Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  Cable recognized the anthropologist from his book covers, having devoured every one, bestsellers all. Dr Brasco’s other name was the Bone Man, a preeminent authority on skeletal remains.

  Dr Martingale gave the sheriff a sheepish smile. ‘Investigator Polk invited him.’

  All hope was gone. Cable ’s case was surely lost. He had not even been consulted about bringing in this expert.

  The CBI agent was, at least, not smug when she turned to Dr Brasco – her Dr Brasco. ‘I know you’ve got more bones to recover, tests to run and all that, but what can you tell us up front?’

  Us? Her nod included Cable in this company. The sheriff now recalled that a pissing contest was a man’s game. The lady was only here to work the case – her case, all face-saving gestures of inclusion aside.

  Dr Brasco bent over the table, calling their attention to one of the skeletons. ‘This is an adolescent male, approximately five feet, seven inches tall. The skull is delicate. It could be taken for a glacial male or a robust female.’

  The county coroner raised his hand like a schoolboy to catch the CBI agent’s eye. ‘I used to be a dentist. The teeth match up with the Hobbs boy’s old X rays.’

  The anthropologist nodded in agreement with his colleague. His pointing finger moved on to the second skull. ‘But you can see the same combination of traits in this woman’s skull.’

  Sally Polk pulled a small notebook from her purse. ‘That one ’s definitely female?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Brasco, ‘I sexed the skeletons by the pelvic structure.’ He moved to the center of the table and looked down at the woman’s remains. ‘This pelvis is wider and rounder – more shallow.’ He lightly touched the bumpy edges of wing-like bones that defined the skeletal hips. ‘As you can see, the anterior ilia spines are more widely separated.’

  ‘Fine.’ The sheriff raised one hand in the manner of swearing an oath. ‘I believe you. How old was she? How tall?’

  ‘Judging by the fusion of bones, I’d say she was at least twenty-five years old, but she could’ve been forty at the outside. She was tall for a woman, five-ten. The bones of her face are consistent with Caucasians. I won’t rule out mixed race, but I see no obvious markers.’ Dr Brasco moved to the head of the table and picked up the woman’s lower jawbone. ‘No wear on the teeth from grinding – not a stressful life. Whatever she did for a living, it was light work, no heavy lifting. That would’ve shown up in the arms, places where muscle separates from bone with manual labor.’ He tilted his head to one side and smiled. ‘Her teeth are just too perfect.’ He fitted the lower jawbone back into position with the skull. ‘Excellent alignment. You’ll find an orthodontist in her childhood, and I’m sure she had regular cleanings as an adult.’ He stepped back and regarded the skeleton as a whole. ‘As for the rest – no signs of malnutrition, no visible markers for disease. She wasn’t poor – not a homeless person.’

  ‘Good to know.’ The CBI agent scrawled a line in her notebook. ‘Nobody notices when the homeless drop out of sight, but there’s bound to be a missing-person report on this lady. Can you tell us how these people died?’

  ‘I can’t be precise with the Hobbs boy,’ said the thin man. ‘Not yet. I’d like some time to differentiate the premortem fractures of a fleshed-out body and the postmortem cracks of drying bones. Burial does its own damage. In the boy’s case, no single trauma stands out as the fatal injury.’

  Now that the bones had been properly matched up, Cable could see that it must have been the woman’s torso resting in Josh’s coffin. The boy’s rib cage was now properly matched up with the rest of him. Most of the ribs were broken, and so were two of the arm bones.

  ‘The woman’s cause of death is more obvious.’ Dr Brasco turned her skull in his hands to show them the back, where cracked bits of bone bent inward, and lines of breakage spread out from this indent. ‘One massive trauma with a blunt instrument. It could’ve been a rock. That ’s my best guess. I’d rule out any manmade object with a smooth surface. The woman died quickly. And the boy – not so fast. Some of his fractures are consistent with defensive wounds.’

  ‘Well, here’s one way to look at it.’ Sally Polk’s pen hovered over a page in her notebook. ‘I see it as a classic bop-and-drop rape. The perp comes up behind the woman and drops her with the rock. But he goes too far, hits too hard. She ’s dead. And then . . .’ Her eyes turned to the skeleton of the boy. ‘And then, he turns around – oh, damn – a witness. The boy saw him coming and fought back. That would explain the defensive wounds and all the time it took to kill him.’

  Dr Brasco nodded in approval. ‘Yes, excellent, Sally – if not for the boy’s broken fingers.’ He retrieved a box from the countertop near the table and opened it to show them what appeared to be small reddish sticks caked with dirt. ‘The excavation team hasn’t recovered all of them yet, but I have enough for a working theory.’ As he laid out the skeletal fingers of Joshua Hobbs, he described a different scene with Josh as the primary target, and the killer as someone with reason to hurt the boy – to drag out his death for hours.

  William Swahn shrugged off any connection between himself and Mavis Hardy. ‘I know her on sight. Everyone does. But we’ve never spoken.’ He held the magnifying glass over the small image of the librarian on the contact sheet. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized her in that gown. She cleans up nicely.’

  ‘You know the kind of people who go to the ball,’ said Oren.

  ‘Everybody in town.’

  ‘And a lot of Ad Winston’s clients – criminals.’

  ‘Celebrity criminals.’ Swahn pointed to another small print. ‘Here ’s one of you. I’d say you were twelve the year this shot was taken.’ He handed Oren the magnifying glass and the contact sheet. ‘It appears that you only had eyes for one little girl that night.’

  ‘Isabelle Winston. You knew she was my second alibi. You gave me Evelyn’s name, but not hers. Why?’

  ‘I didn’t know . . . My source told me there were two witnesses. Mrs Straub was the only one I could verify.’

  ‘I’ve only got your word on that.’

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  ‘Maybe you thought the Winston family was tied into a homicide.’

  ‘Her father was your lawyer, Mr Hobbs. That’s probably how Belle knew you needed an alibi.’ Swahn held up the contact sheet with tiny images of a boy and a girl at the birthday ball. ‘Obviously, she had a crush on you.’

  ‘She was only eleven years old in that picture.’ And, evidently, Ad Winston’s daughter was close to this man – as close as Josh – on a first-name basis. ‘When she was sixteen, she had no reason to lie for me.’ ‘Oh, really?’ Swahn groped around in a carton he had brought down yesterday. He plucked out the photograph of two teenagers passing each other by on the sidewalk, each looking the other way. ‘You and Belle were professional strangers in those days. How old was she when this one was taken? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

  Oren opened the red folder and pulled out Isabelle Winston’s false statement to the sheriff.

  Swahn read it, bemused. ‘You can’t just ask her why she did this, can you? No, you’ll never even tell her you read it. What a gentleman.’ He studied Oren’s face, no doubt looking there for signs of hits and misses, and he seemed vaguely disappointed. ‘I don’t think you need to know what happened to Josh.’

  Encouraged by a flicker of surprise in Oren’s eyes, Swahn continued. ‘It’s my impression that this investigation was forced on you. I don’t see the passion of a man on a mission. You’re in mourning, and it shows. You know what else I see? Guilt. I understand you held the rank of warrant officer. That’s not like a job you can apply for, is it? You were hand-selected, the best of the best. It ’s interesting that you had all this talent in police work, so much experience – and twenty years went by before you investigated your brother’s case.’

  Without a military interest, CID agents were forbidden to participate in civilian investigations, but Oren had a better counterpunch, and now
he let it fly. ‘What about your own case? I know you never saw one shred of evidence against the cops in your old precinct. You just sicked a lawyer on them and grabbed the money.’

  Swahn only inclined his head a bare inch to acknowledge the truth of this. ‘Perhaps no one should investigate a case with a personal involvement. No objectivity. Hard, isn’t it? Being Josh’s avenger and his brother.’

  ‘He ’s always Josh to you. You’ve known Hannah for years, and you call her Miss Rice. The sheriff is a mediocre cop, but I’m sure he picked up on that. He probably thinks you were on a first-name basis with my brother before he disappeared.’

  ‘Before he died,’ said Swahn, correcting him. ‘Your housekeeper calls you and Judge Hobbs the kinderlost. Did you know that? It ’s a word she made up for the ones who get left behind when a child dies. She said the widows and orphans get titles of sympathy, but there was nothing like that for you and your father. So she coined a word to fill that awful void.’

  ‘Hannah spent a lot of time here, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she used to be able to drink me under the table. These days, her tolerance for alcohol is diminishing. Now, when she stops by, it’s less embarrassing.’

  ‘She ’s your friend.’

  ‘Yes. And now I think you believe that I didn’t kill your brother. Like me, you trust Miss Rice’s instincts.’

  ‘I need to see the last batch of photographs she gave you, the ones she had developed after Josh went missing.’

  William Swahn’s surprise appeared to be genuine. He splayed his empty hands to say that he did not have any such pictures.

  It was late in the day when the CBI agent entered Cable Babitt’s office and introduced him to her pet forensic technician, a small man with a pug nose that made him appear ten years old at first glance. ‘I want this to be a joint investigation,’ said Sally – he must call her Sally. ‘So I’m here to share what we’ve got so far.’

  Did he believe this? No. At least she had not come to arrest him for tampering with evidence, but that might well be in his future.

  She rested one hand on the shoulder of her companion. ‘This young man has a few details you might find interesting.’

  Her young man seemed a bit on the sullen side, maybe thinking it was pointless to update him on a crime that no longer belonged to the County Sheriff ’s Office. If that had not yet been spelled out, the youngster’s attitude made it plain enough.

  Cable gestured toward the two chairs in front of his desk, and his visitors sat down.

  The woman reached out to the forensics man and lightly thumped the back of his head in the way of prompting an unruly child. On this cue, the technician pulled out his notebook and read from the pages with no inflection, clearly bored by this chore. ‘A yellow raincoat was found in the grave.’

  ‘I was there – I saw it,’ said Cable. ‘Just get on with it, son.’

  ‘Some of the woman’s arm bones were found in the sleeves. That might fix the time of death. According to the weather bureau, there was only one shower that day.’

  ‘And it didn’t last long,’ said Cable, ‘only fifteen or twenty minutes.’

  With another thump from Sally Polk, the younger man ceased to slouch in his chair, and his voice was more respectful when he said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you. The yellow raincoat was manufactured in New Jersey, but it’s not traceable by stores. They were sold all over the country.’

  ‘I traced it,’ said Cable, with a satisfied smile, and the younger man looked up from his notes. ‘Son, we call it a slicker, and so does the company that makes it. I’m sure you’ve got their name in your little notebook. They did sell them all around the country – for a while. A few years after the sales dried up, the stock was sold to a liquidator. That was the year Josh Hobbs disappeared. And the liquidator’s best customer for those slickers – more than half the stock – was Mrs Mooney. She owns the dry-goods store in Coventry. She sells lots of stuff like that to visitors who believe it never rains in California. The victim probably bought it locally, but her description won’t fit any missing-person report filed in this county. So I guess we got a dead tourist.’

  This bit of detection had been a cakewalk, for he had stopped by the dry-goods store where his own yellow slicker had been purchased that same year. And all of his information had come from a five-minute chat with the proprietor. However, the crime-scene tech was clearly impressed.

  Sally Polk seemed amused, even pleased, by the sheriff ’s little victory.

  He would never understand women.

  ‘Well, there goes half your problem,’ she said. ‘If the female victim’s not county, then the state ’s obliged to track down her identification. Oh, and the tourist angle – good catch. That locks her into a new tourism mandate for the CBI. The governor’s just death on anything that might discourage the tourist trade.’

  Cable closed his eyes. All hope of contesting jurisdiction was shot to hell. He had just handed it to her. She must see him as the kind of fool who should not be allowed to tie his own shoelaces for fear of accidentally hanging himself. He turned his attention back to the technician. ‘Son, what else you got?’

  ‘The hiking boots suggest that the female victim went into the woods of her own accord. Very good boots – held up real well. They were bought for function not style. No personal effects were found on or near her remains. That could indicate that she knew her assailant. The perpetrator might’ve disposed of her identification because he knew he’d be the prime suspect.’

  Cable nodded, though the same could be said for Josh Hobbs. This was padded-out information, probably scripted by Sally Polk. And now he knew that she was not planning to share everything – just the obvious things. ‘What about Josh’s camera? I know he had one with him that day.’

  ‘Nothing like that was found,’ said the younger man. ‘We did a perimeter search and came up dry. But there ’s still excavation work going on at the gravesite. It might turn up.’ Once again, he bent over his notebook. ‘Judging by what ’s left of the woman’s clothing, she was slender. We agree with Dr Brasco’s estimate of five-ten.’

  ‘Tall women do stand out in a small town,’ said Sally Polk. ‘Does that sound like anyone local?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cable, ‘but not a dead local. And you already know that woman wasn’t from around here. So you’re working on a theory of mistaken identity, right? Now why is that?’

  ‘No particular reason, Sheriff. Let’s say I’m open-minded. Is there anything else I can do for you today? Any more questions?’

  Cable shook his head. ‘No, that does it, thanks.’

  ‘You asked about the camera,’ said Sally Polk, ‘but not the boy’s knapsack. I looked up your old missing-person report, and there it was. Josh Hobbs was carrying a bright green knapsack the last time he was seen alive.’ She smiled.

  If a spider could smile—

  Cable flirted with the idea that she had already found Josh’s knapsack in its new hiding place behind his garage.

  No, that was paranoid.

  Before he could recover from this little ambush, she raised one fluttery hand to wave away any necessity for a response. ‘Who remembers details after twenty years?’ Preparing to leave him now, she slipped her purse strap over one shoulder and dropped one more bomb. ‘How come you never arrested Oren Hobbs?’

  ‘Oren had an alibi for his time that day. A witness puts Josh on a hiking trail by himself.’

  ‘I need a copy of that witness statement.’ Sally Polk said this so sweetly. She might be a neighbor lady come to borrow a cup of flour.

  He spun his chair around and reached for the key that Oren had left in the lock of the credenza, but it dangled from the lock of the lower drawer – not the one that held the labeled case files. After a full minute of searching, he realized that the unmarked red folder was gone.

  ‘Lose something, Sheriff?’ asked the woman behind him – right behind him – standing over his bowed back.

  He opened the upper drawe
r and thumbed through the other folders, but the red one was not among them. ‘Damn reporters.’ Cable slammed the drawer. ‘One of them must ’ve taken a file. It was bright red, so that ’d be the one to catch his eye.’ Always best to mix truth with the lies. ‘Those bastards were all over this place yesterday.’

  ‘Reporters.’ She mulled this over, as if taking him seriously. ‘I suppose that ’s . . . possible. I understand Oren Hobbs was in here yesterday. Local boy – I think he ’d have a better chance of getting past your people out there in the squad room.’

  So she had interviewed his deputies and discovered Oren’s unescorted office visit. And now Cable called himself six kinds of a fool. He had never seen this moment coming.

  Sally Polk was holding her notebook, idly leafing through the pages. ‘Ferris Monty seems to think that Oren Hobbs is working this case with you.’ She looked up from her reading, to smile at him. ‘I’m sure that must be wrong. You’d never give a civilian – a suspect – access to evidence. Let’s say Mr Hobbs gave one of your deputies a story about being told to wait for you in your office. I think that story works well for everybody concerned about covering their tails. Don’t you agree? Did you say this was a red folder?’

  SIXTEEN

  Oren Hobbs was seated at a table for two in the Water Street Café, where he waited for the sheriff and watched boys shooting hoops in the playground across the road.

  The large plate-glass window looked out on the schoolhouse. Though built to resemble a hundred-year-old landmark, that building had replaced the abandoned mill-town school when he was in kindergarten. The large gymnasium was underground, a concession to the Coventry Landmark Society, defunct with the demise of its only member, Millard Straub, who could not bear the idea of his hotel being dwarfed by any larger structure.