Raw Bone

by Scott Thornley

  Also by Scott Thornley

  Erasing Memory

  The Ambitious City

  PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

  Copyright © 2015 Scott Thornley

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2015 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Thornley, Scott, author

  Raw bone / Scott Thornley.

  Electronic monograph in HTML format.

  ISBN 978-0-345-81560-6

  I. Title.

  PS8639.H66R39 2015 C813'.6 C2015-906905-X

  Cover design and images by Scott Thornley

  v3.1

  For Shirley

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Beauty.

  Does it live forever?

  Yes, it lives forever.

  From “Beauty,” by Richard W. Halperin

  Chapter 1

  She was left there sometime before the heavy snows and early December freeze-up, far enough from shore that coyotes couldn’t reach her and in water shallow enough that the massive carp and cruising pike wouldn’t feed off her. In this early spring, the snow that remained in the city was all grey and honeycombed—littered with paper, plastic wrappers, cigarette butts and abandoned bags of dog shit—but on the bay side of Cootes Paradise, such sights were foreign. Among the grey rocks and black trees, there were still large patches of white snow sharing the ground with the dead leaves of endless autumns, or laying like cotton balls deep in the branches of evergreen. From beyond the trees, the low sonic hum of traffic on the highway came in waves, like a bow crossing the strings of a double bass.

  The ice was so thin that the right buttock and right hand had broken through and were frozen in place. The flesh appeared waxy and grey, either from decomposition or exposure to the air. Two young men had spotted the hand while cycling cross-country through the park—initially they thought it was a rubber glove.

  MacNeice trained his binoculars on the slab, blocking out the raucous banter from the cluster of cops at the end of the bay. He studied the protruding hand. The fingers appeared slightly swollen but relaxed. From the elevated trail where he was standing, he couldn’t tell with any certainty, but he felt sure the hand belonged to a woman.

  The marine unit was taking its time. They had decided it would be better to cross Dundurn Bay—and certainly more exciting—than to haul a skiff around the bay in a trailer and paddle out from shore. He’d sent Detective Inspector Fiza Aziz with them to oversee the body’s removal.

  MacNeice leaned against a maple and waited for the sun to break through the clouds scuttling across the bay. The damp smell of early spring filled his nostrils and, even though it had more than a hint of rotting vegetation, he found it pleasant. He exhaled, then trained the glasses on where he thought the head would be. Like it was breathing, the slab gently rose and fell.

  Someone was coming along the path toward him; he recognized the footfalls. “What have you got?” MacNeice asked, studying the ice.

  “Not much,” DI Michael Vertesi said.

  MacNeice lowered the binoculars and glanced at the cops on the road. “Michael, give those men something useful to do. Get them busy searching the surrounding area, along these trails, and up that road in both directions.”

  “On it.” Vertesi pulled his collar up against the chill and walked back along the trail.

  MacNeice looked through the binoculars again as the sun broke free of the clouds, and he caught sight of the body floating in counterpoint to the rise and fall of the ice. Long hair, hard to tell what colour, was drifting out from her head. Through the ice, her body resembled yellow marble. He sighed and let the binoculars hang down against his chest.

  His cell rang. “MacNeice.”

  Over the noise of the engine, which he could hear approaching, Aziz said, “We’re not far, Mac.”

  “Richardson’s on her way from home and Winston’s—the commercial outfit they use to retrieve and deliver the body—will be here shortly. Tell your team they’ll have to bring her to the shore here.” He glanced back to see Vertesi pointing up the road and two of the uniforms heading off in that direction.

  “They tell me this is a jet boat that can function in five inches of water, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You don’t sound too certain.”

  “Well, we’ve also got two divers in wetsuits and two firefighters with pikes, axes and a chainsaw.”

  “The sun just gave me a glimpse underneath. I don’t know how thick the slab is, but I think the body’s somehow holding it in place. I can’t see anything of her left side, so make sure they understand she’s probably tethered.”

  “You’re sure it’s a woman?”

  “I can see long hair.”

  The engine sounds grew louder and he looked out to the open water and spotted the police boat racing in a wide arc around the spit of land to the east. “I can see you now. You’ll be fine.”

  “How bad is it going to smell?”

  “Probably not bad. She’s been down there for a while, so the body is cold.” He put the phone in his coat pocket and walked down to the water’s edge where a fringe of icy lace hemmed the ragged shoreline. A shiny black GMC van with “WINSTON” spelled out in gold serif letters was lumbering slowly and heavily down Valley Inn Road. It stopped beside the cruisers, but no one emerged.

  MacNeice watched Vertesi walk over to the driver’s side of the retrieval van, then focused the binoculars beyond the narrow spit where the police boat had dropped power and was surfing forward on its own wake. As it turned into the small bay, he could see Aziz in a bright yellow life jacket. As he got closer, the wheelman swung the boat about, shifted t
o neutral and let the boat drift gently toward the slab. It came gracefully to a stop just shy of the ice.

  One of the divers climbed onto the stern-mounted step deck, pulled the neoprene hood over his head and put his black gloves on. The cop at the wheel shut the engine down and the bay returned to silence. The firefighters used pikes to hold the boat in position as the other diver dropped anchors fore and aft.

  Aziz and the crew chief came out of the cockpit and stood on the port side, and Aziz shouted to MacNeice, “Sergeant Nelson Rivera is commander of this unit. The divers are Constables Dodsworthy and Zanitch.”

  MacNeice called to the diver on the step deck, “Dodsworthy, can you tell how thick the ice slab is?”

  “Probably four to six inches in the middle, three or so at the edge,” he said. “I’ll go under and see what’s happening.”

  Zanitch brought Dodsworthy the tanks and helped him suit up. Dodsworthy put the mask and breathing line on and grabbed a large underwater flashlight. He made sure it was working, nodded and slipped silently into the water. Everyone waited, then the diver’s shiny black glove appeared at the opposite edge of the ice. He pulled down hard; the heavy slab, perhaps eighteen feet long, dipped slightly before his black hand slid back into the water.

  MacNeice had been half expecting, half hoping, that the frozen buttock and hand would sink—but they didn’t. When Dodsworthy reappeared and hoisted himself onto the step deck, the first thing he said was “She’s stuck pretty bad.” He turned MacNeice’s way and shouted, “Her left leg is tied to a marine anchor, her butt and hand are stuck solid in the ice. If I pull her out, I think she’ll rip.”

  “What do you recommend?” Aziz asked.

  He thought about it, looking down at the hand in the ice. “I’ll slide across the surface and use the chainsaw to cut her free. The ice is only about five inches thick where she is and she’s the only thing holding that slab in place.”

  “Has the decomposition gone so far that she’d actually come apart?” Aziz asked.

  “She’s actually in pretty good shape,” Dodsworthy said, “probably because she’d been on the bottom, buried in the muck, not getting torn up by the ice coming and going all winter. You can’t see squat even with the flashlight—it’s all by touch.” They settled on having one diver on the ice and the other underneath to catch her when she sank, or to keep her from drifting away.

  Vertesi came back carrying two Styrofoam cups. “From the Winston’s boys, it’s a double-double; that’s all they had.”

  “I’m chilled enough to forget that I’m picky. Thanks.” MacNeice held up the cup toward the van; the driver flashed the lights in response.

  Zanitch was into his gear and disappeared quickly under the ice, resurfacing a short while later with the heavy anchor. Rivera took it from him, ensuring the line was slack before placing it on the decking. Zanitch dropped quietly beneath the ice again. With the help of the firefighters, Dodsworthy eased himself onto the ice. On his belly, he began snaking toward the hand. A rope was looped from his left arm back to the boat where he had tethered it to the chainsaw. Once he was spread-eagled in front of the hand, he nodded and pulled the chainsaw toward him.

  The operation took several minutes and was not without its surprises. Riding the icy slab was difficult enough, but when Dodsworthy dug the blade of the chainsaw into the ice, he leaned on it for balance as much as cutting power, and the slab suddenly split in two, sending man and machine beneath the surface.

  The body, however, was free of all but a two-foot chunk around the hand and it wasn’t long before Zanitch had brought her to the stern of the boat and the firefighters lifted her into a wire mesh Stokes basket. With the divers aboard, Commander Rivera reversed the police boat slowly toward shore.

  MacNeice turned to Vertesi. “How much coffee do they have?”

  “Two thermoses. We’ve put a dent in one of them.”

  “Tell them to save the second thermos.”

  “Okay, should I tell ’em what for?”

  “De-icing.”

  Vertesi looked over at the boat. “Understood.”

  Chapter 2

  Dr. Mary Richardson, Dundurn’s chief pathologist, arrived as MacNeice was pouring hot coffee on the ice around the hand. It dissolved easily and the firefighters placed the hand gently on the tarpaulin.

  “Have you any of that coffee left?” she asked.

  “A little. Would you like some?”

  She nodded and walked down to the water’s edge, wrapping her long, grey woollen coat around her and crossing her arms against the chill. Turning around, she registered that the cops, divers and firefighters all seemed to be standing about waiting for something to happen.

  One of the retrieval men came forward with her coffee. “Double-double, doctor.”

  “Exactly the way I take it.” She smiled warmly, accepted the steaming cup with both hands and came back to MacNeice. “With the retrieval van here, I shan’t need your men. Also, do you have a privacy screen?”

  “Better than that, a tent.” MacNeice turned to Vertesi, who gave a thumbs up and disappeared behind the police van.

  Sipping her coffee, Richardson gazed out across the bay to the distant city. “Just look at that view.”

  MacNeice agreed that it was beautiful even on a grey day. He turned back to see Vertesi erecting the bright white tent. When it was up, he signalled that he was going up the hill to check with the cops that had been doing door-to-doors.

  Rivera and Zanitch were about to slide the body in the basket into the tent when Richardson turned and said, “Please remove her from that contraption and place her on the groundsheet.”

  MacNeice stood aside, glancing at the anchor and line. “Also, before you go, Sergeant Rivera, cut the anchor line on this ankle to the same length as the line that had broken free. And, if you can, please identify those knots for me.” He pointed to the elegant criss-crossing of figure-eight ties cinched tightly to both ankles.

  After Rivera and Zanitch removed the basket, placed the body on the tent’s white plastic groundsheet and cut the line, Rivera studied the knots. He shook his head, stood up and held the tent flap open for Richardson. She put on her surgical mask and latex gloves and stepped inside, holding her case.

  Rivera dropped the flap. “I have no idea what you call these knots,” he said to MacNeice. “And other than cutting ’em, I wouldn’t know how to undo ’em. They may be marine knots, but nothing you’d see locally.” He gestured toward the anchor. “Don’t know if it’s important, detective, but that anchor wouldn’t have been spec’d for any boat from around here. That’s gear they use for deep-sea oil rigs up in the Bering Sea.” Rivera turned the anchor over with his boot heel. “It’d be enough to secure a sixty-foot glass cruiser.”

  He shook hands with MacNeice, Vertesi, and Aziz, who handed him the life jacket. With their pikes, the firefighters eased the boat away from shore. Rivera started the engine and powered out of the small bay, swinging east in a tight curve along the north shore of Dundurn Bay. A great plume of water gave some suggestion as to their speed.

  “They’ve gone off joyriding,” Aziz said.

  MacNeice smiled. “I would too if I were them.”

  Richardson called from inside, “Mac, join me. Bring Detective Aziz with you.”

  MacNeice held the flap open. “Are you ready for this?”

  Aziz said, “I think so. You?”

  “Never.”

  They found the coroner kneeling in front of the body. She tapped the tarp, indicating that they should join her. “You won’t need a mask. For the moment, she’s too cold to offend.”

  This was the first time Aziz allowed herself to really look. The woman’s flesh was waxy, with mottled colours varying from pale peach to grey, black to bone white, but in a perverse way, beautiful, like alabaster. She had the urge to reach out and touch the thigh but restrained herself, turning her attention to Richardson.

  “Notice anything?” With her mask crumpled below her chi
n, Richardson was smiling at MacNeice.

  “Bruising about the neck,” MacNeice said.

  “Yes. It was broken from behind, by the looks of it. Someone with exceptionally strong hands crushed the windpipe back to the vertebrae and snapped it. Relatively painless and swift. Anything else?”

  “Her eyes and mouth are closed,” MacNeice said. “Wouldn’t they be open if she was strangled?”

  “Yes, and they likely were when it happened. Someone closed them, and I’m curious to know why. What are your thoughts, Aziz?”

  “We were just talking about the knots on her ankles—they look so … distinct.”

  “They are. And?”

  “The one that was tied to her right leg looks like it was chewed through, ten inches or so from the ankle.”

  “Likely a muskrat, though why it took a notion to attack the rope, I couldn’t tell you.”

  MacNeice was attempting to look beyond the discoloration and small wounds on the body to see her the way she was before she was murdered. Five foot six or so, slim, with breasts in proportion to her body. She had no tattoos or piercings. Her hair, a dirty blond or light brown, was shoulder length and, while matted, looked natural. There were no rings on the fingers of either hand. Her big toe had been bitten, but otherwise her feet were well formed and undamaged.

  “What can you tell me about her, MacNeice?” Richardson asked.

  “She wasn’t a prostitute or destitute.”

  “Why do you believe that?”

  “She has no tattoos, no rings, ankle bracelets, no signs of piercing other than her ears, and those holes appear overgrown. Her pubic hair is natural—untouched, I mean.”

  Richardson was smiling at him again, resting one gloved hand on the corpse’s forehead as if she was checking for a fever. “What else?”

  He pointed to the pale hand. “Her fingernails …”

  “They look cared for,” Aziz offered.

  “Exactly,” MacNeice said. “And the feet look as if they’d never known stiletto heels or poorly fitted shoes—no bunions or calluses … No nail polish on her toenails.”

  “Let’s turn her over,” Richardson said. “Do you have gloves?”