Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs

Author:Kathy Reichs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

21

SOUTHERNERS DON’T ATTEND WAKES. WE ATTEND viewings. Makes sense to me. Drained of blood, perfumed, and injected with wax, a corpse is never going to sit up and stretch. But it is laid out for one final inspection.

To facilitate that last, pre-eternity peek, casket lids are designed like double Dutch doors. Finney and his gal pal had taken advantage of that feature, prying open only the hinged upper half.

OK for a snatch and run in the night. I needed full-body access.

Thanks to the vandalism and to natural deterioration, the top of Susan’s coffin had collapsed into a concavity running the length of the box. Experience told me the cover would have to be lifted in segments.

After prying loose Burkhead’s makeshift repair strips, I hacked through corrosion sealing the edges of the lid. Then, like Finney, I laid to with the crowbar.

Burkhead and Slidell helped, displacing decayed wood and metal to unoccupied inches of floor space. Odor oozed up around us, a blend of mildew and rot. I felt my skin prickle, the hairs rise along my neck and arms.

An hour later the casket was open.

The remains were concealed by a jumble of velvet padding and draping, all stained and coated with a white, lichenlike substance.

After shooting photos, I gloved, uneasy about Hewlett’s assessment that nothing in the coffin had been violated but the head. If that was true, what of the femora I’d found in Cuervo’s cauldron? I kept my concerns to myself.

It took only minutes to disentangle and remove the funerary bedding covering the upper half of the body. Slidell and Burkhead observed, offering comments now and then.

Susan Redmon had been buried in what was probably a blue silk gown. The faded cloth now wrapped her rib cage and arm bones like dried paper toweling. Hair clung to the cushion that had cradled her head, an embalmer’s eye cap and three incisors visible among the long, black strands.

That was it for the pillow. No head. No jaw.

My eyes slid to Slidell. He gave a thumbs-up.

I collected a sample of hair, then the incisors.

“Those teeth?” Slidell asked.

I nodded.

“Do you have dental records?” Burkhead asked.

“No. But I can try fitting these three into the sockets, and comparing them to the molars and premolars still in place in the jaw and skull.”

Teeth and hair bagged, I continued my visual examination.

Susan’s gown was ripped down the bodice. Through the tear I could see a collapsed rib cage overlying thoracic vertebrae. Three cervical vertebrae lay scattered above the gown’s yellowed lace collar. Four others nestled between the soiled padding and the edge of the pillow.

Gingerly, I peeled away coffin lining until the lower body was also exposed.

The wrist ends of the radii and ulnae poked from both sleeve cuffs. Hand bones lay tangled among the folds of the skirt and along the right side of the rib cage.

The gown was ankle-length, and tightly adhered to the leg bones. The ankle ends of the tibiae and fibulae protruded from the hemline, the foot bones below, in rough anatomical alignment.

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