A Conspiracy of Bones Read online

  “I called because I’m lying in bed and just watched some very interesting television.” Mama’s tone dropped to a confidential half whisper. “You working on this corpse got gnawed by hogs?”

  Point of information. My petite, gray-haired mother has a mind like a spaghetti-bowl highway interchange. Conversations with her swoop and diverge, sometimes loop back, sometimes don’t. We were now on the subject of my work. Which, for some reason, fascinates her.

  Additional POI. Regardless of the momentary off- or on-ramp, Mama can home in on evasion like a night-vision drone. I didn’t bother dodging this question.

  “Apparently not,” I said.

  “Is that dreadful woman still causing you grief? What’s her name?”

  “Margot Heavner.”

  “Why on earth is she so hateful to you?”

  “Years ago, I offended her.”

  “How? Poisoned her parakeet? Spit in her grits?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly.

  I laid it all out. Hardin Symes. The Body interviews. The revelation about Hardin’s autism. Heavner’s failure to counter Body’s antivax insanity. My calling her unprofessional.

  While I was talking, Birdie padded into the kitchen, sat, and fixed me with a contemplative gaze. Either that, or he was hungry.

  Choosing to interpret the cat’s appearance as a gesture of rapprochement, I got up and filled his bowl. With the canned stuff he prefers, not the dry crunchers. He sniffed, then stretched, to show his indifference. As I turned away, he abandoned the theater and eagerly dived in.

  When I’d finished my story, Mama’s reaction was quick and severe.

  “I can forgive the man his flat-out stupidity. Lord knows he can’t help the IQ he’s been dealt. But Nick Body is mean-spirited, unprincipled, and vile as a snake.”

  “You listen to his show?” Surprised.

  “I listen to everything.”

  “But if you don’t like him—”

  “I need to be aware of the foolishness flying loose in the world.”

  I said nothing.

  “I once heard Body go full-out about the government training up cats for mind control. Can you believe that?”

  My eyes drifted to Birdie. I believed it.

  “Another time, he was off to the races on white genocide, saying immigration, miscegenation, birth control, and abortion are being used to cause white people to go extinct.”

  “Used by whom?”

  “He was a bit vague on that. Not to mention population genetics. The man is completely ignorant of scientific facts. He doesn’t believe in climate change, insists global warming is a sinister hoax. Like the moon landing. And fluoridation of the water supply.”

  I tried to change the subject. Mama was on a roll.

  “Did you know that the little weasel rarely shows his face in public? No one knows where he lives or what he does when he’s not contaminating the airwaves with his drivel.”

  “I’ve read that.”

  “He spews his hogwash, then transmits the files through servers in Bosnia, Borneo, Belarus, and who knows where else so that the original IP is untraceable.”

  Final POI. My mother is a crack-bang genius with computers and manipulation of the World Wide Web. Partly my doing. When she was in one of her funks and checked into a rehab facility, I bought her a laptop to engage her mind. To my surprise, she jumped onto the internet with gusto, subsequently enrolled in and completed scores of courses on various cyber skills. Now there’s no stopping her.

  I glanced at the clock: 5:20 p.m.

  “Mama, I should go.”

  I could picture the tightening at the corners of the Dior-tinted lips. Then, “Darling, here’s my counsel, take it or leave it. You say Heavner had no scruples about wagging her chin with this circus-clown fool of a blowhard. You say she’s now blocking you from a job you’ve been performing for decades. Do it anyway.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Beat Heavner at her own game. If you’re feeling up to it, that is.”

  “Her own game?” I was lost.

  “Good lord, Tempe. You’re brilliant, but you can be thick.” Mega-patient sigh. “ID the faceless man on your own. If you succeed, it’ll irk the patootie out of your new boss. Maybe impress the big enchilada in Chapel Hill.”

  “But—”

  “And investigating will give you something to do besides stewing at home all day. As long as it won’t compromise your condition, of course.”

  Nope. Didn’t touch that.

  “You still there?”

  “I am.”

  “The shower cut off. I should spritz myself up. You’ll consider what I said?”

  “Yes.” Anything to avoid thoughts of Clayton Sinitch fadoodling my mother.

  Consider it I did, turning and twisting the idea a zillion different ways.

  Accept my fate and focus my professional energies elsewhere? Fact is, I get plenty of requests. Though, to be honest, not enough to fill the financial gap left by my loss of income at the MCME. I still drew a salary for my teaching at UNCC, and payment for my consulting to the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the LSJML, in Quebec, but the purchase of the Montreal condo and the cost of construction at the annex had me stretched pretty thin. Ryan would help, of course, but there was no way I’d allow him to pay more than his share. More stressors for the curve.

  So. Follow Mama’s suggestion and forge ahead with the faceless man on my own? Clearly, I was already invested. Otherwise, why had I taken the photographs and blood sample?

  In addition to Hawkins, I had at least one other ally. But who was the anonymous texter? And why had he or she sent me those images?

  Going rogue could turn out to be the final career slayer on my home turf. On the other hand, what did I have left to be slain?

  At five forty, I grabbed the handset and dialed Chapel Hill. The office of the chief medical examiner was closed for the day. Of course it was. I left a voice mail for the big enchilada.

  By six, I was fizzing to the fingertips with agitation.

  Finally, the call I was expecting.

  * * *

  An hour later, I was sitting in a back booth at Sassy’s Chili Shack, a grubby fifties-style diner behind a patch of weedy gravel on Wilkinson Boulevard. Sassy’s looked like it might have started life as a Hell’s Angels clubhouse. The patrons looked like card-carrying gang members or wannabes. Shaved heads. Flamboyant facial hair. Sleeveless denim, lots of leather, studs, and dangling keys. You get the picture.

  Though I like dives, Hawkins’s go-to spot is not my fave. The dump smells of cigarette smoke and beer-marinated wood, and the menu offers little but chili and ’cue.

  Hawkins sat across from me, looking like an upright cadaver in glasses. He was working a combo plate involving a lot of dead animals. I was sipping a Perrier with lime. An eyebrow raiser with the tattooed and bearded barman.

  An eco-friendly Harris Teeter sack lay on the table between us, the parrot-green fabric discordant in the murky light. Inside it, I could see the top of a large brown envelope. A rectangular bulge I hoped was my phone.

  I let Hawkins finish eating before asking if he’d floated queries about the mysterious texter.

  “Gotta be cagey,” he said, meaning no.

  “What’s in the bag?” Unable to control my curiosity a second longer.

  “Copy of Heavner’s file.”

  “Holy shit. Seriously?”

  “Calm down. It’s just the prelim. Nothing finalized.”

  “What’s your take?”

  “I’m thinking suicide.”

  “Why?”

  “No trauma, no signs of a struggle, vic lying straight. Except for the work of the hogs, I’m saying.”

  “No note?”

  “Nope.”

  “Heavner leaning that way?”

  “She wants a murder.”

  “Did she run a tox screen?” Not questioning the odd comment.


  “Standard only.”

  “Where was the body found?”

  “Cleveland County, near Earl, a hop north of the state line.”

  “Why’d Charlotte catch the case?”

  “Guess the locals didn’t feel up to the challenge. No face, no hands, no gut.”

  “Rural area?”

  “Mostly farmland and woods.”

  “The Cleveland County sheriff worked the scene?”

  “Such as it was.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Couple kids figuring to fish. Guess that won’t be high on their list for a while.” Effusive for Hawkins, maybe a record.

  “How’d he get there?”

  Hawkins shrugged and lifted both hands. A move that made me think of a praying mantis.

  “Was any vehicle parked in the area? Bike? Motorcycle?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  Hawkins knocked back the dregs of his coffee and flicked a finger at the bag. “Photocopied what I could.”

  “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Your phone’s in there, too.”

  “I owe you.”

  “Gotta keep it on the down low.”

  “Subterranean.”

  The cadaver eyes locked onto mine.

  “No way it came from me.”

  “No way,” I said.

  5

  Back behind the wheel, in the patch of gravel hosting nothing but old beaters and tricked-out bikes, I checked my watch. Which was hard to read in the slanty amber-violet of early dusk.

  8:02. Too early for my dinner date, too late to go home.

  The Harris Teeter bag lay on the passenger seat, taunting me with its purloined intel. I lifted a handle and dug out my phone and the brown envelope, which felt disappointingly thin. Unsealing the flap with one index finger, I slid free the collection of paper-clipped sheets and flipped through them.

  Photocopies. An incident report from the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Department. A morgue intake form, case designated MCME 304-18. Preliminary autopsy notes, very brief. A few crime-scene pics. A speed-read of the docs suggested that, lacking some fine citizen stepping forward, hope of an ID was as bleak as I’d feared.

  I scooped the swab-kit tube and a Sharpie from my purse and added the case number. Through the clear plastic, I could see the white wadded gauze with its plastic dowel. I hadn’t initialed the tube’s small white cap, normal protocol for a tech collecting a sample.

  Ignoring the alarm again pinging in my brain, I returned the envelope and the tube to the bag and headed out.

  Several zip codes later, I pulled into a small shopping center in a far more privileged section of town. Wine shop, nail salon, mom-and-pop brokerage firm. Tasteful lanterns oozing warm yellow onto well-behaved flora in window boxes and stone-sided planters.

  I parked outside a tiny walled courtyard outfitted with scrolly wrought-iron tables and chairs. A sign on the brick announced Barrington’s in hushed script. I crossed the courtyard and entered through a bell-tinkling door.

  The sole commonality between Barrington’s and Sassy’s was the presence of food. OK. And dimness. At the chili joint, the low lighting was due to cutting corners on utility bills. At Barrington’s, the candles and sconces were carefully orchestrated for gastronomically appropriate ambience.

  My fellow townsmen love to make lists of the Queen City’s finest. The best microbreweries. The top gyms. The tastiest noodle shops. My colleague and friend Lizzy Griesser is a Charlotte expat living in Virginia. Lizzie keeps up with local news and takes such reviews seriously. Thus, the night’s venue. In the category of fine dining, Barrington’s regularly blows the competition out of the skillet.

  The restaurant has only fourteen tables. All of which are filled most nights. When Lizzie finalized the date for her bimonthly pilgrimage south, she phoned immediately. That booking had taken place in mid-May.

  The hostess led me to a two-top deep in one corner. I’d just hooked my purse strap and the handles of the Harris Teeter bag over the seatback when Lizzie arrived.

  How to best describe Dr. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Griesser? She checks all the boxes that should make her pretty by twenty-first-century Western standards. Bright hazel eyes. Full lips. Button nose that turns up just the right amount at the tip. Somehow the combination doesn’t quite work. Instead, her features seem painted on a canvas oversized for proper scale.

  Lizzie is older now. Her eyelids droop, and her jawline sags a little. But she’s not unattractive. Far from it. She’s just, well, odd.

  My friend dropped into the seat opposite mine. Which made her appear shorter than her actual five feet nine inches. Lizzie’s frame is also a bit outside the curve, her legs contributing far more than their share to her height.

  “Am I late?”

  “Just got here.” I smiled, maybe a little too broadly. Nerves. The pinging id. “How’s your mother?”

  “Makes me wish I’d taken a job in Missoula.”

  “There’s a lab in Missoula?”

  “I could start one. Get me a hat and a bandanna, screw cowboys while wearing my boots. But wait. Isn’t Montana the state that elected that jerk to Congress? The one who body-slams reporters?”

  “In its defense, the place has a lot of big sky.”

  “And must be far cooler than here. Damn.”

  “The Lut Desert must be cooler than here.”

  “Look, Tempe, I’m not a gusher, but I really appreciate your taking an interest in Mom. Your visits are truly above and beyond.”

  “It’s just around the corner from my townhouse.” Not exactly. “And she’s an interesting lady.”

  “She’s ninety-nine and thinks I’m still in school.”

  Lizzie completed her doctorate in molecular biology in 1972. When I hit the local forensics scene, she was working in serology at the CMPD crime lab. One winter day, we shared a tuna salad sandwich and a laugh over the peculiarity of names. Lizzie’s mother was called Temple. Tempe—Temple. We found the coincidence funny.

  Over the years, Lizzie and I consulted on dozens of the same cases. Though she was at least a decade my senior—a guess, she’d never say—the collegial camaraderie morphed into friendship via dinners, movies, and shared tales of parental woes.

  Eventually, Lizzie’s father died, and her mother began to forget. How to brush her teeth, find the pharmacy, use the remote. Temple Griesser was currently a resident at Sharon Towers, Charlotte’s oldest assisted-living and retirement community. Lizzie was now employed by a private DNA lab in Richmond. I dropped in on Temple as often as I could.

  The waitress came and introduced herself as Suzy. Suzy asked our preference in water, then filled our glasses from a pitcher awash in lemons. After issuing menus the size of window shades, she queried our wishes from the bar.

  “Mom’s happy enough,” Lizzie continued when Suzy had gone. “Oblivious to everything but her cactus collection.”

  “I’ve learned a lot about succulents.”

  We took a moment to peruse that evening’s offerings. To sip our lemony drinks.

  “How about you?” Lizzie laid down her menu. “How’s your maternal situation?”

  “Mama is engaged to be married.”

  Lizzie’s brows shot to her hairline. Which, like them, was silvery gray.

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  Suzy returned with Lizzie’s martini, my Perrier. She ordered the duck, I went with the chicken. Unless it’s winter—rabbit potpie season—I always do. I’m a sucker for the garlic smashed potatoes.

  We were finishing our meal when I finally made my play. Setting down my fork, I broached the subject that was causing the pinging.

  “There’s something I want to roll past you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “First, some background.” I told her about my conflict with Margot Heavner.

  “I’m sorry about Larabee,” she said when I’d finished. “He was solid.”

  “He was,” I agreed.

  �
��Word is Heavner’s a she-beast.”

  She is. I didn’t say it.

  Lizzie waited as I reached behind me for the brown envelope and the tube and placed both on the table. She’d noticed the green bag the minute she’d arrived, hadn’t asked.

  “A body was found Friday out in Cleveland County. Hogs had devoured the viscera, hands, and face.”

  “So no visual, no prints.”

  “Exactly. Heavner may run DNA, but that’ll mean waiting into the next eon for results. And what are the chances of getting a cold hit?”

  “The vic carried no form of ID?”

  “None.”

  “Doesn’t sound good.” Guarded. Lizzie was getting the first hint where I was headed.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “A mugging gone wrong followed by a body dump?”

  “The guy had two hundred dollars on him.”

  Lizzie said nothing.

  “Some personal items suggest he might not be local.” I finger-tapped the envelope. “It’s all here.”

  Lizzie made no move toward Hawkins’s illegal plunder. “Let me guess. Heavner’s icing you out.”

  “She is.”

  “You do plenty of consults. Why lose sleep over this one?”

  The same question I’d asked myself. “I’m not sure. I mean, the guy could have kids, a wife, a”—undirected, one hand rose into the air—“a cocker spaniel.”

  “Come on, Tempe. We both know the game. Every death leaves a hole in someone’s life.”

  The hand dropped back to the table. “Fine. Full disclosure. I think Heavner’s going full-on Dr. Morgue again.”

  “Exploiting the situation to get her face on TV?”

  “She called a presser, played up the”—I hooked air quotes—“ ‘mystery’ surrounding the case.”

  Lizzie leaned back and ran a hand down one cheek. Her knuckles were knobbier, her skin more liver-spotted than I recalled.

  Several moments passed. Suzy cleared our plates, brought mugs, and filled them. I added cream. Lizzie added nothing. Stirred anyway, still considering the implications of what I was asking.

  I braced for the blow-off. Instead, “Where would you float it?”