The Bone Bed

fifteen

TARNISHED BRASS WITH A HINT OF GILT, EACH BUTTON has some type of eagle design and an iron shank at the back that has been sewn onto the jacket’s front with heavy dark thread.

Civil War. The genuine article. Around the same date as the coin in her ring.” Marino leans close, peering through his reading glasses. “Holy shit, these are something.”

I return to the stretcher, and the putrid smell gets stronger as I begin unbuttoning the blouse. Decomposition is darkly swarming in like a plague of invisible insects as we work and time slips away, moving her closer to putrefaction as I move closer to being held in contempt of court.

Probably not from a regular foot soldier. Probably officers’ buttons.” Marino reaches for a hand lens, judgment creeping into his tone. “Most people who collect old buttons don’t sew them on clothes. No normal person would do that.”

It does seem a bit out of the ordinary,” I remark. “Wearing antique or estate jewelry and so on is one thing, but sewing it on clothing would be another, I suppose.”

You got that right, and button collectors don’t.”

His voice is flinty with disapproval, as if he’s made a sudden decision about the dead woman’s character.

They display them, put them in picture frames, swap them, sell them, maybe donate them to museums, depending on what they are,” Marino says. “I’ve seen buttons like these go for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.”

He studies the three buttons closely with the lens, nudging each one with a gloved finger.

If you look at them from the side”—he shows me—“they’re not dented in at all, are in really great shape, which adds to the value. You’d never sew something like this on a jacket. Who the hell does that?”

Well, she did, or someone did,” I reply.

Removing her wet blouse, I decide it’s purple, not burgundy. The tag at the back of the collar is Audrey Marybeth, size six.

Maybe she was involved in antiques,” I add. “Maybe she collected or was a dealer, or the buttons belonged to someone in her family.”

The bra underneath is loose around her chest, the cups several sizes too big, and I estimate the body has lost at least twenty percent of its weight due to dehydration. She dried out while concealed someplace freezing or near-freezing, cold enough to prevent bacteria from colonizing and causing the decomposition that is beginning with a vengeance now. Minute by minute her odor is stronger, and I’m asking for trouble. I imagine Judge Conry calling lawyers to the bench, wanting to know where I am, discreet at first, and then demanding.

Plenty of people collect in this part of the world.” Marino has a hard look on his face, his mood turned sour. “You go in some of these junk shops and can buy vintage buttons, almost anything you can think of. Police, fire department, railroad, military. But you don’t sew them on clothes, not even nickel-plated ones that go for five bucks apiece. Not even ones in really shitty shape you can buy in bulk.”

Since when are you an expert in vintage buttons?” I spread the blouse open next to the blazer.

You really don’t care.” He’s looking at the clock, and it’s exactly two.

What I care about most right this minute is getting what we need while there’s still a chance.”

Mostly I’m thinking about DNA. I’ve had cases where semen could still be recovered after a remarkably long time inside orifices, the stomach, the airway, deep inside the vaginal vault, and I’m not going to assume it’s too late to get anything from this body, no matter how long she’s been dead. The enemy of DNA is bacteria, and she’s invisibly beginning to teem with it, and it literally will eat her to the bone.

I can gauge the breaking down of her tissue by the way she smells, insidiously foul at first and then much stronger and fast becoming a bristling stench from organisms that originated in her bowels but were dormant while she was kept dry and very cold or frozen. As she has warmed by degrees in the bay, in the boat and van, and now inside this room, the bacteria that cause putrefaction are having their way with her. They have begun a process I might be able to retard slightly by refrigeration but certainly can’t stop. She’s decomposing rapidly right before our eyes.

Remember when I first got into metal detectors?” Marino is asking, and I really don’t recall.

Vaguely.” I reach around to unzip her long gray skirt, discovering a bunched area of the waistband that has been cinched.

Three heavy-duty staples fasten inches of the material together. Stainless steel, no sign of rust.

Why the hell do that?” Marino looks on.

Like I said, she’s not a size six anymore.”

If she ever was.”

When she was alive, she was bigger than this,” I reply. “That much is a fact.”

But if the skirt slid off her because it was too big, it wouldn’t have been lost because of the rope around her ankles and the dog crate,” he says. “Why go to the trouble?”

It depends on when it was done. All I can say with certainty is someone made the waistband smaller.” I pull the skirt down over her wrinkled bare pale legs, surprised to find what’s left of sheer pantyhose.

The stockings are in tatters, ripped off mid-thigh, and in my mind I see her alive. I see her terrified, locked up and trying to escape.

Clawing, pounding a door, breaking her nails. Frantically moving around shoeless on a surface covered with something dark red.

Then nothing; the picture blanks out. I can’t imagine what happened to her stockings except the legs weren’t cut with anything sharp. The ultra-sheer nylon has runs all the way up through the control top, and what is left around the thighs is shredded, torn unevenly, like ragged transparent gauze loose around her sallow dead skin. Did she rip off her hose mid-thigh? If so, why?

Or did someone else do it?

The same person who stapled the skirt around the waistband and arranged jewelry so it wouldn’t fall off the body and be lost.

Like the jacket, the skirt is distinctive, quite stylish, constructed of two jersey layers that flow into a raw-edged handkerchief hem, Peruvian Connection, size six. I spread it on the sheet to dry as Marino resumes reminiscing about our early days together in Richmond, when apparently he became quite the treasure hunter, using a metal detector he kept in the trunk of his unmarked Ford to search crime scenes, primarily outdoor ones, for metal evidence, such as cartridge cases.

Mainly when I was working evening shifts and had most of the day off,” he’s saying, but the memory doesn’t make him cheerful and boisterous, the way he usually gets when he talks about our past.

His voice has a hard, unforgiving ring that reminds me of a shovel striking stone.

I’d go out early in the morning to old battlefields, woods, riverbanks, looking for coins, buttons, whatever I could find. Got a belt buckle that cleaned up real good. You probably remember it.”

I don’t think I do, but I know better than to tell him.

Brought it to your office and showed it to you,” he says, and he’s always liked massive buckles, especially motorcycle ones. “Oval-shaped, with U.S. stamped on cast brass in real big letters.”

I place nude panties and the pantyhose and the bra on a sheet, and move the surgical light closer. I check her for lividity as Marino again examines the antique buttons, leaning close, shining a light on them.

No sign of livor anteriorly,” I note.

What about when someone’s been dead and maybe in a cooler or freezer this long? Maybe they won’t have it anymore.”

Unlike rigor, livor doesn’t completely go away. It leaves a telltale sign.” I look at her from head to toe, taking time I don’t have, moving the overhead lamp as I search for the slightest hint of staining from when her circulation quit and blood settled due to gravity.

I eventually sold it for five hundred bucks. Wish I hadn’t now, because it sure as hell was worth more than that,” Marino resumes talking about treasure hunting. “Also a two-piece CS buckle I found in Dinwiddie. Could have brought me a couple of grand if I hadn’t needed quick bucks when Doris bailed, ran off leaving me with a shitload of debt. She’s probably still with that douchebag car salesman, except I think he’s selling Aflac now.”

Maybe you should find out.”

No way in hell. A real entrepreneur she’s become,” he says sarcastically. “Covers bricks with cloth and sells them as doorstops, no kidding, I mean, go figure. Like a symbol, huh? Something that gets in the way, an obstruction, a stumbling block, but not how she looks at it, of course.”

Maybe you should try to talk to her and find out from her how she looks at it.”

You can pull it up on the Internet,” he says angrily. “Open Says Me. The name of her website. I hold open your world to possibilities. I can’t believe it.”

It figures he’d bring up his ex-wife when we don’t have time to talk about her. I pull the body on its left side, and it’s so light it feels hollow.

There can be a lot of money in historic stuff like buttons, medals, old coins, but there’s also such a thing as respect.” He’s back to that. “What you don’t do is sew antique military buttons on a jacket or a coat to make a friggin’ fashion statement.”

You can see it here. A livor pattern of hemolyzed blood.” I press my fingers into different areas of the back. “No blanching, because the blood has seeped out the vessel walls. So after she died she was flat on her back for at least as long as it took for livor to set, probably twelve hours, possibly more. It could be that she was on her back the entire time since she died, stored somewhere until she was moved and dropped into the bay.”

You sure as hell don’t send a jacket to the dry cleaner’s if it’s got a thousand dollars’ worth of antique buttons on it.” He won’t stop talking about it. “But it’s not the money.”

Moderate mummification, skin wet but hard and dried with faint remnants of patchy white mold on her face and neck,” I dictate, and Marino scribes. “Eyes sunken and collapsed.” I pry open her mouth. “Cheeks are sunken.” I swab the inside of them. “No lip, tongue, or dental injuries,” I say, as I check with a light. “Neck is free of any discrete discolorations.” I look up at the clock.

It’s eleven minutes past two. I move down and find more signs of moderate mummification but no injuries, and I open her legs. I ask Marino to bring me a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit, a PERK, or what a lot of cops call a rape kit, and I glance curiously at him as he walks to a cabinet, his face disgruntled and offended, as if there’s something about this dead woman he takes personally.

We’ll definitely e-mail photos of the buttons and her jewelry to NamUs,” I say. “These details seem unique enough to be significant. Especially if it’s unusual to sew valuable antique buttons on clothing.”

It’s damn disrespectful as hell.”

He hands me a plastic speculum and opens the PERK’s white cardboard box.

When you find stuff like this, usually it’s because the person got killed in battle and their body was left out there in a field or the woods.”

He places bags, swabs, and a comb on a clean sheet.

A hundred and fifty years later someone comes along with a metal detector and digs up their uniform buttons, their belt buckle, and when you find things like that you treat it like you’ve disturbed a grave, because you have.”

I glance up at the clock again as I rehearse what I’ll say to Dan Steward and Jill Donoghue when I see them, an apologetic explanation that I’ll expect one or both of them to relay to the judge. My choice was to lose possibly critical evidence or be late for court, and I’ll be very contrite.

Even if the stuff comes from the attic,” Marino says, “it’s about respect, because it belonged to someone who made the ultimate sacrifice.”

He begins filling out forms with what scant information we have, and he rants on and on.

You don’t sew buttons or shoulder epaulets on a jacket or put a dead soldier’s cap box on your damn belt or wear his friggin’ bloodstained socks. You don’t cut up old uniforms that still have the soldiers’ nametapes on them and make them into quilts.”

He hands me envelopes for swabs.

If you didn’t go to Parris Island or OCS, then don’t wear official U.S. Marine cammies, and for shit’s sake don’t make them into a purse. Jesus Christ, what kind of person does shit like that?”

Don’t see any evidence of sexual assault. Of course, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.” I remove the speculum and toss it in the trash. “But it appears her legs were shaved not long before she died.”

I look at a scattering of dark stubble that when magnified indicate a razor was used.

Several days before she died, based on the new growth,” I add. “Obviously the hair will seem a bit longer because of her dehydration. If she was kidnapped, she likely wasn’t kept very long.”

Marino’s face is dark red, his eyes wide, as if he’s reminded of something that really upsets him.

What’s the matter with you?” I insert an eighteen-gauge needle into the left femoral artery.

Nothing.” He talks the way he does when it’s something.

I try the subclavian next, inserting a needle below the clavicle. No luck, and I try the notch to puncture the aorta, and manage to get a few drops. When I open her up later today, what I’ll find is that her vessels are almost completely empty, the walls stained with hemoglobin, what looks like rust. For the most part, iron is all that’s left.

I drip thick, dark blood on two sample areas of an FTA micro-card and place it under a chemical hood to air-dry.

If you’ll get her back inside the cooler, and this room stays locked. No one’s to come in here,” I tell Marino, as I pull off my lab coat. “Call DNA, let Gloria know they can collect the card within the hour. It should be dry by then, and we want a DNA profile as fast as they can manage, and it needs to be entered into NamUs, NDIS, with as little delay as possible.”

I toss the lab coat, shoe covers, and gloves into a bright red biohazard trash can and push open the door that leads into the air-locked vestibule, then the second door that leads into the corridor. It’s twenty past two and I can’t remember the last time I was this late for court or, better put, as late as I know I’m about to be. It will be at least two-forty-five, possibly as late as three-fifteen by the time Marino gets me to Fan Pier on Boston’s waterfront, I calculate, and that’s if traffic is reasonable.

Elevator doors slide open on my floor, and I jog along the corridor, not caring what a ridiculous sight I must be in a gray drysuit liner and tactical boots, carrying an orange jacket and a garbage bag. I scan my thumb to unlock my office, hurrying inside, as Bryce emerges from my bathroom, startling me. He’s in his coat, his sunglasses parked on top of his head, and carrying the stainless-steel pitcher and demitasse cups Lucy and I drank café Cubano out of what seems light-years ago.

I thought you were at the vet’s.” I drop my bag of wet clothes and jacket on the floor and stoop down to take off my boots. “I’m really, really late. Have you heard from Dan Steward? How’s your cat?”

Good God in heaven, what do you have on?” Bryce stares disapprovingly at the way I’m dressed. “Did you escape from the Ozarks? From a POW camp? Are you a biohazard? Kind of sexy, actually like a warm-fuzzy dive skin, but why gray? These are going into the dishwasher. Lucy must have cleaned up, am I right? Scummy milk film, and sticky enough to attract a flock of hummingbirds.”

I’m late for court, and you need to scoot so I can get ready. What are you doing in here, and does Dan understand what’s going on?”

Low on coffee and bottled water avec gaz et sans, completely out of trail mix, sugar-free granola, protein drinks, and those awful little crackers you like that supposedly are whole-grain or rice or particleboard. Dan’s been dragging out cross-examining the witness who’s right before you. . . .”

Thank God.” I pad barefoot to my desk and dig through files.

But apparently the judge asked where you were and Dan told him but said judges don’t give a shit about excuses and to hurry and get there.”

Have you seen my Mildred Lott file?”

So I stopped at Whole Foods and just got here a minute ago.” He opens my closet door. “And of course noticed your little kitchenette in there is a mess just like it always is after Lucy helps herself. She needs to find a nice wife, because her domestic skills don’t exist. It’s right next to your microscope, where you left it. Under some histology reports?”

He retrieves my suit and blouse.

I don’t know what you did with your pantyhose. Figured you pitched them. I realize they don’t have much of a shelf life.”

I have no idea what I did with them. I probably tucked them in a desk drawer. I don’t care.

He drapes my clothes over the conference table.

I absolutely know Indy wasn’t exposed to onions. Ethan was so happy I was finally back from being in Florida forever, and he made my favorite. His chili’s really amazing, and of course Marino and everyone’s blaming us as if we’re irresponsible and don’t care if we kill our cat.” He looks at me and looks exhausted, fear crouched at the back of his eyes. “She’s only ten weeks old, Dr. Scarpetta, and I’ve had cats before and know when something’s really wrong.”

I’m sorry, Bryce.” I set the file on the table and shut the door that leads into the corridor. “We’ll talk about it when I’m back.”

I know it happened at the groomer,” he continues from inside my closet, where he’s now looking for something on the floor. “Well, your shoes are here but still no pantyhose. Just a week ago Saturday, her very first visit to get her claws clipped, and there she was with about twenty other animals, including a parrot that was making these strangling, hacking sounds like it had kennel cough. I realize it might have been imitating it, but what if it wasn’t . . . ?”

Bryce, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but I’ve got to get cleaned up.”

He hands me my shoes.

Do you have any idea how careful we are?” He’s on the verge of tears.

I promise we’ll chat about this later. . . .”

We’re so paranoid about onions and poisonous things, like poinsettias, which we refuse to have in the house, and I don’t eat raw onions anyway. . . .”

I’ve got to get ready and can’t with you standing here. . . .”

So we always use onion powder, which is better all the way round, because there’s no chance of the ittiest, bittiest piece escaping the counter and ending up on the floor.” His eyes well up.

You put onion powder in your chili?” I carry my suit and blouse into the bathroom and hang them on the shower door.

Now’s not the time to criticize our cooking.” His voice shakes.

I had a cat when I was in law school, and sometimes he refused to eat. . . .”

They can be very sensitive. He was probably angry with you.”

A vet suggested I give him meat baby food, and apparently it had onion powder in it, which can cause toxicity, the same as raw onions, by oxidizing hemoglobin. . . .”

Oh my God! Did he die?”

No. It’s just something to think about and mention to the vet. And you need to leave so I can change. Please.”

It’s just terribly upsetting.”

Well, I guess I’ll just change in here.” I set my shoes on the toilet lid.

You need to be aware the media’s been ringing the phone off the hook.”

His voice sounds loudly, tragically from the doorway that adjoins my office with his, and I unzip the gray liner and hurry out of it, leaving it in a pile on my bathroom floor.

Calling my cell phone, too, at least those reporters who have my number. There’s huge speculation that the old lady you just pulled out of the bay is Mildred Lott. . . .”

No evidence of it.” I run a washcloth under hot water and clean up as best I can, and of course a shower right now is impossible.

You know? That someone obviously was holding her hostage all this time, or maybe her disappearance was faked back in the spring or how she’s been hiding and finally drowned herself? You should hear the theories.”

There’s nothing to make me think it’s her.” I pull on a new pair of pantyhose I retrieve from a cabinet.

Meaning her husband, Channing Lott, couldn’t have had anything to do with her death, since he’s considered a flight risk and has been in jail without bond since April?” Bryce has the remarkable ability of talking nonstop without seeming to take a breath. “So how could he possibly have killed her or paid someone else to some six months after she supposedly vanished?”

I step into my pin-striped skirt and yank up the zipper in back. “I don’t want you releasing any information at all, not one word about this case, please.” I hurry into my blouse, fumbling with the buttons and tucking it in, disgusted by how quickly rumors can start and how difficult it is to disarm them. “Not even a hint of an opinion about whether the dead lady might be Mildred Lott or Emma Shubert or anyone. Understood?”

Well, of course. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know what the press does with the slightest nothing.”

I turn on the vanity light, dismayed by my reflection in the mirror over the sink. Pale. Completely washed out. Hair flat from wearing a neoprene dive hood and submerging my head in cold salt water. I drip Visine into my eyes.

I’m just warning you I’ve got no idea what might come up when you get in the stand, because they can ask you anything they want.” Bryce is still talking.

I rub a dab of gel in my hair and muss it up to give it a little lift, and it still looks awful.