“Breakup?” I interrupted, thinking the topic of conversation had somehow veered into some kind of marital discord. “Whose breakup?”
Harriet sighed. “That’s what people in Alaska call that time of year when the ice breaks up—usually in the late spring. One of the bear-tagging teams working near Eklutna Lake some distance north of here went into the den of a hibernating black bear and noticed something that appeared to be a partial human skull. In the old days, some nitwit most likely would have straightaway gassed both the mama bear and her cubs to death without ever allowing them out of the den. And chances are the bear in this particular den had nothing at all to do with the bones in question, since they looked to have been there for some length of time.
“In any event, since we’re now living in more enlightened times, the tagging team simply notified us about the existence of the remains and sent along the coordinates of the den so we’d be able to locate it later. You’ll be happy to know that we waited until the den was abandoned before sending out a team of graduate students to do the actual work.”
“Graduate students instead of CSIs?” I asked.
“We’re a bit on the underfunded side here,” she said. “We can’t afford CSIs.”
With that, Harriet carefully lifted the lid off the box. I could see there was only one item inside—a partial human skull with jagged holes showing here and there. It resembled a nightmare jigsaw puzzle with several missing pieces. From the multitude of cracks spread across what remained, I could tell that the skull had once been smashed to pieces and then painstakingly glued back together. A few of the teeth were there, but most were missing. There was a deep indentation in the back of the skull.
“Would a blow like that have been fatal?” I asked.
“This is all speculation, of course, but I believe so. If the skin was broken, the wound would have bled profusely, but the real damage would have been from a subdural hematoma.”
“A brain bleed, then?”
Professor Raines nodded. “The angle of the blow suggests that the victim was most likely in either a kneeling or a sitting position when he was struck from behind. At the time of death, I believe the skull was still intact. I suspect a hungry bear cracked it open later in order to devour whatever remained inside.”
“So the victim was dead long before the bear came along.”
“Correct.”
“And the weapon?” I asked.
“Most likely a round metal object approximately three or so inches in circumference,” Harriet replied. “Had the instrument of death been a tree branch, for example, we would have found tiny wooden splinters still embedded in the bone. However, there weren’t any of those.”
“How do you know the guy’s name was Geoffrey?” I asked.
“I don’t,” Harriet answered. “That’s the name I assigned to him when he first came into the lab. At first, with nothing more than the shattered skull to examine, I didn’t know if the victim was male or female, but I allocate names to victims the same way meteorologists dub hurricanes—alphabetically, according to the year, alternating male names with female ones. Since 2008 was quite busy, by late April I was already up to the G’s, and by then it was time for a male name.”
“So you give each set of bones an individual name?”
“It humanizes them for me in a way that calling them Jane or John Doe doesn’t. It helps me keep in mind that these were once real people who walked, talked, breathed, and lived before being reduced to this.”
“What else can you tell me about Geoffrey?” I asked.
“My grads managed to locate several teeth. From those we eventually learned that our victim had received reasonably good dental care. We were also able to obtain a DNA profile that told us Geoffrey was both male and dleit ?áa.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She repeated whatever she’d said before, but I couldn’t come close to pronouncing it to say nothing of spelling it. “And that would be what?” I asked.
“It’s what my mother’s people, the Tlingit, call whites,” Harriet explained. “Based on bone development, I estimate Geoffrey was in his mid-to late teens at the time he died. Naturally I brought the AST—the Alaska State Troopers—into the picture. As far as they’re concerned, he’s what they like to call a UU—an unidentified and unsolved homicide victim, but do you know what I think?”
“What?” I asked.
“I believe, between the two of us, that we might have just identified this one as your missing Christopher Danielson.”
I couldn’t help but be amazed. When I started out in homicide, the best forensics could do was type any blood found at crime scenes. Blood typing eliminated some suspects but did nothing to identify the actual perpetrators. And although fingerprint evidence was often collected, the only prints it could be compared to were those on file cards stored in local police agencies. There was no such thing as a CODIS, the Combined DNA Identification System. And the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, AFIS, was still in its infancy. Under those circumstances the remains of unidentified homicide victims, those Harriet designated as UUs, were destined to remain just that—unidentified and unsolved.
Nodding in agreement, I stared down at the empty skull and thought about the little boy I’d last seen years earlier at his mother’s fallen-officer memorial. The Hinkles had brought both boys to the event wearing matching black suits with clip-on bow ties. The realization that I was most likely looking down on the only earthly remains of Sue Danielson’s younger son hit me like a punch in the gut. I was relieved when Harriet silently returned the lid to the box, shutting the skull from view. Then she reached over and laid a comforting hand on my arm.
“The water in the kettle should be hot by now,” she suggested. “Let’s go have that cup of coffee.”
A small kitchen table and two chairs sat in what evidently served as a break area. I stumbled over to one of those, dropped down onto it, and rested my elbows on the table. I’m not sure how long I sat there with my head buried in my hands while once again, as I had done countless times before, I second-guessed all my actions from that awful night years earlier. If I’d made different choices and decisions back then, would Christopher Danielson have led a completely different life? In fact, maybe if I’d simply stayed out of it and let things play out, Chris would still be among the living and so would his mother.
That merry-go-round of useless thoughts was still spinning in my head when a steaming cup of coffee appeared in my line of vision as Harriet set it down on the table directly in front of me. The coffee inside was black, all right, and strong as it could be. Once I raised it to my lips, it turned out to be by far the vilest cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted but also the kindest. A moment later a second cup was placed on the table across from me with Harriet Raines’s lined and weathered face forming a backdrop.