by CC Abbott
"I am Japanese," Luigi said.
"It don't make a rat's ass," the leader said. "All y’all look alike to me."
He took the first swing, a wild strike that Luigi was able to block with his backpack. His only hope was to fend them off long enough for another car to come by. But the punks seemed to sense that they had little time, and they attacked en masse.
Luigi fought them off as long as he could. It was not long enough, and they left him bleeding and alone on the side of the road. A few minutes later, a passing driver found him and took him to the emergency room.
Cedar was crying again. Mom pulled tissues out of the box on the stand and passed them to her. She dabbed away the tears and then blew her nose. To her credit, it wasn’t a girly girl blow, either.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Bruises, mostly. He’s got a goose egg the size of a tennis ball behind his ear. On that thick boney part.”
“The mastoid process,” Boone and Mom said in unison.
Cedar smiled. “That’s what I get for talking to a family of bone hunters. But the doctors say he’s going to be okay. They’re keeping him for observation for a few more hours. Truthfully, he’s doing better than his host family. They feel awful about calling Luigi’s parents in Osaka. Hello, Mrs. Hasagawa, your son got beaten up by a bunch of thugs. I couldn’t do it.”
“Did they call the cops? Does he know who did it?”
“Luigi just gave the sheriff a statement. He didn’t see anything. It was dark, and their masks covered their faces. He only remembered that one of them was short.”
Boone rose from the bed. “How short?”
Cedar shrugged. “I don’t think he had a meter stick on him. It was dark? His ankle was twisted?”
“How about the car? Did he notice the make and model? Or the license plate? Even if he caught a partial number, it would help the investigation.”
“It was dark? His ankle was twisted? Were you not listening?”
Mom put her arm around Cedar’s shoulder. “No, he was not listening. He's as bad as my daddy. Always trying to fix things, always wanting to be the crusader."
"I don't think he's listening to you, either,” Cedar said.
Mom sighed. "Let me put it in terms that you understand, Daniel Boone Childress. You will let the sheriff investigate Luigi’s assault. You will leave Luigi alone about it. You will not harangue him for information. You may be his friend, but only to give emotional support. You will stay at home, grounded, and recuperating. Do you understand?”
“Huh?”
Mom waved a hand across his face. “Earth to Boone. Did you hear a word I said?”
Boone blinked. “No haranguing and no fun.”
“Providing emotional support can be fun,” Cedar said.
“Not as much as haranguing.”
Mom began an explanation of why he would be a greater help to Luigi as a friend, but Boone was already tuned out, thinking of both the house fire and the assault.
Enough sneaking around trying to gather evidence on the sly, he thought, hoping that Hoyt would listen to him. From now on, he was taking care of business his own way.
THURSDAY
A hospital was a lousy place to sleep when you're so sore your bones were vibrating, and the only thing you wanted to do was drive over to the Loach’s house to drag Dewayne out of his bed and kick his ass right there. Fighting was the barbaric, illegal way of settling problems. But with the painkillers leaving his body, Boone was finding barbarism more and more attractive because he knew it had been Dewayne and the other knuckle draggers who beat Luigi up.
All night long, Boone rolled back and forth on the hard bed. Off and on when he managed to sleep, his dreams were haunted by images of the ceiling collapsing in front of him and the echoes of a woman’s voice crying for help.
No one was ever happier to see Dr. Tetanus as he made his rounds at 0600 the next morning. A few papers were signed, then a wheelchair took Boone to the curb out front. Minutes later, Abner backed his Range Rover slowly out of the parking space. The plan was for Abner to take Boone home, and Cedar would check in on him after her morning classes. Boone was looking forward to her visit even more than escaping the hospital.
“You hungry?” Abner asked Boone as he climbed into the front seat.
Boone groaned from the sore ribs. “My stomach’s kind of—“
“Because I was thinking of stopping by this diner near the county line. It’s a little out of the way, but they make one of the best western omelets in the county. Care to investigate?”
Boone grinned. He shifted in the seat so that his wrist was propped on the armrest and his ribs were in the least painful position. “Now that you mention it, my stomach is feeling much better.”
Abner slowly pulled out of the lot and onto the highway. “That’s my boy.”
The house in Nagswood was a road kill skeleton that had been picked clean. The charred remnants of the frame stood on the east and west corners of the building, propped up by some unseen force. The frame on the west side was slightly more intact, with eight feet of unburned clapboard siding joining two wall studs and a window header together. The glass in the widow was long gone, but the siding was still white in places. The rest of the structure had given way, collapsing in on itself, burying a home within it. The red brick chimney stood in the middle of the colossal wreck. Its hearth was blackened with soot, but the rest of it was undamaged, almost unmarked, a mocking reminder that human beings often chose the worst materials for building their homes.
Tendrils of smoke dust rose here and there. Beneath the smoke was a pile of furniture, or what was once furniture. Now it was like the frame, a twisted mass of materials cooked together in a carbon stew. If you were patient and could stand the smell, you might be able to tell that the large slab of wood with a furnace that now resembled alligator skin was once a Chippendale sideboard. You might also see a colonial style secretary desk and a stained glass lampshade. Over in the far corner of the mess that had once been someone’s life, you might see the bedsprings of a queen-sized bed that had occupied the room Boone had decided to visit before the ceiling gave way.
Abner was a patient man. He discovered all of these things, which he narrated as he wandered through the debris carrying Boone's hooligan tool.
“Stay out now,” he warned Boone when he started work and when Boone tried for the fourth time to sneak away from the truck. “Poke around in the grass. See if you find anything interesting.”
“What qualifies as interesting?”
“Anything that’s not supposed to be there,” Abner said. “You know, interesting. Like why would an abandoned house still be furnished? Why would the furniture be pushed to the middle of the room?”
Good questions, Boone thought as he drifted closer to the site.
Here was something interesting. He stepped close to the foundation of the house on the south side. An explosion had blown a crater at least six feet deep into the center of what was a crawl space. A smaller hole, not as deep, overlapped it. Rubble filled the holes in some. Mixed with the aroma of burnt plastic and wood, Boone noticed the smell of block powder.
“Doc,” Boone said and tried to squat for a better look. A pain in his ribs made him catch his breath. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to squat.
As he was standing, he saw the glint of sunshine off a windshield. Cars were rolling down the driveway. Two men were in the front seat of the first car, a navy blue coupe. The second car was a white sedan with the Bragg County emblem on the doors.
“Doc, we have company.”
Abner glanced at the cars. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Fire marshal's office.”
The drivers parked the cars on the long grass beside Abner's Range Rover. The men in the front car wore blue and gray striped coveralls. One of them carried a tool belt, and the other had a leather satchel that Boone recognized as an evidence case. The third guy was a suit. He carried a clipboard and had a Bluetooth headset in h
is ear.
"Greetings and salutations," Abner called out to the new arrivals.
They walked past Boone without a word. The suit stopped at the lip of the foundation, where he pulled the Bluetooth and tucked it into his pocket. "May I ask who you are?"
"Yes,” Abner said.
"Yes, what?"
"You can ask who I am."
"Who are you?"
Abner carefully snaked his way through the piles of rubble. "Abner Zickafoose, Ph.D."
The suit stopped short. "The Abner Zickafoose?"
"I can’t imagine there are too many of us in the world." Abner leaned on the hooligan. "Have we met? My memory's not as good as it used to be."
"No sir," the suit said, extending an eager hand. "Not personally, anyway. I attended several of your seminars on the collection of human remains at the AFPX conference. Your slideshows are pretty unforgettable, like the fireworks explosion you investigated. I mean, how many times do you see agents collecting toes in cardboard flats?"
"I've seen it several times myself."
"Really? What were the situations?"
"Ahem," one of the men in the coveralls said.
"Sorry," the suit said, getting back to business. "I'm R. L. Pickett, Loss Prevention, from the Bragg County Clerk's office. I'm standing in for the fire marshal while he's at a conference. These gentlemen are Mr. Early and Mr. Stuart. They’re independent contractors specializing in site clean up and debris removal."
Boone's ears perked up. Loss prevention was code for arson investigation. "You think the fire was set deliberately?" he asked.
Pickett twitched, as if he had noticed Boone for the first time. "I don't think anything, personally." His guard was back up, the government armor back in place.
"The boy’s with me," Abner said, short-circuiting what undoubtedly was going to be Pickett's next question. "My research assistant. I'm investigating this fire, too."
Research assistant? Boone pondered the idea for a moment. His grandfather had volunteered to help scrutinize the case, but now it felt like Abner was taking over the investigation. Boone never aspired to be anyone's assistant.
Early and Stuart moved closer to Pickett. It was like they were forming ranks. "Can I ask why?"
"Sure,” Abner said.
"Sure what?"
Boone rolled his eyes. Stuart checked his watch, and Early shook his head. Pickett wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
"You can ask why,” Abner said.
"Why are you investigating the fire, Dr. Zickafoose?"
Abner swung the hooligan onto his shoulder. He looked perfectly at home standing in a dusty pile of debris, dressed in baggy jeans and an angler's vest. His long beard and hair blew in a breeze that had kicked up. "There's reasonable suspicion that an individual was killed here."
Pickett shifted uncomfortably. His body language suggested insecurity. No surprise there. Fire investigations were complex. They took years of training and hands-on experience. Pickett had neither. "That's impossible. There were no reports of casualties. Our records indicate the house was vacant. What are you basing your claims on?"
"Evidence."
"What evidence?" Stuart said, almost laughing. "You're wasting time, old fella, and time is money. If you don't mind, just step aside and let us finish what we came to do."
Stuart beckoned for Early. They stepped over the foundation. Abner met them with the hooligan.
"Actually, boys. I do mind. I'm trying to locate a body, and if you come tromping in here with those size twelves, you're going to make my job that much harder." He handed a digital camera to Boone. “Take a shot every six seconds until we find something, and then every three. The memory chip’s big enough to hold a thousand pictures, so you won’t fill it up. Got it? Good.”
Pickett, realizing the situation was getting out of hand, inserted himself in front of Early and Stuart. "Let's not do anything hasty, gentlemen." He said something under his breath to the two men, and they stepped down. He turned back to Abner. "Dr. Zickafoose, I respect your expertise, but the fire captain went over this site earlier. He found no evidence of human remains."
"I'm not surprised. Firefighters don’t get much training in human identification." He turned and made his way through the piles again. He stopped in the back corner of the house. "That's no fault of his own. Most people don't know where to start looking or what to look for. Mr. Stuart, do you think we should be searching for a skull?"
Stuart scratched the back of his neck. "Well, yeah. I guess so."
"You're not going to find one. Temperatures in a house fire can get so hot, the victim's cerebral fluid boils and the skull explodes. The mandible and most of the alveolar process usually survive, along with a few teeth. The rest are usually scattered. Mr. Early, where would you look for a body?"
"No place special." Early shrugged. "Sort of all over."
"Mistake number two. Anybody know where the bedrooms were?"
Pickett consulted his clipboard. "There were two. One on the second floor on the east side of the house."
Abner pointed at the queen-sized box springs they had found earlier. "Confirmed."
Boone snapped three pictures.
"The second," Picket said, reorienting the floor plan map, "was a developed attic space on the south side of the house."
That's where Abner was standing. "You all care to join me? Boone, you, too."
They stomped through the sticky, black mud that the mixture of ash and water had made. Boone took it easy. Although he was anxious to see what Abner had found, his ribs were killing him. He realized that he was breathing fast and hard, almost hyperventilating from the thrill.
Abner followed a line of blowflies buzzing above a mound of debris. "Don't forget. Pictures in, pictures out."
It wasn't anything Boone hadn't heard before, but there was something off-key in Abner's voice, like the sound of a rusted guitar string. "Is something wrong?"
"I'm making double sure that this scene is preserved."
"Why?"
"Because I'm about to disturb it."
"Hope you know what you're doing," Boone said under his breath to Abner. "Lamar says that you need a warrant to investigate a fire after the crews leave the site."
“He’s right,” Abner said. "But I’m not a cop. I'm a senile old man. That's what they all say. One good thing about senility, you don't have to stand on ceremony just to make politicians and bureaucrats happy. If anybody asks, I'm just following the flies."
They stopped next to a shape that resembled a small hill. Abner looked at the sun. "Any of you gentlemen ever cleaned up a site after an old house burned?"
They all shook their heads.
Boone zoomed in for a closer shot.
"Plaster acts different from gypsum board in a fire. The lathing behind it burns, and sheets of the stuff collapse. Super heated plaster behaves almost like modeling clay, forming around whatever it hits. Like a box springs, for instance."
Abner shoved the hooligan under the mound and used an unburned rafter as a fulcrum. The mound lifted up, revealing a twin bed box springs stuck underneath.
"You boys mind pushing this over? It's a might heavy for an old man. Thanks." They shoved it to the side. It landed hard on the ashes and sent up a cloud of dust. "Don’t breathe that, Boone. It's toxic."
Boone and the men quickly covered their noses with their shirts.
Abner poked at the box springs under the mattress. "Hmm. Interesting.” He carefully pulled the twisted metal out of the soot. "There she is.”
The body was a lump of roasted tissue. It reminded Boone of a marshmallow dropped into a charcoal fire. The skin was toasted brown in places and charred black in others. There were also maggots. Thousands of them. Coating the eye socket, the nasal cavity, and the mouth. Boone’s stomach turned a flip, and his instincts told him to turn away. But his intellectual curiosity won over his emotions, and he leaned down and lifted a maggot up with a fingernail.
“Blowfly larvae,�
� he said, analyzing their yellowish color and pointed heads. “Takes less than a day for them to hatch.”
Like a chorus line, the men turned away and began to vomit. They scrambled out of the wreckage and into the overgrown yard behind the house.
What a bunch of wimps, Boone thought as he clicked one photo after another. He had grown up helping Abner catalog evidence and even helped boil bones so that he could testify to their age in court cases. It felt like he had been training for this moment for years.
From the moment that Abner pulled the mangled box springs aside, Boone knew there was no going back. His first body. No, not a body, a dead person, a dead woman whose life had been ended by a fire. But who was she? And why had Eugene Loach lied about the house being empty? Boone had to know. He had to make it right.
Boone bent over for a closer look. The top of the skull had exploded, and the hair had melted. "You said she. How do you know it's a she?"
Abner pointed at the base of the skull. "Two reasons. First, see that area of exposed bone? The occipital protuberance is not pronounced."
How could he see that so clearly? Boone knew, of course, that one of the several ways to determine the sex of skeletal remains was the occipital protuberance, a small notch of bone at the base of the skull. It was generally large in males. In females, it was almost absent. Any grad student could find it in a dry skull, which Boone had often done himself, but to spot that one characteristic out of a blackened mass was nothing short of amazing.
"Second reason?" Boone asked.
"She was wearing a synthetic house dress."
The victim wore a housedress and one sock. Fire had burned off most of the floral patterned fabric, except for a patch on her trunk. Her unburned skin had a glossy look to it, like she had been lacquered down, and her face had crumpled up, the lips curling away from the teeth and the lids peeling away from the red sockets where the eyeballs had melted. Her arms were drawn up in what was termed the "pugilist position," the fingers formed into tight black balls.
This is what death looks like, Boone thought. This is what we’re left with when the very people who’ve sworn to protect us pretend that our cries can’t be heard.
