Buried (A Bone Secrets Novel 03) (17 page)

The senator was quiet for a moment. “I guess it’s the timing more than anything. And his phrasing that God will punish me. I don’t know what punishment is stronger than the death of a child.”

Governor Brody spoke low in the background.

“I’m getting to it, Phil,” the senator said. “Detective, this guy was arrested for trespassing at the capitol building, so there is a record of who he is. But after his arrest, I never saw him again. I haven’t contacted Salem police to try to track down the arrest record. I thought I’d run it by you first.”

Mason scribbled in his little flip book. “I’ll look into it. You said this happened within a few months of…of the disappearance date? How close to the date do you think the arrest was?”

“I’m guessing within four weeks.”

Mason wrapped up his power phone call. The senator didn’t have much other information. He scanned his notes from the call, an odd buzzing in his stomach. It wasn’t the buzz he got when he knew he had a hot lead. This was different. This was a dire, impending buzz.

Or maybe his stomach felt that way because he was still outside the medical examiner’s building. And now he was late.

He hustled across the parking lot and through the double doors. The girl at the front desk waved him in. “They were just asking if I’d seen you. They’re in op six!” she hollered after him as he strode down the hall.

“Sorry!”

Mason took off his hat and wiped at the sweat on his temples. The building was icy cool compared to the stiff heat outside. He wrinkled his nose as
the smell
entered his nostrils. There was no getting away from it. Tonight, he’d have to wash his pants and shirt and take a shower before going to bed. It didn’t matter if
he was in the building for thirty minutes or three hours. The scent still clung. Dr. Campbell claimed the building had the best air filtration system available. And he didn’t doubt her. Clearly, nothing had been invented to eliminate the odor of decaying flesh.

He added a medical examiner’s perfect air filter system to his mental list of
how to make a million bucks
.

Mason paused outside of op six, took a deep breath through his mouth, and pushed the door open with his shoulder. Dr. Victoria Peres and Lacey Campbell were shoulder-to-shoulder, bent over a skull on one of the silver tables, as Dr. Peres pointed at the nasal opening. Dr. Campbell was nodding emphatically, her brows narrowed in concentration.

Scanning the room, Mason took in four other tables with full skeletons. Each arranged as if the person had simply lain down and his flesh had melted away.

How had they separated the skeletons?

The pit had been one giant hole. The bodies tossed in like trash, their bones and flesh commingling over the years.

“Mason. Over here.” Dr. Campbell gestured, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

Actually, he figured her eyes were already bright from her fascination with the case. It took a special breed of person to get excited over old bones. Dr. Campbell was one. Dr. Peres was another. They were so deep in bone heaven, they probably hadn’t noticed he was very late.

Dr. Peres nodded at him. “Detective.” She glanced at the clock on the wall.

Scratch that. The forensic anthropologist missed nothing.

He moved closer, his boots sounding too loud on the hard floor. “Morning, doctors.” He stopped next to Dr. Campbell
and forced himself to take a good look at the remains. The bones were a muddy brown, not the ivory color he’d expected. He glanced at the other tables. The other skeletons were the same. “Why are they dirty?”

Dr. Peres bristled and Dr. Campbell smiled, putting a calming hand on the other woman’s arm. “They aren’t dirty. They absorbed the color of the dirt they were buried in for twenty years. It’s pretty common. And they’ve been cleaned. There was some tissue still attached in a few places.”

Mason grimaced. “Tissue? There was still flesh left?”

“A bit. A simple soaking in a few different solutions takes care of it.”

Mason knew she’d purposefully left out details. In the past, he’d stepped into the room when bones had been simmering to remove the flesh. It’d smelled like a restaurant. He swallowed hard.

“How’d you get them separated? How do you know you have the right bones grouped together?” he asked.

“Very carefully.” Dr. Peres spoke. “I’m glad I was there for the unearthing. That’s where the first mistakes are always made. Luckily, he’d buried them one at a time. There was a small layer of dirt between each skeleton, enough to help us keep each separate.”

“Layers of dirt? How long apart between each burial?”

Dr. Peres bit her lip, and Mason knew she was frustrated that she didn’t have a perfect answer for him.

“I can’t tell. We can have each dirt sample analyzed, but I’m comfortable saying all five were buried within a ten-year period.”

Mason nodded. Once they had identified the bodies, he had a hunch each one would have been reported missing around the same set of years. He needed to get them identified first.

“What else can you tell me?” He pulled out his notebook and pen.

Dr. Peres’s face shifted into lecture mode. “This is number three. He’s a Caucasian male, approximately eighteen to twenty-five. Six feet tall with a well-healed fracture of his tibia.” Dr. Peres pointed at a bone in the lower leg. Mason bent closer and saw the thickened, slightly lumpy area along the sleek bone. “It can take three to five years for a break to look this good. It’s an old one…compared to this one.” Dr. Peres moved to a different table and indicated the smaller lower arm bone.

The bone had a jagged break that ran across the bone. “This happened pretty close to death. And this particular break on the ulna usually indicates a defensive wound.” She lifted her arms and crossed them in front of her face as if protecting her head. “Imagine defending yourself against a swing from a baseball bat. Where is the impact going to be?”

Mason nodded. Her visual worked very well for him. “But how do you know it didn’t happen while transporting the bones? Old bones have got to be brittle. I wouldn’t think it’d take much to accidentally break one.”

Dr. Peres smiled and picked up the thin arm bone. “Every break tells me a story. See here?” She ran a gloved finger along the break. “See the darkness? It’s a stain from the bleeding because of the break. The broken ends would be a lighter color than the outer bone if it happened during the recovery or transport because there would be nothing to seep in and stain the break. And see how notched the broken surface is? When fresh bone breaks, the ends are jagged and angled. When a bone breaks long after death, the break is almost flat, because the bone is brittle…like a dry stick snapping. Ever try to break a green tree branch?
It’s a jumbled mess. A fresh stick will never break cleanly. Same with bone.”

Mason blinked, remembering his attempts to break some small tree branches to roast marshmallows with while camping. It’d been a disaster. He’d used an ax to finish the job. “So someone took a bat or mallet to him, and he tried to protect himself?”

Nodding, Dr. Peres gently laid the bone back in its place. “He was hit with something hard. And his skull shows three blows that are perimortem…close to time of death. I can’t tell you what the weapon was other than it was large and blunt. The imprints on the skull are too large to be a hammer.” She lifted the skull, showing Mason three impact sites with radiating fractures.

“Were those enough to kill him?”

“Easily.”

Had the man been beaten to death?

“But I don’t think that’s what killed him.” She rotated the skull and showed him a small circle at the back of the skull. “This is probably your cause of death.”

“Christ,” muttered Mason. “Entry or exit wound?”

“Entry,” stated Dr. Peres. “See how there’s no beveling of the bone around the wound? Entry bullet holes are flat around the holes. The bevel is inside. I didn’t find an exit wound or the bullet. It either exited through the eye or never exited at all.” She frowned. “Though I would have found the bullet if it had stayed inside.”

Mason made a few notes. “Do the others have gunshot wounds?”

“Three of the skulls do,” answered Dr. Campbell.

“Do you have ages for the rest of them?”

“They’re all in the same age range,” said Dr. Peres. “Three are white, two African American.”

Mason looked up from the notes he was scribbling. “Oh? An equal-opportunity killer?”

Dr. Campbell’s eyes narrowed. “Does the race matter?”

“Usually killers will stick to one race. Not always but more often than not.”

“I prefer the word ancestry over race,” added Dr. Peres.

Mason held up his hands. “I just want to find who did this. Sorry I’m not the most PC person in the world. Frankly, I can’t keep up with what’s okay to say and what’s not. But yes, a pattern in the type of victims does help direct us to the killer.” He met both women’s gazes. “Now. Tell me how you can tell someone is black…African American…whatever. He’s been killed, and I want to find the murderer.”

The women exchanged a glance, and Dr. Campbell picked up the closest skull. “Common to African Americans is the wide nasal opening and the rectangular eye orbits.”

“Rectangular? Seriously?” Mason asked.

Dr. Peres picked up a different skull. “See? This one is Caucasian.”

Sure enough, the other skull had eye openings that looked more angular.

“There are many things to take into account when determining race,” said Dr. Campbell. “But the nose is one of the most useful.”

In Mason’s opinion, the noses were fucking gone. All that was left were holes. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

“Damn it.” He dug the phone out. It was the same unknown phone number from before. The senator.

“Callahan,” he answered, avoiding eye contact with Dr. Peres. No doubt he was getting the evil eye for answering his phone in the middle of her lecture.

“Detective, I thought I’d save you some time. I made some calls and tracked down the arrest record of the man I told you about earlier.”

Already?
Mason couldn’t get results that fast.

“I’m having a copy e-mailed to you. The man’s name was Jules Thomas.”

“Thank you, Senator. I’ll look it over.”

“Glad to be of help.” The senator signed off.

Mason slipped his phone back in his pocket, shaking his head. The man knew how to get things done. Fast.

“Senator?” asked Dr. Campbell. “Senator Brody?”

“Yes, your ex-boyfriend’s father. He dug up some information for me.” He didn’t volunteer more information. Dr. Campbell personally knew the senator and his son. If she had questions, she could ask them.

“I’ve enjoyed the anthropology lesson, but I need to head back to the office.” Mason touched the brim of his hat. “I look forward to your reports, Dr. Peres. As soon as we can figure out who these skeletons are and match them to missing persons’ records, we’ll figure out who did this to them. And who did it to that bus full of kids, too. Goodbye, Dr. Campbell.”

He kept his walk to a steady pace as he exited the operatory. Pushing open the door to the outside heat, he inhaled deeply three times.

Fresh, clean air.

Michael did a double tap on the desk bell for the second time. Jamie glanced around the small room. The little town’s only hotel turned out to be a bed-and-breakfast two buildings down from the restaurant. The house was charming, but it had that old lived-in smell to it. The one where you figure the carpets have been vacuumed twice a day but not cleaned in several years.

Michael looked ready to jump the counter and check them in himself. Jamie put a hand on his arm. “The woman at the sheriff’s office said to keep hitting the bell because the guy’s a little hard of hearing.”

Michael’s answer was to whack the bell again. Finally, a muffled voice came from upstairs.

“What’d he say?” Michael asked.

Jamie shrugged. “Beats me. But at least he heard us.”

Someone came slowly thumping down the stairwell. The cadence of the steps was odd, unrhythmic. A gray-haired man smiled at them as he rounded the corner. One of his legs was slightly shorter than the other and didn’t bend. Jamie responded to his contagious grin as he limped behind the counter.

“Well, you must be the two Sara called me about. She said you’d be checking in. You from Portland?”

The power of small towns.

“Yes. That’s us,” she replied. “Are you Chuck?”

His brown eyes beamed. And Jamie fell in love. If she could remember her grandfather, this is who she’d want him to be like. Smiley and kind. “I am. And I’ve got your room all ready for you.”

“That’s great,” said Michael, bending to grab his bag. “We’re bushed.”

Jamie froze. “Wait—”

Green eyes and brown eyes looked quizzically at her. The green ones twinkling innocently.

“We need two rooms,” she pleaded.

Chuck’s face fell. “Oh…well. Then we’ve got a problem. I’m full up.”

“Full? The whole place is full? I thought this town rarely got any visitors,” grinned Michael.

“Now, that’s true. But I’ve only got five rooms. And four are full. It’s kind of a busy week for me. The Hensens have relatives in town but no room to put them, so they take up two of my rooms. Jordeen Gold’s mother-in-law is here, but she won’t sleep at Jordeen’s because Jordeen is her son’s second wife, and she’s still rather partial to the first.” Chuck ticked off the rooms on his fingers. “And Bill Norman has been staying for the last two nights since his wife kicked him out. I figure he’ll be here another two nights. That’s usually about her limit.” He looked up with a grin. “That leaves one for you.”