by Jo Crow
James was the light of my life, and I wasn’t going to let him flicker and fade away.
“Detective Elkins. I didn’t realize you’d be here so soon. Let me just finish up and—” Dr. Nash brushed off his gloved hands, then stood straight. When he turned, I caught a glimpse of what was on his exam table.
Bones.
My stomach turned.
“There we go. I’m afraid I haven’t had any time to clean up. I’ve spent the morning photographing the way the dirt’s accumulated on the bones, taking samples, in an attempt to figure out where they were buried originally, and how long they’ve been in the ground—and how long out of it. So far, the results—for what we have—are inconclusive. I have some ideas, but I’ll need a little more time to gather evidence to piece the puzzle together. We’re running the usual tests for the cause of death, but results don’t exactly happen overnight.” Dr. Nash snapped off one glove, then the other. He chucked both into a small trash can not far from the exam table. Then his gaze turned to me. “And who is the young lady in your company this morning?”
“This is Clara McNair.”
The statement hung stale in the air between us, as if my name was a curse that sucked the energy from a room. I couldn’t see Dr. Nash’s mouth beneath his mask, but I was certain he was frowning. The sparkle in his eyes turned from enthused to something I couldn’t pin down. It wasn’t quite sympathy, but neither was it disdain.
“Well, I really wish I’d been given more notice. You have my apologies, Ms. McNair. Under usual circumstances, I would have arranged the deceased in our viewing room for family visitation; until we can get some DNA from you, and unless we learn otherwise, we’re working under the assumption these remains are Richard and Glenda McNair. Your mother and father, I believe?”
A maelstrom of emotions seized me, its gales making it impossible to work out what I really felt.
Fear. Hurt. Confusion. Hope.
I pushed through the storm.
“We’ll be genetically testing the remains to prove identities but, until then, as personal effects were also recovered, we felt it would assist our investigations if you could identify them—as closest kin, we need you to take a look.”
Personal effects? Detective Elkins hadn’t said anything about that. I glanced his way, desperate for an out, but he jutted his chin in the direction of the examination table. Heart heavy, I returned my gaze to Dr. Nash and nodded.
“Great. The objects have already been documented and removed from the… bones, so…” He stepped away from the examination table, and I saw beyond his frame for the first time.
What lay on the table squeezed my stomach so tightly I was sure I would be sick.
I wasn’t a doctor, but the courses I’d taken in human anatomy to supplement my neuropsychology degree enabled me to identify what was lying beneath the sheet: Ribs, startlingly jagged. A pubic bone, curved and open. But the sight that rattled me the deepest was the jawless skull with dirt caked in its eye sockets, its teeth yellowed by time. I curled my arms around my stomach and pushed through my discomfort.
They were just bones.
Bones that may, or may not, have once been a part of my life. In these bones lay answers, but confronting them brought me face-to-face with tremendous guilt.
A gloved hand met my shoulder, and I jumped. Dr. Nash stood behind me, his face drawn with concern. “You’re looking pale. Do you need a glass of water? I can arrange to have a chair brought in if you need it.”
“N-no. That’s fine.” I hadn’t realized I’d emoted, and I did my best to shut down my feelings. The less Detective Elkins knew, the better.
“All right then, let’s see…” Dr. Nash rooted through one of the cabinets beneath the stainless-steel countertop. He stood a moment later, several sealed bags in hand. They were transparent and labeled, but I didn’t need to read what they said. My mind was too busy recalling every time in my life I’d seen the objects now clutched in Dr. Nash’s hands.
My mother’s red dress, the one with the white lace underlay I’d thought once belonged to a princess when I was just five years old. She’d guarded that dress jealously for years, only wearing it on special occasions so it kept its allure, until one Christmas a member of the kitchen staff had tripped on the way to the table and spilled an entire bottle of red burgundy down the front. The stain had come out, but the illusion was ruined; afterward, she’d worn it with increased frequency—much to my delight. With her brown hair curled and pinned, her earlobes decorated with pearls, she really had looked like a princess. Now that same dress was stained irreparably, its lace like rust from exposure to the red clay so common in the area, and its bodice threadbare. Time had eaten away at the material, leaving parts of it frayed and torn.
Tears beaded in my eyes as I stepped forward, but Dr. Nash wasn’t done. When he placed the bagged dress on the countertop, beneath it was a smaller bag—a single pearl earring, its luster lost beneath filth. The twin was missing, buried in the tomb of red clay she’d been encased in all these years.
The tears in my eyes traced glossy pathways down my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around my chest and held myself, knowing I had to be strong, desperately wanting to be anything but.
“We found this on the woman,” Dr. Nash said. “And this on the man.”
From the same compartment, Dr. Nash withdrew a new set of bags. In the first was a scrap of torn fabric that had once been the sleeve to a suit jacket. Lying on it was a cufflink. It had been cleaned of dirt enough that I could make out the engraving: RM.
Richard McNair.
My father.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pushing the last of the tears from the corners. There was no doubt in my mind that the remains on Dr. Nash’s examination table belonged to my mother and father. The objects were too personalized to belong to anyone but them.
I recalled a time when I was twelve, watching my mother cup those same cufflinks in her hands as she fussed over my father, while he patiently stood at the door, looking debonair in his tuxedo. They were on their way to a wedding—whose, I didn’t know—and my mother had been worried all morning about forgetting something.
It would be just like you to forget your cufflinks, Richard. It’s such a small thing, but it’s something that really makes a difference.
I swallowed hard and let the memory go.
The bag with the cufflink hit the countertop, and I found the strength to open my eyes. Dr. Nash held one last item—a hairpiece. Discolored by time and made ratty by its burial, it was now little more than a knot of hair bonded to a common source; but no matter its condition, I recognized it. My father didn’t like to admit he was balding, and he’d gone to great lengths to conceal his hair loss.
The hairpiece was his.
“Are any of these objects familiar?” Dr. Nash asked. He laid them out on the countertop, side by side, a macabre collection of the last things my parents had ever touched. I pushed my lips together, trying my hardest not to let my voice dip or waver.
“I can confirm they belonged to my parents.” I spoke in a harsh whisper, my words shaped by tears yet shed. “The red dress, the cufflink… all of it.”
But something was missing. My mother’s wedding ring. It wasn’t there. She never took it off her finger. The 5.5-carat black opal was showstopping, its internal reds and greens and blues offset by dark base colors. Fastened in a platinum mounting with minuscule 0.25-carat diamond accents, it shone brighter than any other piece of jewelry I’d ever come across.
If a stone so remarkable hadn’t been recovered with the rest of her possessions, I held onto the small hope that maybe she was still alive. That she wasn’t lying on the table.
“Could it be a mistake?” I directed my question to Dr. Nash, but Elkins stepped in.
“The bones aren’t fake, if that’s what you’re getting at. Look at them.” He drew back the sheet, exposing them to the harsh light. “The ends are porous and filled with grime. Beneath the dirt, there’s discoloration.”
He lifted a small bone with the tip of a pen he plucked from his inside pocket. “The grain of the calcium and phosphorous fibers are hard to replicate. Unless there are some particularly gifted artists this year at Hickory Hills High, these are real.”
Real. The word struck hard, and it left me numb. Real, human remains.
Detective Elkins shook his head, but his face was hardened, and there was no glint of sympathy in his eyes.
“Where were they found? Who found them?” I looked past Elkins at Dr. Nash, trying to understand what I was seeing.
Elkins crossed his arms loosely over his chest, observing the remains. “It’s too timely to be a coincidence, don’t you think? Ten years next week since they disappeared, according to the records. The bones were meant to be found.”
“But where?” I repeated.
“One of the police officers informed me this morning you’ve been in town a week; staying on the McNair estate, Officer Stevens said, in one of the staff houses. The main house is still in good condition, grounds maintained and such like; you wouldn’t know they had few groundskeepers.”
Realization dawned.
There was hostility there, a subtle statement that spoke volumes about what the murderer did and did not want. Detective Elkins was right: This was no coincidence. I wasn’t blind. Whoever had put my parents’ remains on the estate had brought identifying markers with them. They wanted me to know what had happened to them. More than that: They wanted to point the finger at me.
“Now, can you tell us where we can find the rest of their remains?” Detective Elkins asked. The rumbling depth of his voice cut through and reminded me why I was at the morgue, and who I was with. Detective Elkins would never trust me. In his eyes, I was already guilty.
He must have known that exposing me to the truth wasn’t going to get me to confess to a crime I never committed. I had nothing to do with their disappearance, and if he pushed me for more information while I was with their remains, I would exercise my right to remain silent and call my attorney. A decade wasn’t long enough; I’d forgotten how investigations like these worked. I knew that, as long as I was in Hickory Hills, I needed to be distrustful of the people around me, but most of all, I needed to steel myself against the detective who was convinced I was guilty.
But how could I blame him? The scene uncovered on the McNair estate was so gruesome and personal that an emotional attachment had to be assumed. All that had been found of my parents in 2007 were their severed fingertips and blood from their injuries. The hired help had gone for the night. I’d left the house that night, too, but the struggling teenage girl I’d been back then hadn’t thought to go somewhere that would give her a watertight alibi.
Anyway, the man I’d been with would never admit his connection to me.
“I didn’t do this.” My voice rattled when I spoke, the emotions I struggled to repress overwhelming my efforts. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’m innocent. I don’t know where they are, or who did this—or why.”
All it took was one look to know Detective Elkins didn’t believe me. I shook my head.
“You can accuse me all you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. I love my parents. I didn’t do this.”
There was silence. It shook me deeper than any scalding criticism or statement of disbelief. I stared at the toes of my shoes. I couldn’t bring myself to look up—they were too close; the sad little pile of bones made me sick with anxiety and dread. Was it my mother lying on that table? Was that really my father’s remains?
“Unless there’s something else you want me to do, I need to leave.” I couldn’t take the sight or the smell any longer. I needed to get back to James and prepare for filming: the quicker I was finished with my part, the quicker we could get the hell out of this town. “Detective? Doctor?”
“So far, this is all that’s been recovered.” Dr. Nash surprised me by sounding sympathetic. “When the genetic testing comes back, you’ll be notified if there’s a match.”
“Thank you.” The appreciation was bitter on my tongue. “Have a good day.”
How safe was I? It niggled at the back of my mind. I had no idea what the murderer wanted, but I knew a threat when I saw one.
Get out or you’ll be next.
Detective Elkins’s voice followed me out of the room. “Don’t leave town, McNair. This is an active investigation, and you’re implicated. I’ve got enough evidence to reopen the case.”
I didn’t have a reply for him. By the time I arrived at the stairs, I was running.
I needed to get out.
Out of my head, out of this morgue, and out of Hickory Hills.
4
The woman with red hair peeked through her glass window as I exited into the lobby, then said something I couldn’t hear through the tinny speaker installed in the pane. It wouldn’t have stopped me anyway. My feet moved of their own accord, and my legs obeyed their will. I wrenched open the door and stepped outside—only to find myself surrounded.
The camera crew were clustered around the door of the morgue. Reflective lenses shone in my face, my features distorted in their black glare—but no amount of distortion could hide my hurt or disgust at being recorded.
Did Samuel have no decency?
I’d just been through one of the hardest moments of my life, and he was looking to capitalize on my suffering. I hadn’t agreed to this.
To add to my misery, the camera crew weren’t the only ones waiting for me to leave the morgue. Some of the people of Hickory Hills, their faces twisted with disgust and hatred, loitered in the parking lot. Only the temporary barriers Samuel had set up were keeping them away, and I wasn’t sure they would continue to respect those artificially created boundaries. There was no police presence to stop them, and from what I could see as I glanced around the crew, security was missing.
“Clara!” Samuel’s voice cut through the din of conversation and the shrill, infuriated cries of murderer, bitch—from what I could hear, I was a serial killer who had single-handedly dragged their town into economic free fall.
Samuel burst out of the crowds, zeroing in on my location by the door as a mobile camera propped on a cameraman’s shoulder recorded every second of my departure.
“Clara! Can you tell us what you saw inside the morgue? Is it true they found skeletal remains? What was the cause of death? What do you think of their discovery days before the ten-year anniversary of their disappearance?”
When Samuel had approached me seeking my cooperation in his documentary, he’d reassured me I would be interviewed in a closed setting and asked questions I would have time to prepare for. The transitory elements were pre-scripted—all I had to do was recite what had been agreed upon. Candid footage like this? It wasn’t part of the deal. And with my emotions run ragged by the scene I’d just witnessed, I had no patience.
I needed space to think through the implications of what I’d just seen.
“Please, get the camera out of my face, Samuel.” I held my voice steady; on the inside, I was shaking. Fear sharpened into anger, and from it, irritation. “I don’t want to talk right now.”
“How are you feeling?” Samuel followed—the camera trailing strategically behind him. I witnessed the cameraman push a few other crew members out of the way, seeking the best framing shot. “Do you believe the bones recently discovered on the McNair estate really are your parents, or do you think this is some elaborate hoax meant to stir up trouble when tensions are running thickest? Or maybe it’s a statement on the ten-year anniversary of their disappearance.”
“No.” I pushed past him, but Samuel pursued me relentlessly. “I need to leave.”
“Are you saying you don’t think this is a hoax?” The intensity in Samuel’s voice was fabricated, meant to titillate an audience greedy for human tragedy. The corners of his mouth were upturned, and his eyes were alive like a hound hunting a fox. “Was it confirmed that the bones were real?”
The people of Hickory Hills parted for
me as I made my way beyond the barriers; no one wanted to be near me—like if they got too close, they might catch whatever evil they assumed lurked in my soul.
I made my way to my car; Samuel was on my heels.
“How did they die? Do they have any new leads on who might be responsible?” he asked.
“There’s no need for new leads when we already know who did it!” someone in the crowd shouted. A murmur of agreement broke out, a dull, babbling noise that blanketed my rage with dull dread.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
With Samuel not more than two feet behind me, I spun around and confronted him. He was taken aback, his eyes widened in surprise and his lips parted just slightly. The cameraman, unfazed, circled us to find the best place to record.
“Samuel.” My voice quivered as I spoke. The struggle to remain civil pushed me to my limits. “You need to get these cameras off me and leave me alone. I’m not ready to talk about anything. This isn’t a moment for public consumption.”
“Every moment is a moment for public consumption.” Samuel shook his head, eyes alight with excitement. “The world’s a stage, Clara. You’ve heard that before, right? Well, today the world is your stage, so what do you want to show it? Are you going to hold out on us, or are you going to rise up and accept your role in this story? Because like it or not, this is your story. Now that you’ve been cast, there’s no going back.”
“You want me to show the world what I’m feeling?” I demanded. The irritation simmering inside boiled over. Gritting my teeth, I fired back in the only way I knew how. I didn’t wait for an answer—before Samuel could as much as open his mouth, I’d turned to the camera. “Then let me share what I’m feeling right now about this. All of this. All of you.”
