The Bone Bed

four

I SCROLL THROUGH MY INBOX, LOOKING FOR AN E-MAIL from Bryce or Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Steward, as I continue to hope my appearance in court won’t be needed.

What about image clarification? Maybe we can figure out who’s on the jetboat?” I’m talking about the video clip while I’m fretting about Mildred Lott.

Forget it,” Lucy says.

It’s so ridiculous,” I mutter, when I find no message that might grant me a reprieve.

It used to be that my autopsy report was enough for the defense, my appearing in court not necessary or even desirable, but since the Melendez-Diaz decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, life has changed for every forensic expert in America. Channing Lott wants to confront his accuser. The billionaire industrialist faces a murder charge for allegedly placing a contract on his now presumed dead wife, and he’s demanded the pleasure of my company this afternoon at two.

What you see in that video file is all you’ll ever see.” Lucy empties her shot glass. “What you’re looking at is as good as it’s going to get.”

We’re sure there’s no software out there that might be more sophisticated than what we’re using here at the CFC?” I don’t want to accept it.

More sophisticated than what I’ve engineered?” She gets up and moves closer to my computer screen. “Nothing holds a candle to what we’ve got. The problem is the footage is hot.”

She clicks the mouse to show me, a heavy gold ring she’s recently started wearing on her index finger, a steel chronograph watch around her wrist. Pausing the recording on the faceless image in the back of the boat, she explains that she made multiple layers of the same video clip, dropping the brightness, using sharpness filters, and it’s hopeless.

Whoever did the filming was directly facing the sun,” she says, “and nothing is going to restore the blown-out parts. The best we can do is suspect who the person on the boat might be based on context and circumstances.”

Suspecting isn’t good enough, and I replay the clip, returning to a stretch of river an hour by jetboat from a sheer barren hillside where American paleontologist Dr. Emma Shubert was digging with colleagues from the University of Alberta when she vanished almost nine weeks ago. According to statements made to the police, she was last seen on August 23 at around ten p.m., walking alone through a wooded area of a Pipestone Creek campsite, headed to her trailer after dinner in the chow hall. The next morning her door was ajar and she was gone.

When I talked with an investigator from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last night I was told there was no sign of a struggle, nothing to indicate Emma Shubert might have been attacked inside her trailer.

We must find out who sent this to me,” I say to Lucy. “And why. If it’s possible the figure in the jetboat is she, what was going on? What’s the expression on her face? Happy? Sad? Frightened? Was she on the boat willingly?”

I can’t tell you that.”

I want to see her.”

You’re not going to on this video clip. There’s nothing more to see.”

Was she on her way to the bone bed to dig or returning from it?” I ask.

Based on the position of the sun and satellite images of that part of the river,” Lucy says, “the jetboat likely was traveling east, suggesting it was morning. Obviously the day was a sunny one, and there weren’t many of those in that part of the world this past August. Not so coincidentally, two days before she vanished, the day she found the pachyrhino tooth, it was sunny.”

So you’re thinking the video was taken on August twenty-first, based on the weather.”

Apparently she did go to that site that day, traveled by jetboat to the bone bed on the Wapiti River.” Lucy repeats information that’s been in the news. “So the video might have been recorded on an iPhone during the boat ride there that morning. She has an iPhone. Or did. As you know, it was missing from her trailer. It may be the only thing that’s missing, since other personal effects allegedly were undisturbed.”

The footage was filmed on an iPhone?” This is new information.

And the photo of the severed ear,” Lucy says. “A first-generation iPhone, which is what she had.”

I’m not going to ask Lucy how she managed to acquire these details. I don’t want to know.

She still had the first one she’d gotten, didn’t bother upgrading, probably because of the contract she had with AT and T.” Lucy gets up and returns to the bathroom to rinse our shot glasses, and I detect distant voices down the corridor.

Then I hear the recorded sound of a police siren, one of Pete Marino’s ringtones. He’s with someone. Bryce, I think, and they’re headed in this direction. Both of them are on their cell phones, only the sounds of their words coming through, and I can tell by the energy in their voices that something has happened.

I’ll call you later, will be back before the weather moves in,” Lucy adds, as she leaves. “It’s going to be really bad later in the day.”

Then Marino is in my doorway. His khaki field clothes are rumpled as if he’s slept in them, his face flushed, and he walks in as if he lives here, talking loudly on his phone. Bryce is behind him, my delicately handsome chief of staff, wearing designer sunglasses on top of his head and faded denim drainpipe jeans and a T-shirt, as if he just stepped off the set of Glee. I notice he hasn’t shaved since I saw him a week ago, before he went to Florida, and facial hair or the lack of it always means the same thing. Bryce Clark is stepping in and out of different characters as he continues auditioning for the star role in his own life.

Well, normally that would be a no,” Marino says into his cell phone. “But you’re going to need to get the lady from the aquarium on the line so the chief here can tell her directly and make sure everybody’s on the same page. . . .”

We appreciate that and totally get it.” Bryce is talking to someone else. “We certainly do realize nobody’s going to be fighting over it. Maybe you and the fire guys can flip a coin, just kidding. I’m sure the fireboat’s got a Stokes basket same as you. No vacuum bag or cervical collar or whatever needed, obviously. Of course the fire guys are better equipped to hose everything off after the fact with those big bad deck cannons of theirs. Point is? Doesn’t matter in the least to us, but someone’s gotta help get it to shore, and we’ll handle it from there.” He looks at his watch. “In about forty-five? A little after nine? That would really be fabulous.”

What is it?” I ask Bryce, as he ends the call.

He puts his hands on his hips, scrutinizing me. “Well, we certainly didn’t wear the right thing for going out in a boat this morning, did we?” He surveys the gray pinstriped skirt suit and pumps I wore today for court. “I’ll just be a minute, gonna grab a few things because you’re not going out with the Coast Guard in what you’ve got on. Fishing out some floater? Thank God it’s not July, not that the water’s ever warm around here, and I sure as hell hope it’s not been in there long, my least favorite thing. I’m sorry, let’s be honest. Who can stand it? I realize nobody means to get in such a disgusting condition, can you imagine? If I die and get like that please don’t find me.”

He’s in my closet, retrieving field clothes.

That’s the part the boys with the Guard aren’t happy about, because why would they be?” He keeps talking. “Having something like that on their boat, but no worries, they’ll do it because I asked them pretty please and reminded them that if you—and I specifically mean you, the chief—don’t know how to take care of it, who does?”

He slides a pair of cargo pants off a hanger.

You’ll double-pouch or whatever it takes so their boat doesn’t stink to high heaven, just a reminder? I promised. Do you want short sleeves or long?”

He peers at me from my closet.

I’m voting for long, because it’s going to be nippy out there with the wind blowing,” he says, before I can even think of answering. “So let’s see, your down jacket’s a good idea, your rescue-orange one, so you show up a mile away. Always a good idea on the water. I see Marino doesn’t have a jacket, but I’m not in charge of his wardrobe.”

Bryce carries clothing over to me as Marino continues talking to someone who obviously is out in a boat.

We don’t want anybody cutting through knots or nothing, and any ropes would have to be cleated down,” he is saying, as Bryce drapes my CFC uniform across my desk and then returns to the closet for boots. “I’m going to hang up and call you on a landline and maybe have a better connection and you can talk to the Doc yourself,” Marino adds.

He comes over to my side of the desk as I hear the elevator in the corridor and more voices. Lucy is on her way to her helicopter, and other staff members are arriving. It’s a few minutes past eight.

Some huge prehistoric turtle entangled in the south channel,” Marino tells me, as he reaches for my desk phone.

Prehistoric?” Bryce exclaims. “I don’t think so.”

A leatherback. They’re almost extinct, have been around since Jurassic Park.” Marino ignores him.

I don’t believe there was a park back then,” Bryce chimes in louder.

Could weigh as much as a ton.” Marino keeps talking to me as he enters a number on my phone, a pair of over-the-counter reading glasses perched on his strong nose. “A waterman checking his lobster pots discovered it at sunrise and called the aquarium’s rescue team, which has an arrangement with the fire department marine unit. When the fireboat got there and they started to pull the turtle in, turns out there’s an unfortunate attachment on the vertical line . . . Pamela?” he says to whoever answers. “I’m handing you over to Dr. Scarpetta.”

He gives me the receiver, folding the glasses with his thick fingers and tucking them into the breast pocket of his shirt as he explains, “Pamela Quick. She’s out in the fireboat, so the connection might not be real good.”

The woman on the phone introduces herself as a marine biologist with the New England Aquarium, and she sounds urgent and slightly hostile. She just this minute e-mailed a photograph, she says.

You can see for yourself we’re out of time,” she insists. “We need to get him on board now.”

‘Him’?” I ask.

A critically endangered species of sea turtle that’s been dragging tackle and other gear and what’s obviously a dead person for who knows how long. Turtles have to breathe, and he barely can keep his nares above water anymore. We need to get him out right now so he doesn’t drown.”

Marino holds his cell phone close to me so I can see the e-mailed photograph he just opened of a young woman, blond and tan, in khaki pants and a green Windbreaker, leaning over the side of the fireboat. She’s using a long-handled grappling hook to pull in a line that is entangled with a shockingly massive sea creature, leathery and dark, with a wingspan nearly as wide as the boat. Several yards away from its protruding huge head, and barely visible at the surface of the rolling blue water, are pale hands with painted nails and a splay of long white hair.

Bryce sets down a pair of lightweight ankle-high black tactical boots with polished leather toes and nylon uppers. He complains that he can’t find socks.

Try my locker downstairs,” I tell him, as I bend over to slip off my pumps, and I say to Pamela Quick, “What we don’t want is to lose the body or cause any damage to it. So normally I wouldn’t permit—”

We can save this animal,” she cuts me off, and it’s patently clear she’s not interested in my permission. “But we have to do it now.” The way she says it, I have no doubt she’s not going to wait for me or anyone, and I really can’t blame her.

Do what you need to do, of course. But if someone can document it with video or photographs, that would be helpful,” I tell her, as I get out of my chair, feeling the carpet under my stocking feet and reminded I never know what to expect in life, not from one minute to the next. “Disturb any lines and gear as little as possible, and make sure they’re secured so we don’t lose anything,” I add.