Temperance Brennan 02 - Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs

Author:Kathy Reichs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1999-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

It went as I’d described to Katy, but for one major variation. There was stratigraphy. Below the body with the crab face I was shocked to find a second decomposing corpse. It lay on the bottom of the four-foot pit, facedown, arms tucked below its belly, at a twenty-degree angle to the body above.

Depth has its benefits. Though the upper remains had been reduced to bone and connective tissue, those below retained a large amount of flesh and soupy innards. I worked until dark, meticulously screening every particle of dirt, taking soil, flora, and insect samples, and transferring the corpses to body bags. The sheriff’s detective took videos and stills.

Sam, Baxter Colker, and Harley Baker watched from a distance, occasionally commenting or stepping forward for a better look. The deputy searched the surrounding woods with a Sheriff’s Department dog specially trained to alert to the smell of decomposition. Kim looked for physical evidence.

All to no avail. Except for the two bodies, nothing turned up. The victims had been stripped naked and dumped, robbed of everything that linked them to their lives. And as hard as I studied the details, neither the body positions nor anything I observed in the grave contour or fill revealed if the victims had been buried simultaneously, or if the upper corpse had followed at a later date.

It was almost eight when we watched Baxter Colker slam the door of the transport van and lock the handle in place. The coroner, Sam, and I were gathered beside the blacktop, above the dock where we’d moored the boats.

Colker looked like a stick figure in his bow tie and neatly pressed suit, his trousers belted high above the waist. While Sam had warned me of the Beaufort County coroner’s fastidiousness, I’d been unprepared for business attire at an exhumation. I wondered what the man wore to dinner parties.

“Well, that does her,” he said, wiping his hands on a linen handkerchief. Hundreds of tiny veins had burst and coalesced in his cheeks, giving his face a bluish cast. He turned to me.

“I guess I’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.” It was more a statement than a question.

“Whoa. Hold on. I thought these cases were going to the forensic pathologist in Charleston.”

“Well, now, I can send these cases up to the medical college, ma’am, but I know what that gentleman is going to tell me.” Colker had been “ma’aming” me all day.

“That’s Axel Hardaway?”

“Yes, ma’am. And Dr. Hardaway is going to tell me that I need an anthropologist because he doesn’t know beans about bones. That’s what he’s going to tell me. And I understand Dr. Jaffer, the regular anthropologist, isn’t available. Now, where does that leave these poor folks?” He waved a bony hand at the van.

“No matter who does the skeletal analysis, you’re still going to want a full autopsy on the second body.”

Something startled in the river, breaking the moonlight into a thousand little pieces. A breeze had picked up and I could smell rain in the air.

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