Daniel Weaver sat on his couch at home, watching TV and feeling sorry for himself. His mother was concerned about his two bottom teeth, which had grown wiggly, and the two top front teeth, which were also a little loose, but the dentist told Grandpa Owen that it wasn’t unusual for kids of even four to start losing their primaries, and there was no reason to worry about Daniel. The dentist did find some decay in one of his molars, though, and asked if Daniel enjoyed an appetite for sugary sodas and sweet things. Grandpa Owen had to admit that Daniel would eat sugar straight from the bowl given half a chance, and the boy had yet to discover a soda he didn’t like.
‘He doesn’t get it from me,’ Grandpa Owen told the dentist. ‘I don’t dote on candy.’
‘What about his mother?’
‘She’s like me. I know she takes sweetener in her coffee, but I believe that’s as far as it goes with her.’
Daniel was sitting in the dentist’s chair while the conversation went back and forth, the words ‘cavity’ and ‘filling’ still ringing in his ears, because neither sounded good.
The dentist smiled. She was younger than Daniel’s mom, and smelled of strawberries.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I’m not trying to blame anyone. It’s just that we don’t like seeing decay, especially not in a boy Daniel’s age. So we’ll fill in this little cavity for now, and keep an eye on him in case it’s a sign of a larger problem, but I’m hopeful it’s not. Meanwhile let’s ditch the sodas and juices, and keep candy for a treat, okay?’
This time, her words were directed as much at Daniel as Grandpa Owen. Daniel nodded miserably. He really did like soda, and Baby Ruths, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and—
Well, the list just went on and on.
‘Will it hurt?’ Daniel asked the dentist.
‘Only a little pinch at the start to make your gum numb, but nothing that will trouble a tough guy like you.’
The dentist had lied. The injection really stung, and Daniel was embarrassed to feel tears squeeze from his eyes. On the way home, Grandpa Owen described it as a life lesson.
‘If someone tells you something’s not gonna hurt, it’s gonna hurt. If they tell you it’s gonna hurt a little, it’s gonna hurt a lot. The only time they’re not lying is if they just tell you straight out that it’s gonna hurt.’
None of which made Daniel feel any better about the world.
Now, with his mouth beginning to return to normality, he reckoned he could handle a big glass of Coke without depositing half of it over his chin and clothes. Except Grandpa Owen had poured all the soda down the sink, and taken an inventory of the candy supply before jamming most of it into the pockets of his coat, leaving only a couple of bars on the highest closet shelf, the one Daniel couldn’t reach even with the aid of a chair.
This, Daniel decided, was a sucky day.
Grandpa Owen was snoozing in the armchair beside him. Grandpa Owen didn’t like kids’ cartoons any more than Grandpa Owen liked candy, and while Daniel could usually consume both with equal gusto, the images on the TV were irritating him today. Maybe he’d go play a game instead.
He was just getting to his feet when the toy telephone began to ring.
34
They weren’t the first such images Parker had viewed, and he did not believe they would be the last, but they subsequently stayed with him in a way that others had not, and it took him a while to understand why.
Gray: a body embryonic huddled in an earthen womb, sacking and a bedsheet for its amniotic membrane; the left hand drawn up to the mouth, as though to stifle some final cry; the knees to the chest, the right arm mostly concealed beneath the body except for the fingers, outstretched and visible at the hip. Hair, what remained of it: long. Some skin yet adhering to the skull. The decay would have been more profound had she been interred in warmer weather, but a cold-ground burial had preserved her. Still recognizably a woman, the elements of a human being discarded.
But no, not quite a discarding. This is not simply a disposal of a thing unwanted, or a repudiation of criminal evidence. The inhumation feels if not reverent, then duteous. Some care has been taken here, or perhaps his perception has been influenced by the marker, a stellate testament to the presence of the dead; a sign to commemorate, but not invite discovery.
To have spent so long out here: alone, waiting.
Were you sought? Did someone fear for you? Even now is there a father, a mother, a sibling hoping for your return? If you are not to be restored alive to these others, they have a right to know of your passing, so that misplaced hope, or fears of some ongoing torment of mind or flesh, may be brought to a close.
Who put you here in this dark wood? Was it a husband, a stranger? Did you suffer? If so, I am sorry. If I could, I would have saved you from it.
Why did you die? How did you die?
Who. Are. You?
We will try to put a name to you. You have spent too long unacknowledged.
And we will find your child.
It would require darkness for Parker to start to comprehend, and sleep for him to discover an answer. In his dream he would stand over the desiccated remains of the woman, her enfolded residue, and traverse a landscape of skin and bone until he came at last to the part that was both of her and of another, a reminder that something remained lost.
The peat had preserved so much: a little more acidity to the soil, a wrapping of moisture-trapping plastic instead of porous cotton, and only bones might have been left. But nature had conspired in the safeguarding of the body, and so there was skin, hair, and fingernails. And something more: a tendril of tissue, with a withered oval of flesh at the end.
The placenta, and the umbilical cord.
This was not alone a woman.
This was a mother.
But that was all to come. For now Parker stood with Allen, and took in the photographs and video images contained in a file on the lawman’s computer. Allen had offered to call in one of the evidence technicians to go through the information, but Parker didn’t want to distract them from their work, and he was also pretty sure that Allen knew as much as anyone about the investigation. He would stay in touch with Walsh for the rest.
Parker was always astonished at how fast crime scene technology progressed. In addition to the pictures and video images, a series of three-sixty-degree scans of the gravesite and its surroundings were available to view, so that at any point an officer could place him-or herself at the center of the scene. Allen told Parker that the MSP would soon be using drones for mapping, although up here their usefulness would be determined by the thickness of the canopy.
Parker knew little of what he was seeing would be useful to him, but it was important to accept any information offered. Finally, he reached the last of the detailed images of the body. What followed were pictures of the fallen tree, and the hole left by it, both with and without the remains of the woman. Some were merely close-ups of dirt, through which Parker began scanning quickly until Allen stopped him.
‘You remember earlier, when I said there might be a problem?’
‘What am I missing?’ Parker asked.
Allen appeared almost embarrassed.
‘It’s going to sound weird.’
‘Believe me, you’re preaching to the choir.’
‘First of all, there’s no reason why that tree should have come down. It was healthy, and the ground was stable. But once it fell, it caused the additional disturbance on the slope that uncovered the remains. Then there’s the way the dirt was dispersed in the aftermath, and the extent of the body revealed after the fall.’ Allen began flipping back and forth between images while Parker looked on. ‘It may turn up in the forensic report, because I know the anthropologists were puzzled by it.’