Slowly I moved the vibrating blade toward my own forearm—closer and closer, millimeter by millimeter—and touched it to the flesh midway between my wrist and elbow. The blade buzzed and tickled, but it did not cut, my pale skin oscillating in perfect sync with the minuscule movements of the tiny teeth. This was one of the wondrous things about the Stryker saw: it could slice through bone like a hot knife through butter, but it wouldn’t cut soft tissue, not unless the soft tissue was immobilized by pressure from underlying bone. If I bore down hard on my forearm, the result would be terribly different: a sudden spurt of blood, followed by the rasp of teeth chewing through my radius and ulna. But I did not bear down, my flesh and bone remained intact, and I turned, smiling, to the task at hand.
I selected one of the long bones—the left humerus, or upper arm bone—and clamped it carefully in a bench vise that was bolted to the counter beneath one of the exhaust hoods. Then I switched on the fan, switched on the Stryker saw, and bent over the bone, bringing the oscillating blade closer and closer to the bone at what had once been the middle of the shaft, before the elbow had been gnawed off by the bear. The blade sang as it began chewing into the bone, a zinging soprano pitch that always reminded me of cicadas, though more musical, somehow. As the blade bit deeper, wisps of bone dust spun and swirled upward, drawn into the fan’s slipstream like tendrils of cigarette smoke. It took less than ten seconds to cut through the bone, which was roughly the diameter of my index finger. The cut I’d made had removed the bone’s jagged distal end, along with an additional two inches of the shaft, creating a clean cross section through the bone, showing the dense outer, cortical bone and the inner, spongy bone.
Next I bore down with the saw again, this time cutting off only a half-inch piece: the cross section for the TBI’s lab. Protected from the weather and from contaminants—bacteria, bear’s saliva, and my own DNA, if the exhaust hood and my surgical mask were doing their jobs—this clean cross section would, I hoped, give the TBI’s genetic technician plenty of intact, uncontaminated DNA to analyze. Sealing the disk of bone in a plastic film canister, I set it aside to send to the TBI lab later in the day.
The surgery complete, now it was time for 16–17 to have a bath. A long, hot bath.
The processing lab’s equipment included two immense electric-jacketed kettles, the sort restaurants used to cook fifty pounds of potatoes or twenty gallons of chili in a single batch. We used them to simmer skeletons—like making soup or stock, except backward: we threw away the stock and kept the bones instead. I raised the lid on one of the kettles and began filling it with hot water. As it filled, I poured a scoop of Biz Stain & Odor Eliminator into the kettle, followed by a capful of Downy Fabric Softener: the two additives I’d found most effective at helping clean and deodorize the bones. Gently I added the bones, which, being few in number and fragmented, occupied a poignantly small percentage of the kettle’s capacious interior. Given how weathered and bare the bones already were, they wouldn’t need to simmer overnight, as most remains did. These might be ready for a final scrubbing by the end of the day, and that was a task I would definitely delegate to Miranda.
SHE LOOKED UP FROM HER COMPUTER SCREEN WHEN I walked into the bone lab. “Did you just come from the facility?” she asked. “The truck was gone when I got here, so I wondered if you might already be there.”
“I was. I woke up early—”
“You always wake up early,” she interrupted.
“I woke up even earlier than usual,” I amended, “so I figured I might as well get the bones in to simmer.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I was planning to do it on my way to the airport, but it’s taking a while to pull this stuff together, so I appreciate that.”
“What stuff?” I asked, and then, “The airport? Why are you going to the airport?” Suddenly I noticed her appearance for the first time since walking into the lab. Miranda was wearing a suit, of all things—a dark gray skirt, white blouse, matching gray jacket, and—could it be?—honest-to-God stockings. Had I ever seen Miranda in stockings? And her hair, normally hanging in long waves of chestnut, looked oddly short and . . . springy. I stared, thunderstruck. “Did you . . . roll your hair?”
“What? Oh. Yeah, I did,” she said, looking embarrassed. Or was it defensive?
“Okay,” I demanded, “who are you, and what have you done with the real Miranda?” She rolled her eyes and glared. “And what’s with the fancy getup? You better change into a jumpsuit. Those stockings won’t last five minutes up in the woods.”
“The woods? What woods? What are you talking about?”
“The Cooke County woods. I’ve been thinking. We need to go back. Take another look at the death scene. I can’t help thinking we missed something yesterday.”
Miranda stared at me, her face a study in astonishment. “Are you kidding me, or do you honestly mean you forgot?”
“Forgot what?”
“Forgot why I can’t go back up to Cooke County today. Forgot why I’m in this ‘getup,’ as you put it. Forgot why I’ve been here for two hours printing out a stack of this stuff. I’m on my way to Quantico.”
“Quantico? What for?” Even as I said it, I sensed a recollection beginning to bubble up from deep in the tar pit of my memory, bringing with it a bad feeling. A very, very bad feeling.
“Jesus, Dr. B. I have a job interview there. With the FBI. That didn’t even register with you? It wasn’t worth remembering?”