The Bone Collection: Four Novellas

by Kathy Reichs

  “But the asshole tried to kill you.”

  “They’ve charged him with assault and battery and attempted murder. He says I fell into the water. There were no witnesses. It’s my word against his.”

  “So he walks?” Anne refilled her glass. To soothe her outrage.

  I was outraged, also. Two girls dead in the most godforsaken places on earth. Fuentes on Everest. Hallis on Aconcagua. A good possibility no one would pay.

  “James will definitely do time,” I said. “There’s a very patient, very determined crew over at Financial Crimes. They and the DA are working hard to ensure a conviction.”

  Anne nodded her approval.

  I tilted my head to allow the offshore breeze full access to my flushed skin. “The paper trail is apparently a thing of beauty. Proving embezzlement was easy. So was tracking the missing money to James’s Cayman Islands account.”

  “Dumb shit.” Anne rarely minced words. Or held back.

  I inhaled salt-laced air. Savored the roughness of Anne’s beach house deck on the soles of my bare feet.

  “How did Blythe Hallis take the news that her little angel was a crook?”

  “As you’d expect,” I said. “Composed, ever the lady.” I thought a moment. Added, “She insisted on paying for Viviana Fuentes’s burial in Santiago, next to her father. She’s also making good for every penny of the stolen money.”

  “Really?” Anne took another sip, then settled back, legs up, ankles crossed on the railing.

  “Same nonprofit. Same mission. New name. Vivi’s Fund. Dara Steele and Elon Gass are going to run it.”

  “Out of the goodness of their little snake hearts.” Anne chortled at her own joke. She did it a lot.

  I shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to watch The Heights to find out.”

  “Pass. If I want to observe narcissism in high places, I’ll tune in to C-SPAN. How about a beach walk?”

  “You’re on.”

  She rose and carried our plates to the kitchen. I lingered. Wondering. Had Damon James been right? Or had something good come from bringing Brighton Hallis down from Everest?

  Yes, I decided. Definitely yes.

  Viviana Fuentes was mourned, if only by me. Lying safely beside her beloved father, she would not spend her eternity as a macabre landmark in a top-of-the-world death zone. It wasn’t much. But it was something.

  “Let’s hit it.” Anne had reappeared wearing a hat the size of her table.

  We stepped out into the Carolina sun. Wind teasing my hair, sand caressing my toes, I felt the frozen knots of frustration begin to thaw.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Bones on Ice was inspired by a story I read in the fall of 2014, describing more than two hundred bodies frozen in the so-called death zone of Mount Everest. The body of the legendary mountaineer George Mallory has remained intact on the peak since 1924. Others have evolved into more recent climbing landmarks, such as “Green Boots Cave,” or “Rainbow Valley,” named for the multicolored down jackets and climbing gear of corpses dotting the hillside. I was horrified and fascinated, and couldn’t help wondering what would happen if one of those bodies came down and revealed unexpected secrets.

  I immersed myself in researching the triumphs and perils of high-altitude climbing and began to write. This story was nearly complete when tragedy struck on April 25, 2015. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit northwest of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, killing more than 8,000 people, injuring 23,000 more, destroying thousands of homes, and flattening entire villages.

  An avalanche triggered by the earthquake slammed into Mount Everest base camp, killing nineteen, making it that mountain’s deadliest day ever. Dozens more were injured and hundreds were stranded above base camp, futures uncertain.

  On May 12, 2015, a second earthquake, magnitude 7.3, rocked Nepal, bringing further loss and destruction.

  I stopped writing, uncertain. I didn’t want to exploit such a tragedy. At the same time, I more than ever wanted to share the stories of Everest. I’d been touched by the heartbreaking losses and the triumphant victories.

  I decided to complete this work to honor those lost, and to direct attention to organizations providing disaster relief, and to groups dedicated to improving long-term conditions for the indigenous communities of Everest.

  Sherpas are a Nepalese ethnic group numbering around 150,000. They are renowned for their climbing skills and superior strength and endurance at high altitudes. They are essential to any Everest outing, acting as guides and porters, doing everything from carrying loads to setting up camps. They secure the climbing routes, fix lines, ferry supplies, and conduct clients to the top of Himalayan peaks. They also face the highest risks.

  Devastation in the wake of the earthquakes is severe. Nepali relief efforts continue, and financial support is desperately needed. If you have been moved by the news, please visit the websites of these worthy nonprofit organizations:

  ActionAid USA: act.actionaid.org/​usa/​nepal-earthquake-emergency-appeal

  International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: ifrc.org/​en/​news-and-media/​news-stories/​asia-pacific/​nepal/​earthquake-in-nepal-68486

  Nepal Red Cross Society: ammado.com/​nonprofit/​155815

  Oxfam International: oxfam.org/​en/​emergencies/​nepal-earthquake

  Nepali Sherpas serve as the bedrock of an industry with the highest mortality rate in the world, and do so for a fraction of the pay received by Western guides. Conditions in the region are harsh. Many worthy groups strive to ameliorate the Sherpa standard of living. Please visit the websites of the following nonprofits:

  Himalayan Trust: himalayantrust.org/​donate

  The Juniper Fund: thejuniperfund.org

  Sherpa Education Fund: sherpaedfund.org

  Sherpa Healthcare Nepal: sherpahealthcare.org/​index.php/​donation

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As usual, I owe a debt of gratitude to others for their help on Bones on Ice. My daughter, the news junkie and author Kerry Reichs, has an unerring ability to see the stories behind the news. She read an article about bodies used as landmarks in the death zone of Mount Everest, researched high-altitude climbing, and brought me a “killer” story idea. I want to thank my assistant Melissa Fish for her unflagging enthusiasm and diligent research on any project I hand her.

  Carson Sprow at International Mortuary Shipping was patient and thorough in walking me through the bureaucracy and details of shipping frozen remains from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Chuck Henson of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department good-naturedly fielded my questions on jurisdictional matters of international crime, no matter how bizarre. The editorial comments of Jennifer Hershey and Anne Speyer made the work infinitely stronger.

  To prepare for this book, I immersed myself in the stories of those who climb. Credit for my newfound knowledge goes to Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer; The Climb, by Anatoli Boukreev; the website of noted mountaineer Alan Arnette; and numerous online articles and blogs that share their authors’ personal experiences.

  The dangers of climbing the tallest mountain on earth are legion, yet generation after generation responds to the siren song of Mount Everest. My story could not exist without theirs, so I tip my hat to all those determined to summit an impossible peak “because it was there.”

  FIRST BONES

  I sat with my chair drawn close to him, an icy heat hovering below my sternum. Fear.

  Through the sliding glass door came muted hospital sounds. An arriving elevator. A rattling gurney or cart. A paged code or name. In the room, only the soft rhythmic pinging of sensors monitoring vital signs.

  His face looked gaunt and greenish gray in the glow of machines tracking his pulse and respirations. Every now and then I glanced at a screen. Watching the lines jump their erratic zigzag patterns. Willing the pinging and jumping to continue.

  Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit. So cold. So sterile. Yet a human touch: a stain shaped like Mickey’
s ears on one rail of the overcomplicated bed. Funny what you notice when under stress.

  A sheet covered him from the neck down, leaving only his arms exposed. A pronged tube delivered oxygen to his nostrils. A needle infused liquids into a vein in his right wrist. The arm with the IV lay tucked to his torso. The other rested on his chest, elbow flexed at an obtuse angle.

  I watched his sheet-clad chest rise and fall. Somehow his body looked smaller than normal. Shrunken. Or was it an illusion created by the fish-tank illumination?

  He didn’t move, didn’t blink. In the eerie light, his lids appeared translucent purple, like the thinly peeled skin of a Bermuda onion. His eyeballs had receded deep into their orbits.

  Hollywood’s dramatic death scenes are a scam. A slug to the body destroys roughly two ounces of tissue, no more. A bullet doesn’t necessarily drop a man on the spot. To kill instantly, you have to shoot into the brain or high up in the spinal cord, or cause hemorrhage by hitting a main vessel or the heart. None of those things had happened to him. He’d survived until a late-night dog walker stumbled upon him, unconscious and bleeding but still showing a pulse.

  The wee-hours call had roused me from a deep sleep. Adrenaline rush. Shaky clawing up of the phone. Then the heart-hammering drive across town. The argument to talk myself into the STICU. I hadn’t bothered with polite.

  Death by firearm depends on multiple factors: bullet penetration deep enough to reach vital organs, permanent cavity formation along the bullet’s path, temporary cavity formation due to transfer of the bullet’s kinetic energy, bullet and bone fragmentation. All of those things had happened to him.

  The surgeons had done what they could. They’d spoken gently, voices calm through the fatigue, eyes soft with compassion. The internal damage was too severe. He was dying.

  How could that be? Men his age didn’t die. But they did. We all did. America was armed to the teeth and no one was safe.

  I felt a tremor in my chest. Fought it down.

  Uncaring death was about to punch a hole in my life. I didn’t want to consider the coming weeks. Months. We had done so much together. Fed off each other physically, emotionally. Despite the occasional aloofness, abruptness. The arguments. The unexplained retreats. The exchanges weren’t always pleasant, but they spurred the process, helped us accomplish more than either of us would have managed solo. Now the future looked bleak. Unbearable sadness wrapped me like a shroud.

  He’d been a good man. Capable. Devoted to his work. Always busy, but willing to listen, to provide feedback, sometimes outrageous, sometimes sage. Forever in motion.

  I thought of the hours we’d spent together. The shared challenges. The identification of issues and approaches toward solutions. The painstaking attention to detail that could knit together a comprehensible whole from fragments. The shared sense of accomplishment in uncovering answers to perplexing questions. The mutual frustration and disappointment when no solution emerged.

  I’d seen so much death. Corpses whole and partial, known and unknown. Lives ended in every conceivable manner. From the very old to the very young, male and female. At times cause was apparent, at others a puzzle requiring prolonged assessment and all my acuity. He was my greatest resource.

  Throughout my career I was often the bearer of heartbreaking news. The changer of lives, informing anxious next of kin that their loved ones were dead. He’d been there. Or listened to my telling. Death was a constant in my work, and now death would put an end to this cherished partnership.

  I looked again at the man in the bed. All was past. There would be no future.

  The door opened and a nurse entered, rubber soles noiseless on the immaculate tile. She was short and round with ebony skin that gleamed in the monitors’ reflected light. A badge on her scrubs said V. SULE.

  Nurse V. Sule smiled, a quick upward flick of her lips, then patted my hand.

  “He is having morphine.” Accented English. Rich, lilting. “He will sleep long. You go, hon. You have a coffee.”

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Another pat, then Nurse V. Sule began checking fluid levels and dials and tracings. I scooched my chair to the wall and sat back down. I’d been in it for hours. Ever since he was wheeled into that room.

  I watched Nurse V. Sule. Her movements were quick and efficient, but at the same time strangely graceful. I thanked her when she left.

  The chair was uncommonly comfortable as hospital furnishings go, armed, padded, willing to tilt slightly if I leaned back. I wondered if seating of this type was specially selected for rooms hosting those facing vigils of long duration. For visitors helping usher in death.

  I gazed at the rising and falling sheet. My vision blurred. The final breath would soon be drawn.

  Exhausted, and overwhelmed by sorrow, I stretched my legs, angled my head back, and closed my eyes.

  Just for a moment.

  Years earlier.

  8:07 A.M. Wednesday, December 17.

  The knob rattles. I feel a subtle pull of air, note the time, and look up, curious. It’s winter break and the building is deserted. The entire campus is deserted. Who could be coming into my lab?

  The door wings back and two men stride in. Uninvited. Both are tall, maybe six feet. One is thin. The other is not thin. Both are in their mid-thirties.

  I’m annoyed at the interruption. I’ve been on the anthropology faculty at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte a single semester, my employment contingent upon having a PhD. The junior member of my doctoral committee has recently informed me that he won’t be signing off on my dissertation. Not only did the jackass refuse to read my opus during summer break, now that he has read it he’s demanding the inclusion of another trait in the statistical treatment.

  The borrowed collection I’m examining is due to be returned in three weeks. Spring term looms and course outlines, lectures, and exercises must be prepared. I’ve yet to hang tinsel or purchase a single gift. So, yes. I’m not in a ho-ho-ho mood.

  The heavy man has cop stamped on his forehead. Which, being greasy, matches his hair. Brown corduroy jacket, butt-shiny polyester pants, Kmart tie, kiss-my-ass swagger.

  The thin man looks like an antonym in more ways than weight. Designer suit, silk tie, custom shirt, Italian leather shoes gleaming like soup. His hair is artfully arranged to disguise its erosion from his scalp.

  I lower my mask but don’t rise. The men cross to my work table. Kiss My Ass takes the lead.

  “Where’s Doc Becknell?”

  “I’m Dr. Brennan.” Premature on the title, but soon enough. If I can shake this pair and get back to scoring foramina. “Can I help you?”

  “We need the doc.”

  “And you gentlemen would be?” Laying down my magnifier.

  Kiss My Ass yanks a badge from his belt and holds it out for inspection. The leather fob is so new it still smells of cow.

  “Congratulations on the promotion, Detective Slidell.”

  Slidell’s chin cocks up and his lower lids crimp.

  “Fresh off the press,” I respond to his unasked question, then turn to his partner.

  “Detective Eddie Rinaldi. We’re sorry for the intrusion, ma’am.”

  “Where’s Becknell?” Slidell demands.

  “Unavailable.”

  “How ’bout we get her on the horn and make her available.”

  “That would be difficult.”

  “We live in difficult times.”

  “Dr. Becknell is on sabbatical,” I say.

  “Meaning?”

  “She’s away.” I suspect this Slidell is oblivious to the ways of academia.

  “Away where?”

  “North Azraq, Jordan.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Excavating. The site is Epipaleolithic, early Kebaran down to Acheulean. Also some lower Levallois-Mousterian layers.” Half making it up, knowing the guy’s clueless. Bitchy. But Slidell’s arrogance isn’t playing well with me.

  “Dandy.”

&n
bsp; “Indeed.”

  Slidell’s eyes hold on mine, then drop to the table.

  “What’s that?”

  “Prehistoric cremains.”

  The eyes roll up, still irritated over my newbie crack. Maybe the archaeo-jargon.

  “Burned bone,” I explain.

  “Who’s the vic?”

  “A girl who died in her teens.”

  “How?”

  “Her heart stopped beating.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “I try.”

  “So you do the same bone-whispering mojo as Doc Becknell?”

  “What is it you want, Detective?” The clock is ticking. And I don’t like this man.

  “I’ve got a crisper needs a name.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Hearing the disgust in my tone, Rinaldi jumps in.

  “Let me explain, please. A physician named Keith Millikin vanished about a week ago. Dr. Millikin ran a street clinic off Wilkinson Boulevard, a one-man operation providing low-cost health services for indigents, the homeless, street kids—”

  “Junkies and deadbeats.”

  I ignore Slidell. So does Rinaldi.

  “When Dr. Millikin failed to open his office for five days running, one of his patients, a gentleman named Louis Grimm, filed a missing persons report.”

  I wait. Rinaldi doesn’t continue.

  “Go on.” Guarded. I suspect where this is headed.

  Slidell opens his mouth, but his partner hushes him gently with a raised palm. I notice that Rinaldi’s fingers are long and graceful, his nails buffed, his cuticles neatly trimmed.

  “Dr. Millikin lived in an Airstream off Highway 49, down near the South Carolina line. Yesterday, getting no response from the police, Mr. Grimm persuaded his brother to drive him to Dr. Millikin’s home. To make a long story short—”

  “Which you ain’t.”

  “—Mr. Grimm observed smoke damage to the rear of the trailer, found the door unlocked, and entered.” Rinaldi sounds like he’s reading from an incident report. “The trailer’s interior was gutted by fire. Spotting remains among the debris, and feeling the authorities might once again ignore him—”