Deadly Decisions

by Kathy Reichs

  When I began consulting to the North Carolina medical examiner, I felt an excitement not present in my early work. Kate’s bikers, like the cases that followed, had an urgency that ancient deaths did not. I could give a name to the nameless. I could provide a family with closure. I could contribute to law enforcement’s efforts to reduce the slaughter on America’s streets, and to identify and prosecute perpetrators. I’d shifted my professional focus, gone dry in my personal life, and never looked back on either front.

  “How did you end up in Tulio’s case review session?” I asked.

  “I drove a couple of my analysts up to Quantico for a VICAP training session. Since I was there, I decided to sit in to see what’s new.”

  “What was?”

  “Other than the fact that your biker boys are knocking each other off with greater alacrity than most social clubs, looks like the same old.”

  “I don’t think I’ve worked a Carolina biker case in years. Who’s down home these days?”

  “We’ve still got three of the big four.”

  “Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Pagans.”

  “Yes, ma’am. No Banditos yet. And it’s been quiet for some time, but you never know. Things could heat up next month when the Angels hold their run at Myrtle Beach.”

  “It’s still pretty wild up here, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ever hear of a young girl named Savannah Claire Osprey?”

  There was a long silence. Across the miles the connection sounded like the ocean in a seashell.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I heard her take a deep breath.

  “The Osprey disappearance was one of the very first cases I worked for the bureau. It was years ago. Savannah Osprey was a sixteen-year-old kid with a lot of medical problems. Didn’t hang with a wild crowd, didn’t do drugs. One afternoon she left her house and was never seen again. At least that was the story.”

  “You don’t believe she ran away?”

  “The local police suspected the father, but no one could find a thing to prove it.”

  “Do you think he was involved?”

  “It’s possible. She was a timid kid, wore thick glasses, rarely went out, didn’t date. And it was common knowledge the old man used her for a punching bag.” Her voice was filled with contempt. “The guy should have been locked up. Actually he was, but not until later. Got busted on a drug charge, I think. Died about five years after his daughter disappeared.”

  What she said next hit me like a blow to the chest.

  “He was such a peckerwood shit and she was such a pathetic little thing that the case really bothered me. I’ve kept her bones all these years.”

  “What did you say?” I gripped the phone, barely breathing.

  “The parents never accepted it, but I know they’re hers. I still have them stored at the ME office. Doc calls every now and then, but I always ask him to hang on to the stuff.”

  “Her remains were found?”

  “Nine months after Savannah disappeared a female skeleton turned up near Myrtle Beach. That was the thing that shined the light on Dwayne Osprey. While he was never what you’d call a steady worker, around the time she went missing he was making deliveries for a local cheesecake company. The day of his daughter’s disappearance Daddy made a trip to Myrtle Beach.”

  I was so shocked I could hardly formulate a question.

  “But did you ever get a positive on the remains?”

  “No. There was too much missing and what was recovered was too damaged. And of course we weren’t doing DNA back then. Why are you asking about Savannah Osprey?”

  “Did you recover a skull?”

  “No. That was the main problem. The victim had been dumped in the woods then covered by a sheet of corrugated tin. Animals pulled parts of the body out and scattered them all over creation. The skull and jaw were never found, and we figured they’d dragged them off. The bones left under the tin were intact but weren’t very useful, and the rest of the skeleton was so badly chewed that it was hard to tell much except gender. Some pathologist was doing the anthropology back then. His report stated that nothing remained to indicate age, height, or race.”

  A pathologist would not have known about microscopic aging, or about calculation of stature from partial long bones. Not a good job, Doc.

  “Why do you think it’s Savannah?” I asked.

  “We found a small silver charm in the vicinity of the bones. It was a bird of some sort. Though she denied it, I could tell from the mother’s reaction that she recognized the thing. Later I did some research. The charm was an exact replica of a fish hawk.”

  I waited.

  “The fish hawk is also known as the osprey.”

  I told her about the skull and leg bones in Montreal.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Is the mother still around?”

  “Anything’s possible since they cloned that sheep. I’ll find out.”

  “Do you still have the file?”

  “You bet.”

  “Antemortem X rays?”

  “Zillions.”

  I made a quick decision.

  “Get those bones, Kate. I’m coming down.”

  • • •

  Patineau authorized the trip, and I booked a morning flight to Raleigh. Kit and I had a late dinner that night, both of us avoiding mention of the bundle in the entrance hall that I had brought from the lab and would be taking with me. He was looking forward to tomorrow’s outing with Crease and had no problem with my absence.

  The plane was crowded with the usual assortment of students, businessmen, and weekend golfers. I stared out the window as attendants served coffee and soft drinks, wishing I, too, were off to a course—Pinehurst, Marsh Harbor, Oyster Bay, anything but the grim analysis of a teenage girl’s bones.

  My eyes dropped to the athletic bag under the seat in front of me. It looked innocuous enough, but I wondered what my fellow passengers would think if they knew the nature of its contents. I have flown out of Dorval often enough that the X-ray machine operators no longer ask for an explanation. I wondered how it would be leaving Raleigh.

  Outside, the morning sun was painting the clouds a luminescent pink. When we broke through I could see a tiny shadow plane paralleling the one in which I rode.

  Yes, that was it, I thought. That’s how I saw the girl at my feet. Though I now had a name, in my mind’s eye she remained a shadowy ghost on a formless landscape. I hoped this trip would change that image into a firm identification.

  KATE MET ME AT THE RALEIGH-DURHAM AIRPORT AND WE DROVE directly to the SBI lab. She’d already brought the remains from the medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill, and secured a room where we could work. If samples were to be taken for DNA analysis, all parties agreed that this arrangement was the most efficient.

  I gloved my hands and unwrapped my parcel as Kate retrieved hers from a locked closet. She placed a long white box on the table and stepped away. I could feel the familiar tension in my chest as I unwound the string and folded back the cardboard flaps.

  One by one I arranged the bones, placing each in its correct anatomical position. Ribs. Vertebrae. Pelvis. Long bones.

  The pathologist had been right in his assessment of animal damage. Scavengers had gnawed away so much that not a border, crest, or joint remained on any but the smallest bones. The pubic symphyses and iliac crests were completely gone, and only fragments of clavicle had survived. But one fact was immediately clear.

  Both femora were missing.

  I added the bones from St-Basile to those that lay on the table. While they did not complete the skeleton, neither did they duplicate any element.

  Kate spoke first.

  “Looks like a match for size and muscular development. She must have been a tiny thing.”

  “Using a femur I calculated a height of five foot two, plus or minus. Let’s see what your tibia gives us.” I indicated two landmar
ks on the shaft. “There’s a regression formula that allows the use of just this segment.”

  I took the measurement then did the math. The error range was large but bracketed the estimate I’d gotten with the femur. When I showed her the figure, Kate went to the side counter and riffled through a file that was thicker than a Manhattan phone book.

  “Here it is. Savannah was five-one and three-quarter inches.”

  She riffled some more, then withdrew a five-by-seven envelope and shook free several pictures. She spoke as she studied an image.

  “It was so sad. Most of Savannah’s classmates had no idea who she was. And Shallotte is not that big a place. The kids that did recognize her name or photo couldn’t tell us a thing about her. She was one of those people that no one remembers. Born 1968. Died 1984.”

  Kate held out a snapshot.

  “The kid got a really bum deal. Miserable family. No friends. Anyway, you can tell she wasn’t very big.”

  I looked at the photo and felt a surge of pity.

  The girl sat on a blanket, one scarecrow arm clutching her middle, the other held palm out to fend off the picture taker. She wore a one-piece bathing suit that showed skin so pale it was almost blue. She’d been hiding her face, but the camera caught her looking up, eyes enormous behind thick lenses. In the distance I could make out the horizontal slash of waves meeting shore.

  As I stared at the wan little face, I ached inside. What could have prompted an attack on someone so fragile? Did a stranger force her at knifepoint, then strangle and leave her to the dogs? When did she realize she was going to die? Did she scream in terror, knowing no one would hear her cries? Had she died in her own home, to be hauled off and dumped? As her eyes closed for the last time did she feel terror or resignation or hatred or numbness, or merely bewilderment? Had she felt pain?

  “—compare cranial features.”

  Kate was pulling X rays from a large brown envelope and popping them onto a wall illuminator.

  “This is a cranial series taken just four months before Savannah disappeared.”

  I got my X rays from the athletic bag and clipped them next to the hospital films. Starting with the facial views, I compared the shape of the frontal sinuses. Varying from small and simple to large and multichambered, these hollow spaces above the orbits are as unique to an individual as his or her fingerprints.

  Savannah’s sinuses rose into her forehead like a crest on the head of a cockatoo, the configuration on her hospital X rays matching exactly the one in the skull on my film. And the surgical burr hole was clearly visible in every view, the shape and position identical on the antemortem and postmortem films.

  There was no doubt that the skull unearthed in St-Basile was Savannah Claire Osprey. But could we link the skull and femora to the partial skeleton found near Myrtle Beach?

  Before leaving Montreal I’d removed a sliver of bone from the shaft of one of the femora and extracted a molar from the upper jaw in the skull, thinking that if relatives could be located, or ante-mortem samples of the victim’s tissue or blood could be recovered, DNA sequencing might confirm the suspected identity. While the dental and radiographic evidence now rendered DNA testing unnecessary for purposes of identifying the bones from Montreal, I had another goal in mind.

  Using a bone saw, I cut a one-inch chunk from all of the tibiae and fibulae that Kate had been saving all these years. She watched in silence as the circular blade buzzed through the dry bone, sending up a powdery white spray.

  “It’s not likely the hospital will come up with samples after all this time.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But it happens.”

  It was true. Gallstones. Pap smears. Blood spots. Old DNA had been found in all sorts of strange places.

  “What if there are no relatives?”

  “By comparing the sequencing from the Myrtle Beach bones to that found in the St-Basile-le-Grand bones we’ll at least know if all the remains come from the same individual. If they do we have essentially identified the Myrtle Beach bones because we have a firm ID on the Montreal skull. But I would like to get a DNA.”

  “What if there’s no DNA?”

  “I’ve already had microscope slides made from one of the St-Basile thigh bones. When I get back I’ll do the same with these samples, then I’ll examine everything under high-powered magnification.”

  “What will that tell you?”

  “Age, for one thing. I’ll see if that’s consistent between the two sets of remains. I’ll also look for details in microstructure that might be useful.”

  It was almost one when we’d labeled and numbered the four specimens and Kate had done the paperwork necessary to release them to me. We decided to grab a quick lunch before tackling the case file. Over cheeseburgers and fries at the local Wendy’s she related what was known of Savannah Osprey’s last hours.

  According to the parents, Savannah had had a routine week. Her health was good and she was looking forward to an event at her school, though they couldn’t remember what it was. On the day of her disappearance she spent the early afternoon studying for a math exam, but didn’t appear particularly anxious about it. Around two she said she needed something at the drugstore, and left the house on foot. They never saw her again.

  “At least that was Daddy’s version,” Kate concluded.

  “He was at home that day?”

  “Until around three-thirty, when he made a pickup in Wilmington, then set out for Myrtle Beach. The departure time was confirmed by his employer. He showed up a little late with the delivery, but blamed the delay on traffic.”

  “Were you able to search the house or truck?”

  “Nope. We had nothing on him, so we could never get a warrant.”

  “And the mother?”

  “Brenda. She’s another piece of work.”

  Kate took a bite of burger then wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.

  “Brenda was working that day. I think she cleaned motel rooms. According to her statement, when she returned at five the house was empty. She didn’t begin to worry until it got dark and Savannah didn’t call or show up. By midnight Mama was panicked and reported her daughter missing.”

  She drained her Coke.

  “Brenda was cooperative for about two days, then did a complete reversal and decided her daughter had taken off with friends. From then on it was like talking to a frozen pork roast. It was the Shallotte PD that contacted us and eventually got the NCIC info from Savannah’s doctors and dentist. That’s normally the job of the parent or guardian.”

  “Why the about-face?”

  “Dwayne probably threatened her.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “About five years after Savannah disappeared Dwayne must have developed a yearning for the mountains. He drove all the way up to Chimney Rock to celebrate July Fourth by camping and drinking with his buddies. On his second night there he made a beer run into town and Yankee Doodle Dandied himself right off the highway and into Hickory Nut Gorge. He was thrown out and the car rolled over him. I understand that when they found him the diameter of Dwayne’s head exceeded that of the spare tire.”

  Kate bunched up her wrappers, centered them on her tray, and pushed back from the table.

  “The investigation pretty much died with Dwayne,” she said as she slid everything into a waste container.

  We emerged from the restaurant and onto a small patio where an ancient black man in a Yankees cap greeted us with the standard “Hey.” He was watering flowers with a garden hose, and the scent of wet earth and petunias mingled with the odor of cooking grease.

  Afternoon sun glared off cement and warmed my head and shoulders as we crossed the parking lot to Kate’s car. When we were buckled in I asked, “Do you think he did it?”

  There was a silence before she answered.

  “I don’t know, Tempe. Some things didn’t add up.”

  I waited as she sorted through her thoughts.

  “Dwayne Osprey had a drinking proble
m and was mean as a snake, but the fact that he lived in Shallotte meant some village was deprived of its rightful idiot. I mean this guy was stupid. I never thought he could kill his child and transport her body to another city, then cover his tracks completely. He just didn’t have the neurons. Besides, a lot was going on that week.”

  “Such as?”

  “Every year in mid-May there’s a huge motorcycle rally in Myrtle Beach. It’s a mandatory run for Hells Angels chapters in the South, and a lot of Pagans usually show up, as well. The place was crawling with bikers that week, everything from outlaw to Rubbie.”

  “Rubbie?” She couldn’t mean it in the Montreal sense, where the term was slang for wino.

  “Rich Urban Bikers. Anyway, that’s how I ended up on the case. My boss thought there might be a gang connection.”

  “Was there?”

  “We never found one.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Hell, Tempe, I don’t know. Shallotte is right on Highway 17 en route to Myrtle Beach and there are dozens of motels and fast-food joints along there. With all the traffic heading to and from South Carolina that week she could have just bumped into some psychopath pulling off the highway for chicken and biscuits.”

  “But why murder her?” I knew it was stupid as soon as I asked it.

  “People are shot for driving too close, for wearing red where the blue gang hangs, for getting product from the wrong supplier. Maybe someone killed her just for wearing glasses.”

  Or for no reason at all, like Emily Anne Toussaint.

  • • •

  Back at the SBI lab we spread out the dossier and began examining documents. Medical records. Dental records. Phone records. Arrest records. Transcripts of interviews. Reports of neighborhood canvassing. Handwritten notes taken on stakeouts.

  The SBI and Shallotte investigators had pursued every lead. Even the neighbors had pitched in. Parties searched ponds, rivers, and woods. All to no avail. Savannah Osprey had left her house and disappeared.