Speaking in Bones Read online

  And these guys were thorough. A Websleuths.com member named R.I.P. had mailed a copy of McCall’s missing-person poster to every women’s shelter, hospital, and medical examiner facility in Nebraska. Unfortunately, Sarah McCall had yet to be found.

  As I made myself tea, I couldn’t help but think how McCall had unknowingly helped in her own investigation. The woman was a prodigious user of social media. The polar opposite of Cora Teague.

  Returning to the keyboard, I linked over to CLUES.net. The site was less user friendly than Websleuths.com, the mark of a creator less skilled in the use of web design templates. But Strike was right. No info was required to become a member.

  It took some trolling, but I finally located a forum on Cora Teague. Compared to the other cases I’d perused, there were very few threads and only a handful of participants, most of whom had quickly dropped out.

  The first thread was initiated on August 22, 2011, by someone calling him- or herself OMG. The post stated that Cora Teague was missing and in danger due to poor health, and claimed a lack of interest on the part of family and local law enforcement. She or he described Teague as a white female, five feet six inches tall, of slender build, with green eyes and long blond hair.

  OMG stated she or he had last seen Teague on July 14, 2011, outside the Teague family home in Avery County, North Carolina. Teague was wearing a long-sleeved blue tee, jeans, a lightweight white jacket, and leather boots. OMG did not describe the circumstances of that sighting, and no detail came out in the brief interchanges that followed.

  A websleuth using the name luckyloo joined the thread on February 24, 2012. By that time no one had posted a comment for over six months. I guessed luckyloo was Hazel Strike.

  There was some uptick in posting following Strike’s appearance, but eventually the thread was down to two participants. OMG was not one of them. In January 2013, following a two-month silence, Strike asked to meet with OMG. The request was not answered. OMG had long since dropped off the radar.

  By nature, I am stubborn. I can’t step back from a problem that I can’t solve.

  Sipping my now tepid Earl Grey, I thought about what I’d just read. About Strike’s theory.

  About the audio.

  I wondered what had made Cora Teague tick. What shadowy illness had driven her back to her parents’ home.

  I wondered the identity of OMG. Oh my God? I wondered the reason OMG believed Teague had come to harm.

  And, for the hundredth time, I wondered if Teague was alive or dead.

  Cora Teague was a mystery I was now burning to crack.

  I shifted to NamUs.gov and called up the case file I’d created on the Burke County torso. After entering a description of the key chain recorder and denim belt loop, I logged off and headed up to bed.

  Unaware of the deadly spiral I’d kicked into motion.

  The bedside clock said 11:48. I’d decided it was too late to call Ryan when my iPhone blasted “Girl on Fire.” Note to self. Change ringtone.

  I checked caller ID, clicked on, and slid under the covers.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey what?” Ryan’s standard response.

  “It’s the south,” I said, smiling. “It’s our way of greeting.”

  “How was your day?”

  “You sound like me trying to engage my cat.”

  Ryan laughed. He’d recovered from his disappointment over my canceled trip and was in a pretty good mood. “How is the Birddog?”

  “Peeved that dinner wasn’t served until nine.”

  “Why so late?”

  “Do you want to hear about these cases now?”

  “We could talk specials at Costco.”

  I pictured Ryan in his condo overlooking a dark and forbidding St. Lawrence River. He’d be on the sofa, legs extended, ankles crossed on the coffee table. Ryan never phones from bed. To him, bed means only two things. And he is skilled at both.

  First, when Ryan’s head hits the pillow, he is instantly asleep. Second. Thoughts of the second sparked a tiny flip somewhere south of my stomach.

  “One case involves a mummified old man. Straightforward ID. The second case started with an odd visitor.” I told Ryan about Lucky Strike. Cora Teague. The remains labeled ME229-13. The recording. “The voices were unnerving.”

  “How so?”

  “The girl sounded absolutely petrified. Then the men arrived and began harassing her.” Recalling the scene again sent a ripple of cold up my spine. “I don’t know. Maybe the whole thing is a hoax.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “Who is this Strike?”

  “A websleuth.”

  “I know you’ll explain that.”

  “They’re amateur detectives who work the Internet trying to solve unsolved cases.”

  “God help us.”

  “Many seem quite competent. And incredibly dedicated.”

  Silence.

  “Can you at least make an attempt at being open-minded?” I asked.

  Ryan made a noise I took to mean yes.

  “Some work cold case homicides. Some try to match MPs with unidentified remains. They were the ones who interested me.”

  “Understandably.”

  I told him about the sites, the forums, the discussion threads. “Some people spend hours looking at images created from decomps and skeletons. Then they comb through antemortem pics of MPs, looking for matches.”

  “And we know how accurate most facial reproductions are.”

  Ryan had a point. In my brief cruise through a number of online repositories I’d seen the usual array of artsy color portraits, crude pencil drawings, cartoonlike sketches, wig-topped clay busts with scarecrow features, and unnaturally symmetrical computer graphics. From experience, I knew most were painfully inexact. Some sites contained actual morgue photos, the faces grotesque and distorted in death.

  “Others start with UID reports, which include unique identifiers—an odd scar, a distinctive tattoo, an unusual fracture, an implant, an artificial body part. Then they search MP sites for individuals possessing similar traits.” Ignoring Ryan’s comment. “Still others start with persons reported missing from an area in which remains have been found, then work outward to the county, to the state—”

  “To the future, to the horizon.”

  “Shall we trade Jedi jokes or do you want to hear this?”

  “I love how your voice goes all sexy when you’re peeved.”

  “I visited a site devoted to a murdered teen nicknamed Princess Doe. Her body was discovered in Blairstown, New Jersey, in 1982, her face bludgeoned beyond recognition. Close to a hundred potential matches were listed, Ryan, all young women loosely fitting the kid’s description, all reported missing after 1975.”

  He tried to comment. I kept talking.

  “And there are dozens like Princess Doe. Scores. Caledonia Jane Doe. Tent Girl. The Lady of the Dunes. Jane Arroyo Grande Doe.”

  “Sounds like a lot of man-hours.”

  “And women.”

  “Noted.”

  “UIDs are a big problem, Ryan. Both in the U.S. and Canada.”

  “Like earwigs.”

  “Are you trying to annoy me?”

  “I love how your voice goes all—”

  “The National Institute of Justice estimates there are tens of thousands of unidentified bodies lying around in morgues or buried in anonymous graves in potters’ fields in this country.” Jesus. I sounded like Strike.

  “I thought that was the point of NCIC.”

  Ryan referred to the National Crime Information Center, a mongo computer complex in Clarksburg, West Virginia, containing info on all things criminal. Stolen guns, cars, boats. Counterfeit bonds, pilfered checks. Fingerprints. Names of terrorists, gang members, violent felons. And, as of the past few years, unidentified remains and certain categories of missing persons.

  “You know as well as I do that NCIC doesn’t get the job done. Hell, unti
l 1999 it wasn’t even mandatory for state and local agencies to register their missing or unidentified. As recently as 2007 the National Institute of Justice estimated that only fifteen percent of all UIDs had been input.” While online, I’d spent some time querying this topic. “A 2009 National Research Council committee reported that eighty percent of the coroners and MEs surveyed responded either ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ concerning their use of NCIC to match their UIDs to MPs.”

  “Why such a poor turnout?”

  “For starters, the database is only open to law enforcement.”

  “You can’t have every bimbo with a missing uncle accessing the system.”

  “True. But another problem comes from the fact that case entry is incredibly labor intensive. The full protocol is over thirty pages long. You think cops sit down with family members and go over every box that needs checking?”

  Ryan said nothing.

  “Often what happens is a cop sends in the basics—gender, one of the big three for race, broad ranges for age and height. Maybe date of discovery. The profile is so vague the program spits back hundreds of possible matches. How likely is it the guy’s going to plow through all that information?”

  “Or gal.”

  “Noted.”

  “Cops are overextended these days.” Ryan sounded a touch defensive.

  “And then there’s the problem of incompatibility in reporting. What if dentals on a UID are entered using one charting system, and dentals on an MP are entered using a different system? Though both cases might be in the database, one will never link to the other.”

  “You’re saying NCIC is ineffective and underutilized.”

  “For a stolen car or passport, it’s terrific. To link remains to an MP, not so much. But things are improving.”

  “So websleuths go at the problem using sites accessible to the general public.”

  “Yes.”

  “Some of which welcome any dolt wanting to post his hat size.”

  I ignored that. “A few websleuths have had reasonable success.”

  “Like ol’ Truth-or-Dare Strike.”

  “Lucky.”

  “What?”

  “She goes by Lucky.”

  “If Strike actually contacted the kid’s family and school, that’s hardly within the definition you just gave.”

  “It’s called offlining.”

  “If Strike’s telling the truth, she offlined her ass right onto a potential crime scene.”

  “Look. The torso may or may not be Cora Teague.” My voice was light-years from sexy. Ryan’s attitude was starting to piss me off. “But Strike has generated a lead.”

  “Or conned you into wasting time and energy.”

  “Following up on tips is part of my job.”

  “Strike’s got nads, I’ll give her that.”

  “Perhaps we should talk about something else.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Nice use of trilogy.”

  There was a long silence amplified by irritation on my end, skepticism on his.

  “How’s Daisy?”

  Ryan’s peace offering was not where I wanted to go.

  Katherine Daessee Lee Brennan. Daisy. My crazy-as-a-sock puppet mother.

  When I was eight, my father died in a car wreck, my baby brother in a pediatric ICU after losing a heartbreaking battle involving white cells. I was relocated from Chicago to North Carolina, and lived the rest of my childhood migrating between the family beach house at Pawleys Island and my grandmother’s cupcake Victorian in Charlotte.

  After spending decades ferrying her daughter through a ceaseless series of mental crises, Gran finally clocked out at age ninety-six. In the end, I think Mama’s craziness just wore her out.

  Shortly after Gran’s death, my mother disappeared without apology or explanation. Four years later, my sister, Harry, and I learned she was living in Paris with a caregiver named Cécile Gosselin, whom she called Goose.

  When I was thirty-five, Mama returned to the States with Goose. Since then they’d shifted between the Pawleys Island property and a sprawling condo on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The arrangement worked well for me. Holiday visits. Emails and texts. Brief chats on the phone.

  Then, without warning, Mama pirouetted back into my life shortly before Ryan’s own reappearance. With her Louis Vuitton luggage, Hermès scarves, and Chanel No. 5, she’d checked into the only facility ever to meet her extraordinarily high standards. Also traveling in the entourage was an untamed malignancy that would eventually kill her.

  “Mama’s still terrorizing the staff at Heatherhill Farm,” I said.

  “Goose remains bivouacked at the B and B down the road?”

  “Yes. The woman is a saint.”

  “Daisy’s probably promised to bequeath her the family fortune.”

  “Mama’s estate planning centers on bouncing the very last check she writes. I don’t know. It’s hard to figure Goose. The woman rarely speaks.”

  “We French are enigmatic.”

  “But you produce good cheese.”

  “And wine.”

  “And wine.”

  “Daisy would make a daunting websleuth.”

  “Don’t you dare broach the subject to her.” Ryan was right. My mother’s skill at mining the Web is unsurpassed. But there’s a downside. When she’s in a manic phase, a mild curiosity can become an all-consuming obsession for Mama.

  “Roger that. Any news on Katy?”

  Another topic that kept me constantly anxious. Two years earlier my daughter had enlisted in the army and been sent to Afghanistan. She’d survived her tour, come home, and, to my horror, volunteered to return. She was now in the first month of her second deployment.

  “Happy and healthy.” Or was at the time of our last Skype call.

  “Good.”

  There was a very long pause. I braced, knowing what was coming.

  “I get why you had to cancel your trip to Montreal. But have you given any thought to my pitch?” Ryan’s tone was carefully neutral.

  Pitch?

  “Yes.” I ran a hand through my hair. Inhaled. Exhaled.

  “And?”

  “It’s hard, Ryan. With Mama.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Katy.”

  “Katy will be fine.”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you.”

  I knew I should reply in kind. Instead, I fought a wild urge to disconnect.

  “I’ll take no news as good news.”

  I shrugged. Stupid. Ryan couldn’t see me.

  “Here’s my suggestion.” He changed topics again. “Shoot that recording over to your audio geeks.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Why not?” Still neutral. No one does it like Ryan.

  “Strike refused to leave it with me.” Alone in the dark, I felt myself blush with humiliation at my own ineptness. “I phoned the Burke County sheriff’s deputy who recovered the bones.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I’m waiting for a callback.”

  “It might be wise to have the audio analyzed.” Ryan stated the obvious.

  “I’ll call Strike in the morning.”

  That turned out to be a bad idea.

  That night I attended a Mad Hatter’s party of the macabre.

  I was seated at a table stretching as far as I could see in both directions. White linen cloth and napkins. Silver spoons and candlesticks. Porcelain tea service.

  Ryan was across from me, wearing a bow tie, tux, and red wool tuque. Beside him was a woman who barely came up to his shoulder. Her hair was a foggy nimbus haloing her head, her features a shadowy landscape lacking in detail or definition. The woman’s body ended at the bottom of a rib cage rippling below a cut-off long-sleeved blue tee.

  Behind Ryan and the woman, a huge arched window framed a neon sunset. Garish yellows, oranges, and reds, heaped layer upon layer, supported an ominous black disk floating just above the horizon.

  I knew that w
as wrong. That the sun should be light. I tried to tell Ryan. He kept talking to the woman at his side.

  Far down the table to my left, Mama and Larabee were engaged in heated discussion. Larabee was in bloodstained scrubs. Mama had on the black Chanel suit she’d bought for Daddy’s funeral but never worn.

  At the far right, Hazel Strike sat alone in jeans and boots, backpack beside her on the snowy linen. The fiery twilight made her topknot look like brassy meringue.

  Everyone was holding a tiny china cup. Ryan’s fingers looked huge on the scrolly little handle.

  Mama and Larabee grew louder, but I couldn’t make out their words. Recognizing a dangerous note in my mother’s tone, I tried to stand, but found I was glued to my chair.

  Drizzle began falling. No one seemed to notice but me.

  I looked at Ryan.

  “Will you melt?” he asked.

  I tried to answer. My lips wouldn’t form words.

  “Will you let Cora Teague melt?” Flat.

  Still my mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Melt.” Larabee, Mama, and Strike chorused in unison. The word reverberated, as though bouncing off the walls of an enormous chamber. I looked around. All three were staring at me.

  “Will you let me melt?” Sharp-edged, no echo.

  I refocused on Ryan. His eyes were angry blue flames.

  “Do I disappear into the black hole?”

  Before I could answer, Ryan swirled backward and vanished into the menacing death-disk sun. The woman’s fog-hair swirled, sucked upward by Ryan’s sudden departure. Her face, now revealed, was devoid of flesh, the empty orbits pointed at me in beseeching accusation. A beat, then the woman swooped a path identical to Ryan’s.

  Frightened, I whipped my gaze left. Mama and Larabee were gone.

  Right. Strike was on her feet, curling knobby fingers inward, telling me to join her.

  I turned away. Tried to peer into the wormhole that had swallowed Ryan and the woman. Saw nothing but tomb-like black.

  “Ryan!” I screamed.

  I awoke, heart racing, skin slick with sweat.

  Wildly disoriented, I took a moment to figure out where I was.