.”
Before she had a chance to say anything more, voices called from her backyard.
Mack turned, cupped his mouth, and yelled, “Come to the edge of the backyard.”
As she and Mack watched, several officers rounded the corner. They stopped, took one look, and then raced toward them. “What did you find?”
“Did you call the coroner?”
One of the officers nodded. “He’s on his way.” The man crouched near the shovel, noting the silt screen farther down creek, then considered their finds so far gathered on the bank. “A hand? An arm?”
Mack nodded. “Looks like it.”
The two officers walked to where Doreen was. “Are more remains down here?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. But we disturbed the creek bed, so a few pieces could have floated down creek.” She nodded toward Mack. “He has a finger bone in his hand too. I put the silt screen here to stop anything else from going too far.”
After that, chaos once again filled her yard. She glanced at Mack. “Now that the troops have arrived, surely I can leave the creek.”
All business now, he nodded. “Yeah. Go in and get warm.”
She extricated herself from the water without any help. As she walked toward her house, Mugs’ barking added to the chaos.
Mack called behind her, “Make sure you take the animals too.”
She nodded. “But I don’t see Goliath.”
One of the officers standing with Mack said, “Where did you put the finger bone?”
Mack pointed to the shovel that held the hand. “It should be right there.”
Walking away, she heard them discussing the fact that the finger bone had gone missing. She scrunched her shoulders and lowered her head. She had a bad feeling about that.
“Doreen,” Mack called, “check Goliath and Mugs for the finger bone.”
“Will do.” She shook her head. “But you know that I can’t keep track of those two at all times.”
Suddenly there was a ruffle of feathers, and Thaddeus decided walking was too dangerous. He flew up to her shoulder and sat there, his claws digging into her flesh. “Cold. Cold. Cold.”
She reached out and gently stroked his feathers. “You’re right. I’m very cold.”
“Thaddeus cold. Thaddeus cold.”
She groaned. “So you are, little one. Your feathers are wet too, aren’t they?”
Up ahead Mugs raced forward and backward as more people streamed around her house. She caught one of the officers and pointed to two people standing at the corner of her backyard, recognizing Sibyl and her cameraman. Again. “That’s the press. Get them off my property. You don’t want them here at all.”
When the reporters realized they’d been caught, the pair backed away.
She called out, “If you come back on my property again, Sibyl, I’ll prosecute.”
They shot her a dirty look and stepped around the corner of the house, Goliath running into her sight from the opposite direction. Good, I hope he tr
ipped them. She turned to the officer. “You get somebody up front, and you post them there. You make sure nobody steps foot on my place. Do you hear me?”
The officer frowned at her and turned to Mack. Whatever Mack said obviously satisfied the officer because he nodded, pulled out his phone, and said, “We’ll take care of it.”
At least her temper had eased the chill taking over her body. She stormed into the house, and, with all three animals inside, she slammed and locked the door tight. Then she walked carefully, throwing a couple kitchen towels on the floor to get her to the bottom of the stairs without leaving a trail of water behind.
She gave up trying to keep the dripping to a minimum, grabbed the towels, and ran upstairs. In the bathroom she quickly stripped down and hopped into the shower. It took several minutes of standing under the hot spray before she finally warmed up.
She couldn’t believe they had found more bones. The last thing she’d wanted was to find another body. Thankfully this was a whole lot better for her to handle. Ancient bones were just white, looked like dried sticks in a way. That they’d been human at one time was disheartening, but those old bones were a lot easier to deal with than the blood and tissue found on the bones of a more recent corpse.
Was it weird that she knew this much about decaying bones after so few days here in the Mission? But, the more she thought about this, the better she felt about her newfound knowledge. After all, Mack needs to know this stuff. And I’m like his … partner. Right?
Sighing at her insights, she quickly shampooed her hair, then did it a second time before she stepped from the shower and dried off. There was just something about having been in the creek with those bones right there, much less with minnows and frogs and whatnot in the water. She found dry clothes, dressed, and then grabbed all the wet clothing she’d brought into the house. Back downstairs, on her way to put the wet things in the washer, she noted the size of the crowd gathered out front. She peered through the front door window. Sure enough, the crowd completely filled the cul-de-sac.
