Only Flesh and Bones

by Sarah Andrews

  Imagine the scene. Baritone voice through loudspeaker: “You there! Drop your-weapon!”

  I: “Hey, no problem!” I tossed the knife onto the lawn and clutched the wound shut with my right hand. It was starting to bleed, fast.

  Voice: “Now back away from the building, slow and easy.”

  I: “Okay, I’m—this hurts!” I stumbled out of the bushes and turned gingerly to see what was behind me. The lights on the top of the car were wheeling about. My heart began to race, and sounds seemed to recede from my head.

  The cop, who was by then out of his car and halfway up the lawn, moving towards me with one hand hovering over his now unlatched holster, eased in toward the window and with one foot kicked my old beat-up two-blade Buck knife farther away from me. “Kneel down and put your hands apart on the ground!” he ordered.

  I knelt.

  “Hands on the ground!”

  Blood began to drip from my hands. “I … I can’t. I’m, ah, bleeding.” The blood was escaping my grip now, plop, plop, plop. I didn’t want to get it on my slacks. They were the only really good pair I owned, and they fit well, and when you don’t really have a waist and you’re a bit thick through the thighs like I am, a fit like that is hard to find.

  The cop noted the blood as he quickly surveyed the scene. “What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely.

  I opened my mouth to tell him but couldn’t think of a good answer.

  “What are you doing here?” he repeated. His hand still hovered above his holster.

  I wondered thickly what all the excitement was. Sure, he had caught me outside a man’s house on a Sunday morning with no church to go to, but was that a capital offense? What if this were my house? Was this how Salt Lake City’s finest approached well-dressed home owners who chose to fiddle with their window locks on Sunday mornings? Or was there an all-points bulletin out for a female cat burglar of medium height, brown hair, sort of forgettable-looking, who liked the challenge of broad-daylight theft? “I’m … um …”

  The moment was so unreal that I found myself watching him as if he were a movie. That impression was amplified by the fact that he was very fit and movie-star good-looking. Sharp blue eyes with heavy black lashes. Black hair. A ruddy, healthy pallor, roses and cream, like the best of the Irish. His uniform was perfectly pressed, and it fit him like something in a clothing ad.

  In an effort to make sense of what was happening, my mind decided that if I were watching a movie, I must be on a date. Yes, that fit, because I was, after all, wearing some of my best clothing, and I’d just showered and done what I could for my face. I felt embarrassed that my date had caught me kneeling on the lawn, and I hoped he wouldn’t think I was some kind of slob. Here he’d been so kind to invite me to his movie, and I’d gone and knelt in the dirt. I didn’t want to disappoint him. He seemed so … authoritative.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. My mind was going. For a moment, I wondered if it was loss of blood, but I hadn’t lost that much, not yet. Then I remembered that with any injury, no matter how slight, there is some measure of shock.

  With some effort, I cleared my throat. Try it sometime, when you’re on your knees in front of a policeman while bleeding from a fresh knife wound. The old pipe can grow tight. Finally, I managed to say, “I’m a guest of Dr. Dishey’s,” and tipped my head toward the house. “I have to get to this conference I’m attending, and I got out here to my car and realized that I’d forgotten my keys. They’re right in there, on the um—” I peered up toward the window. My stomach was beginning to flutter. I’m usually tougher at the sight of blood, having done my share of ranch chores in my day, but I began to feel the need to put my head between my knees. “Can this wait?” I mumbled.

  The cop unclipped his microphone and called his station. “Central, this is Raymond. Got a Caucasian female here, medium height, brown hair, gray eyes, early thirties. She’s cut and bleeding. Request backup to take her to the hospital.”

  He needed a backup to take me to the hospital? What? “Listen,” I said, “if there’s any problem, you can talk to Dr. Dishey about it. I don’t know where he went, but I’m sure he’ll be back anytime now. We’re supposed to be at the conference by noon, so I mean …” A wave of nausea swept over me. “Please?”

  Another police car pulled up at the curb, siren bawling to a stop. My head was beginning to ping. I looked up into the firm, handsome face of my non-guardian angel, or at least this angel who appeared to be guarding the world from me, and found him studying me with a mixture of detachment and concern. He neither looked away nor met my eyes, but gazed at me steadily, as if watching for signs that would alert him if I was about to attempt flight. I felt a growing need to lie down on the grass.

  With an effort, I stared up into his eyes. They were like a mountain lake at dusk, almost indigo, very deep. “My car keys are inside,” I said softly. “My luggage is inside. George will be back, I swear it. He can explain everything.”

  Still he did not make eye contact. I looked away—at the ground, at the grass stains on my knees, at the sticky blood that was accumulating between them. Then, as the legs and feet of two more policemen hove into my darkening view, he said, “That’s not hardly likely, is it, ma’am? Because we found George Dishey an hour ago, and he’s dead. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  I had never been handcuffed before, let alone to a hospital gurney. I lay staring at the texture of the ceiling tiles, feeling the constriction of that cold steel bracelet, wondering what could possibly have happened to George Dishey that the police would react this strongly. But I didn’t ask. Murder is an ugly thing however it is done, and all the fight had gone out of me for the time being. I waited only for the anesthetic the intern had injected into my thumb to take effect so that the pain would stop. After that, I didn’t care what happened. They could stitch my thumb to the floor as long as they kept it numbed.

  I shook my head, trying again to clear it. Being welded to a floor—or to a murder investigation—would not do at all. I had a job to return to in Denver, where I was working as a petroleum geologist for a boss who had not been amused at the thought of releasing me for three days for an activity that would not directly add to the stuffing in his wallet. “A conference on forensic geology?” he had snorted, showing me yellowed teeth around the remnants of his spent cigar. His shrewd eyes had danced thoughtfully as he chewed ruminantly on the tattered roll of tobacco. “What kinda bullshit is that?”

  “Um, it’s a sideline of mine. You see, I use what I know about geology and geological industries to help solve crimes. I’ve asked as a consultant to the police a few times,” I’d said, as the palms of my hands grew moist. I had waited until the last minute to ask for leave, even though I’d known about the conference for months.

  “Crap,” he’d replied. “You find me some oil. You gotta scratch this itch, fine; take your vacation time. But I wanna see you back here by Thursday with nuttin on your mind but ‘Drill here.’”

  Before I could get another word in edgewise, he’d plugged a fresh cigar into his mouth and flicked his fingers at me, his way of announcing to his underlings that their audience with the king was over.

  My heart had fallen. In the tradition of many oil-patch entrepreneurs, my cigar-chewing employer granted two weeks vacation each year, and he wanted to talk to the employee who took the second week. I had shuffled down to the personnel office to sign away three-fifths of my annual vacation, thoughts of rebellion thoroughly buried under the weight of reality. Petroleum jobs were rare as hen’s teeth. My previous-boss, J. C. Menken, had called in a lot of favors to get me this one after his company folded. With recent mergers of the giant companies, Mr. Cigar could have his pick of lackeys like me, and I suspected that he had at length only approved my leave on the basis that he could brag to his buddies in the steam room that one of his slaves had been invited somewhere by the famous George Dishey—you know, da dinosaur guy you see on da TV programs.

  So as I lay on
that gurney, I was less worried about my thumb than the fact that I had to be at my desk by Thursday morning at 8:00. With George dead, the fizz had all gone out of this whole junket, and it would have suited me fine to give my damned talk and catch an evening flight home and be at work on Monday. Unfortunately, I already had too good an idea what involvement in a murder investigation could do to my chances of getting home on time.

  Time. The second hand on a large impersonal clock swept slowly around its smooth white face. I stared at it, trying not to look into the eyes of Officer Raymond. That, I did not want to do. Looking at Officer Raymond made me want to cry, and as long as I didn’t understand why I felt that way, I wasn’t going to let it happen.

  Presently, the intern slipped back in through the door from some other job she was doing and probed at the fleshy part of my thumb. “Do you feel that?” she inquired.

  “No.”

  “Good. Now just hold still, and I’ll have you sewn up in a jiffy.”

  “Fine.” Stoic was a role I knew how to play.

  Clink, clack went the stainless-steel hemostats she was about to clamp onto my flesh. She opened a suturing packet and laid out the prethreaded needles on a sterile cloth. She selected a weapon. I turned my head to look away, but there stood Officer Raymond. I looked back. She irrigated the wound, probed for foreign objects, irrigated again. Lifted a needle. At the precise moment she lowered it to my thumb, a new man walked into the emergency room. The intern paused, looking up at him. He smiled at her, at me, at the scene—a big juicy grin that only amplified the unnervingly bright light in his eyes—and flipped open a wallet to show me his badge. “Go right on with your work, Grace,” he said to the intern. “I’m just going to ask your patient a few questions.”

  Sadist, I thought.

  “Fine, Bert,” said the intern, “just keep out of my light.”

  “Your name is Emily B for Bradstreet Hansen,” the man named Bert informed me, “and you say you’re a guest of the deceased.”

  “Yes.” I concentrated on his face, which was only a little less daunting than the sight of the intern preparing to suture my thumb. A pressure hit my left thumb. That was all, just pressure, but I knew what it was. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, remembering the half-dozen other. times I’d had stitches in my life, remembered the horses I’d fallen off on the way to getting hurt badly enough to need them. Remembered—

  Tug. She fiddled, tying the first knot.

  “So that’s your story. Okay,” Bert said lightly, as if that was all just fine and settled now. “So we have a homicide on our hands, and maybe you can help us with it, then.”

  My arm rocked slightly with the intern’s ministrations. “Fine,” I said. “Just ask your questions. I’m not going anywhere.” Nice, Em. Make it sound defensive.

  “Why don’t you just take it from the top?”

  Tug. “Certainly. I am a geologist. I am in town for a conference on vertebrate paleontology. Dr. Dishey invited me. I’m supposed to deliver a short speech this afternoon at one of the symposia,” I said, being somewhat snotty about my Latin plurals for the occasion. “I had never met him before last night, when I drove in from the airport. I had only spoken with him on the phone. My plane was late, delayed by weather coming out of Denver. I’d give you the flight number, but it’s with my luggage in Dr. Dishey’s house.”

  Tug.

  “When I got in, Dr. Dishey offered me a drink, but I said I was tired and just wanted to go to bed. I did just that. Alone. In a separate room from Dr. Dishey. That was at about nine. This morning early, I heard the phone ring. I heard Dr. Dishey answer it. He was shouting. Quite abruptly, the conversation ended, and half a minute later, I heard him go out. He slammed the door. I heard his vehicle start. Big engine. Sounded like a truck. I heard it leave. I went back to sleep. I stayed asleep until about seven.”

  Pressure. Tug.

  My stomach was starting to swim again. I swallowed hard and told myself it was the anesthetic. Tried not to think about the fact that I was lying on my back, and that this man was leaning over me. “I got up, showered, ate breakfast, waited around for a while, and then headed for my rental car. Halfway there, I realized I didn’t have my keys. I thought about waiting awhile longer for Dr. Dishey to show up, but I didn’t like sitting around on his front porch waiting, so I looked at the window, realized what an old-fashioned latch it had, and thought I’d give it a go. That was when Officer, ah, Raymond showed up.”

  The intern made a fifth and last stitch, finishing her embroidery, and began dressing the wound. I dared open my eyes. The man Bert, obviously a police detective—he was in civvies, after all, and had that kind of cozy “tell me everything” attitude some of them affect—smiled at me, a kind of ghoulish attagirl. I blinked, hoping he was some narcotic-induced dream bubble that would pop and disappear, but he only swayed slightly, further unseating my stomach. He was somewhere in his forties, with thinning hair combed back in strings, and possessed of rather opaque pale greenish eyes, like two cabuchons of Persian turquoise. Abstract thoughts like that occur to geologists—comparisons between animate and inanimate objects—and they throw us off sometimes. With the stress of being questioned and the local anesthetic confusing the million nerve endings in my beleaguered thumb, the thought upset my mental filing system, putting Detective Bert geographically under P for Persia, rather than under U for Utah.

  “You could not see this telephone.” He leaned farther over me. The ceiling seemed to crawl.

  “No. It was in another room. I did not see the telephone, Dr. Dishey, or anything else.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was not yet light out. There were streetlights, but my bedroom was in the back of the house. The blinds are heavy. There was no clock. I did not look at my watch.”

  “So you do not, in fact, know what time this telephone rang.” His tone was still light, but I could feel the pressure of his choice of words, the subtle assertions that said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, or, you’re lying.

  Straining to keep my voice level, I said, “No. If I had to guess, I’d say about five.”

  “What exactly did Dr. Dishey shout into this telephone you did not see?”

  I took a long, deep breath, mentally counted to ten, and reminded myself that I had nothing to hide. Wondered if I should ask to have a lawyer present. Tried to remember if he or Officer Raymond had read me my rights. Wished the anesthesia had been general. “I couldn’t hear much. He just sounded angry.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Well … okay, I remember a few choice epithets, the kind of thing you’d know anywhere, just by the rhythm of the words.” I paused, squeezed my eyes shut again. Would Officer Raymond be shocked that I knew the rhythms of four-letter words? And what in hell did I care for? “There was something that sounded like ‘You can’t!’ and, ‘You’ll bust the thing to pieces,’ but I could be wrong. I was more asleep than awake.”

  “Ah. So then you went back to sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you awoke about seven.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you always sleep ten hours at night, Em?” He sounded incredulous, like I was having him on and he felt it was time to tell the little girly that the Man knew better.

  The sting of his insinuation landed right on top of the realization that he had guessed my nickname correctly. Em is what my friends call me, and much as I hate being called Emily, it rankled me that he should presume to be so familiar. Had he made a lucky guess, or had I told him? No, I was certain I had not. I had, in fact, only offered my driver’s license as explanation of who I was, had given it to Officer Raymond before he loaded me up and brought me to the hospital. Which meant he still had it now. Which meant I couldn’t drive, even if I could retrieve my keys.

  Rather than feel fear, I chose anger, and it swept through me like fire. I opened my eyes and fixed a glare on the detective. “Listen, Bert. I know you have a job to do here, and I know it’s
a tough one. Really. You’ll find this statement a little hard to believe, too, but I have some experience with police investigations. I am a geologist, but I have been involved with four separate homicide investigations as a special witness. I can present my bona fides. Call the Denver PD and ask for Carlos Ortega in Homicide. In fact, I have worked so closely with him that I can give you his direct number. Would you do that for me? Would you call him?”

  The intern, having finished her chore and cleaned up her utensils, hopped up off her stool and left the room. The detective spread his lips and cheeks into a wide smile that left his pale eyes looking like they’d been painted on as an afterthought. “Sure,” he said. “All in due time. Tell me about this conference you say you are attending.”

  I tried to shift my mental gears into neutral. Tried to be Em Hansen the professional, the person who had her game face together to attend a conference outside of her specialty. “It’s the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologish. Up in Snowbird.”

  “You’re a paleontologist?”

  “I am a geologist, like I said. My specialty is in oil and gas.”

  “But you’re going to a paleontology conference.”

  “Yes. Dr. Dishey is a vertebrate paleontologist. A dinosaur specialist.”

  “Dinosaurs,” he echoed.

  “Carnivorous dinosaurs, in fact,” I said nastily. “He invited me to the conference to speak on my other, ah, specialty.”

  “Which is?”

  “Forensic geology. That’s why I’ve been involved with murder investigations,” I asserted levelly. “It is sometimes necessary to understand geology in order to solve a crime. And I’m supposed to speak there this afternoon,” I added, looking pointedly at the clock.

  The detective smiled obnoxiously, raising his eyebrows in a mockery of looking impressed. “Ah, a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. You look at the dirt on the victim’s shoes and know he was down by the quarry.”

  At first, I did not favor his jest with a reply. Then I said, “That’s just part of it. More often, it’s a matter of having inside knowledge of the profession. Goes to motivation,” I said importantly.