A Conspiracy of Bones Read online

My townhouse was blessedly cool and smelled faintly of plaster and fresh paint.

  “Birdie?” Tossing my keys onto the counter.

  No response.

  “I’m home, Bird.”

  Nothing. The cat was still pissed about the renovations. Fine. I had my own issues.

  I locked the door, set the alarm, and crossed the kitchen without turning on a light. Passing through the dining room and then the parlor, I climbed the stairs.

  Nineteenth-century deeds refer to the tiny two-story structure as the annex. Annex to what? No living soul has a clue. To the mansion, now condos, presiding over the grounds of Sharon Hall? To the converted carriage house beside it?

  I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’ve lived in the annex’s Lilliputian rooms for more than a decade, since my separation from the would-be swain of the shipping-line heiress. Throughout my tenancy, I’d changed nothing but light bulbs.

  Until recently. And the process—building codes, permits, homeowners’ association hysteria—had been horrendous. And still there were issues. Jammed windows. A lunatic electrician. A no-show painter.

  Reaching the top tread, I glanced right toward the door leading into the new square footage. As usual, my chest tightened, just a hiccup, enough to get my attention. The same flinch experienced by victims of home invasion?

  I’d made the decision to live with Ryan. We’d agreed to shift between cities, commute as work demanded and freedom allowed. We’d bought a condo in Montreal. I’d agreed to construction of the addition here. Enough space for a roomie.

  So why the mental cringe? Why the refusal to actually move into the space? Nothing more fearsome than bad wiring and the wrong shade of gray lay beyond the door. Two desks, two bookshelves, two filing cabinets.

  Two toothbrushes in the bathroom. Two kinds of bread in the freezer.

  Everything in pairs.

  My life subdivided. I’d been there. It hadn’t worked out.

  Get a grip, Brennan. Ryan’s not Pete. He’ll never betray you. He’s handsome, smart, generous, kind. And sexy as hell. Why the reluctance to commit?

  As usual, I had no answer.

  In the bedroom, I threw my purse onto the bureau, myself into the rocker, and kicked off the sandals. Then I plugged in my phone so the damn thing wouldn’t die within seconds.

  I view crime-scene and autopsy pics all the time. They’re never pretty. The ashen flesh, the unseeing eyes, the blood-spattered walls or car interiors. Though I’m accustomed, the sad tableaus always affect me. The stark reminders that a human life has ended violently.

  These hit me harder than most.

  I swallowed.

  The first image showed a man lying supine in a body bag, arms straight and tight to his sides. The bag had been unzipped to his waist. I could see nothing beyond his rolled sleeves and belt.

  The man had died in a blood-soaked ecru shirt. A pair of shoes was tucked by his head, made of the same rich brown leather that had held up his pants.

  Above the bloody collar, the man’s face was a horror show of macerated flesh and bone. The nose and ears were gone, the orbits dark and empty.

  Sightless as the dead goose by the garden wall.

  The grim flashback elicited another visceral shudder.

  The next two images were close-ups of the man’s hands. Or would have been had either survived. His forearms were mangled from the elbows down, the radii and ulnae ending in jagged projections below the point to which the creamy sleeves had been rolled. Severed tendons glistened white in the hamburger mash.

  The last image zeroed in on the man’s midsection. The shirtfront had been displaced to one side. His abdomen gaped wide below ribs resembling the bleached wreckage of a boat’s shattered bow. What remained of his viscera was almost unrecognizable. I spotted a few organ remnants, some threads of liver and spleen, nothing positioned where it should have been.

  The message was tagged with no name or number, filtered through a spamlike phone exchange. I knew there were apps and websites that would accommodate a texter’s desire for anonymity. Tricks to hide one’s identity using throwaway email accounts. But who would do that? And why? And who would have access to such a mangled corpse? To my mobile number?

  Joe Hawkins? Such a breach of protocol seemed way out of character. Joe was the oldest death investigator at the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office. Oldest in every sense. Hawkins was stitching Ys when the MCME had a single pathologist and one assistant. Probably when Custer went down at the Little Big Horn.

  If the sender was Hawkins, what was his motive? Yeah, the vic was a mess. But we’d both seen worse. Much worse. Was Hawkins an ally in my current conflict? A neutral leaking intel to a comrade in peril?

  Was Hawkins giving me a heads-up? Since the faceless man would be difficult to ID, was he suggesting the case might require an anthropology consult? For years, I’d been the sole practitioner serving the region. In the past, the task would unquestionably have fallen to me.

  Until Larabee was killed and Margot Heavner stepped into his scrubs.

  Word of explanation. Since North Carolina has a statewide medical examiner system, the hiring decision was made by the chief ME in Chapel Hill. The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office, the facility for which I consult, is one of several subsidiary offices and serves the five counties surrounding Charlotte. Thanks to trigger-friendly gun laws, my fellow state citizens shoot one another with glorious enthusiasm. Therefore, following Larabee’s murder, the chief needed a replacement fast.

  The salary isn’t stratospheric, so Heavner had been one of only a handful of applicants. From her perspective, Charlotte’s climate dazzled in comparison to that of North Dakota. From the state’s perspective, she was willing to work cheap and start right away.

  Bingo! Dr. Margot Heavner, forensic pathologist, author, and showboat extraordinaire.

  Heavner began freezing me out the minute she landed. No pretense at subtlety. From day one, she made it clear that hiring Charlie Manson would be preferable to working with me.

  You guessed it. There’s history between us.

  Six years back, Heavner published a book titled Death’s Avenger: My Life as a Morgue Doctor. The opus, intended for a general audience, was a collection of case studies, most fairly mundane, intended to paint its creator as the greatest pathologist since the invention of the scalpel. Fair enough. Shine a light on the profession, inspire the next generation.

  And shine she did. For a few weeks, Heavner was everywhere. Talk shows, print, sidebar ads, social media. I was good with it. Until Dr. Morgue did a series of interviews with a right-wing sleazeball named Nick Body.

  Blogging and podcasting on the internet, and from there onto scores of AM radio stations, Body spews whatever trash he thinks will boost ratings and readership. Antivaccination, government mind control, U.S. military involvement in the Twin Towers and Beirut barracks attacks—everything is fair game, no matter how hurtful or absurd. Ditto any sensationalized tale of violence and personal devastation.

  Heavner didn’t restrict her conversations with Body to the topic of her book. In more than one, she discussed the case of a murdered child. A brutal killing for which no perp had been convicted.

  I definitely wasn’t good with that.

  When asked by a journalist for my opinion of Heavner’s behavior, I was sharp in my criticism. Maybe he was goading me with loaded questions. Maybe it was the fact that I was working three child homicides and feeling overly protective of victims. Maybe I was tired. Whatever the cause, I didn’t hold back.

  Heavner was furious. Threatened a lawsuit for slander or libel, or whatever, but didn’t follow through. The feud never went public. No one cares about the bickering of science nerds. But in our little nerd circles, the gossip was rife.

  That year, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a colleague in entomology, Paulette Youngman, advised me to let the quarrel go. Was it Dallas? Baltimore? The venues all blur in my mind. Paulette a
nd I were on break from a multidisciplinary workshop on child abuse when Heavner passed in one of her signature Diane von Fürstenberg wraps.

  “You’re right,” Youngman had said. “The woman has no scruples.”

  “She discussed an open homicide to hawk her damn book.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter if she’s compromised the case and there’s no justice for the child. And he wasn’t the only one. She talked about other missing kids. I could hear Body salivating through the speakers.”

  Youngman swirled the ice in her soda, then set down her Styrofoam tumbler. “Ever hear of Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani?”

  “I think I have a colony under my sink.”

  “It’s a fungus that grows out of the heads of ants in the Brazilian rain forest. They’re called zombie ants.”

  “Sounds like another crackpot Body conspiracy theory.”

  “But this is true. The fungus mind-controls the ants.”

  “Mind-controls them into doing what? Voting Republican?”

  “It takes over the ant’s brain, then kills the host once it’s moved to a location suitable for fungal success.”

  “Fiendish.”

  “It’s fungus.”

  I was lost. “Your point?”

  “Heavner’s morality has been hijacked by a need for fame and public adulation.”

  “She’s become a zombie pathologist.”

  Youngman shrugged.

  “So I should just let it drop?”

  “In the end, the ant always loses.” Youngman tipped her head, reflecting fluorescent light off the unfashionable black glasses riding low on her nose.

  For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Youngman broke the silence.

  “Did Heavner’s book make the New York Times bestseller list?”

  “Not even close.” I’d checked.

  Youngman grinned.

  I grinned back.

  In the intervening years, I’ve often thought of that conversation. Assumed the whole ant-fungus metaphor was a by-product of viewing too many projected images of battered children.

  But here it was, six years later, and Heavner had found a location where she could flourish. Dr. Morgue was running the MCME. And I was persona non grata, my life in disarray.

  I looked at the clock. Almost midnight. Call Hawkins?

  Not a chance he’d be awake.

  A quick toilette, and I crawled into bed.

  Of course, I didn’t sleep.

  In the dark, images looped and swirled, denizens of my subconscious begging for attention. Heavner. Hawkins. The faceless man. A defect in my left posterior communicating artery now packed with tiny platinum coils.

  At some point, Birdie came and curled at my side.

  Didn’t help. My mind was a hazardous-waste dump of doubt, distress, and unanswered questions.

  Chief among them: Who was the doomed ant, who the fungus facing a prosperous future?

  3

  SATURDAY, JUNE 30

  I was awakened by a mockingbird doing animated a cappella outside my window. Birdie was gone, presumably off resuming his snit.

  The clock said 6:27. The sky was easing from pewter to pearl. The room was a collision of shadows sharpening at the edges.

  I tried rolling over.

  A conversation sluiced into my drowsy brain. An old woman, voice quavery, as though uncertain of wanting her message delivered. Or terrified.

  I still hear the old woman’s words in my head. Bloodsucking trash. Using my sweet baby’s death to glorify her own self. Lord Jesus knows it’s wrong.

  Hardin Symes. That was the dead kid’s name.

  I later learned that the caller was Bethyl Symes, Hardin’s grandmother. I’d heard of Nick Body, of course, the fiery provocateur. I’d never listened to a Body broadcast or read one of his blogs. I’m not his demographic.

  But Bethyl was a regular. And she was incensed that Heavner had made a piss storm, her words, of her grandson’s murder. Exposed her family’s aching heart to the world.

  Because of Bethyl, I tuned into the Heavner interview and subsequently launched the missiles that kicked off the feud.

  I never heard from Bethyl Symes again.

  Agitated, I got out of bed, did some questionable grooming, mostly teeth, then descended to the kitchen. After brewing coffee, I filled the bowl of my judgmental cat. Then I snagged the Observer from the back stoop and settled at the table to scan stories I’d already seen on the internet.

  Why the dinosaur approach to news? Loyalty to the kid who’s been tossing papers onto my stoop for the past three years, winging them from his bike with NASA precision. Derek. Derek claims he’s saving up to attend Harvard. Maybe I’m a sucker. The story also gets him a ridiculous holiday tip.

  A pileup on I-77 had taken the lives of an Ohio family en route to Charleston for their annual beach week. New condos were going up in South End. The DOJ was opening an inquiry into the finances of a local member of Congress.

  Nothing on the faceless man. My real reason for looking.

  Another coffee, then I pulled my MacBook Air from my carryall and ran a quick online search. Found no mention of the discovery of human remains near Charlotte.

  I puttered until eight. Dishes. Email. A load of laundry. Then, knowing he was a dawn riser, I dialed Hawkins’s mobile. He answered after one ring.

  “Shoot.” Hawkins’s normal greeting.

  “Is a thank-you in order?”

  “For what?”

  “Did you text me last night?”

  “Nope.”

  Surprised, I explained the photos. “Any idea who sent them?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is the body at the MCME?”

  “Yep.” To say Hawkins is taciturn would be the understatement of the millennium.

  “What’s the scoop?”

  “Guy was pig feed.”

  “I was guessing dogs.” One glance at the texted images had told me the mutilation was due to animal scavenging.

  “Wild hogs.”

  “Where?” When talking to Hawkins, I often adopt his brusque manner. Not a conscious choice, the clipped rhythm just sucks you in.

  “Cleveland County.”

  I left an encouraging pause. As usual, the ploy didn’t work.

  “Body dump?”

  “Unclear.”

  “When did he roll in?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “The autopsy will take place on Monday?”

  “This morning. I caught it.”

  “It’s Saturday. Why the urgency?”

  “No idea.”

  “Who’s doing the cutting?”

  “Heavner.”

  “What do you know so far?”

  “Stiff’s got no face, no belly, no hands.”

  I could hear a television in the background. Hawkins was at home, wherever home was. In all our years together, I’d never asked where he lived. He’d never volunteered.

  “So no visual ID and no IAFIS.” I was referring to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the FBI’s national database of prints and criminal histories. Sometimes you’re lucky and get a cold hit.

  “Nope.”

  “Unless the guy’s carrying a license in his pocket, Heavner will need a bio-profile to give to the cops.”

  “Social Security card would do.” Clattering overrode the rise and fall of the TV dialogue. Hawkins was either cooking or building something.

  “I’ll let you know if I hear from Heavner.” Saying the words made my stomach curl in. I knew Dr. Morgue would never call.

  * * *

  She didn’t.

  Not all morning while the autopsy was under way.

  At ten, I went for a long run, pushed myself hard, came back drenched and almost trembling with muscle fatigue. There was no voice message on my mobile. No flashing red light on my answering machine.

  I know. More stegosaurus technology. There’s zero reason for keeping the landline. N
o noble delivery boy. Just habit. Like my old prescription meds, expired and useless but never thrown out.

  As the hours ticked by, I kept seeing the images. Kept asking myself who might have sent them. Came up with no plausible candidate. Or explanation.

  Heavner didn’t phone at midday, when she and Hawkins probably broke for lunch.

  Birdie was still pouting. Mama didn’t check in to see if my head had exploded. Or ablaze with new travel ideas. Though each was the surviving spouse of a long-term marriage, she and the dry-cleaning tsar were planning the mother of all destination weddings. At least, Mama was.

  Ryan didn’t ring with news from Montreal.

  Time was I could always visualize Ryan’s whereabouts. The Crime contre la personne squad room, eight floors below my lab in the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome on rue Parthenais. His condo at Habitat 67, all angles and glass and views of the Saint Lawrence River, Vieux-Montréal on the opposite shore. Since his retirement—another stressor for my curve—I can’t pinpoint him with any precision.

  Slidell had also gone radio silent. Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, a combo of bluster and paunch and bad polyester, was for decades a detective with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department homicide squad, thus Ryan’s equivalent in Dixie. Not in the sheets, just in the murder probes. Like Ryan, Slidell had also retired and shifted to PI work, though he continued as a volunteer with the CMPD cold-case unit. I was never sure of Slidell’s whereabouts lately, either.

  I heard from no one. Saw no trace of my cat. The annex was filled with a silence so total I wondered if the previous week’s migraine had caused a mini-stroke resulting in hearing loss.

  By one o’clock, I was suffused with enough manic energy to summit Everest solo.

  OK, Brennan. Showtime.

  Grabbing a Diet Coke and the laptop, I double-stepped up to the spiffy new addition.

  Light was slicing through the slats of the plantation shutters. The gray shutters that were supposed to be white. I made a mental note to phone my contractor first thing Monday. Cursed when I remembered he’d taken off for Puerto Rico to help his brother rebuild after Hurricane Maria. Revised note. Call the painter.

  The air was infused with the sweet smell of freshly sawed wood. OK. That was sort of nice.