Spider Bones (8 page)

I lifted the cover.

The remains were as I remembered, skull shattered, lower arms and hands and both feet missing, cortical surfaces darkly mottled and covered by pink-white mold and charred muck.

Working silently, Danny and I reassembled what was left of the man so long buried in North Carolina. Skull. Torso. Arms. Legs.

When the skeleton was arranged anatomically, we ran inventory, with Danny naming bones and me recording. Though I’d done a preliminary assessment at Sugarman’s, his would be the analysis of record.

Inventory finished, he went through the same steps I’d followed at the funeral home. With the same findings.

The remains were those of a male who died between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Race remained elusive.

“Nothing to exclude Spider Lowery,” Danny said.

“And nothing to positively ID him.”

“Teeth are out.”

“We might spot root fragments when we X-ray. Or we could compare alveolar configurations.” I referred to the shape of the tooth sockets.

Danny shook his head. “The Form 603 is strictly narrative.”

Danny meant Lowery’s military dental record, typically containing diagrams, called odontograms, X-rays, and information about the patient’s care, identity of dentist, when, where, et cetera.

“Why no X-rays?” I asked. “Wasn’t every soldier given a dental exam at induction?”

“Theoretically, yes. If not at his or her induction center, maybe in boot camp, maybe in-country, at Bien Hoa Air Base, for example. But it didn’t always happen.”

“You’re suggesting Lowery slipped through the cracks?”

“Maybe. Here’s another possibility. Troops reporting to a new duty station often carried their own records with them. It helped with in-processing if medical and dental information arrived at the same time as the soldier.”

I saw where Danny was going. “But that didn’t always happen either.”

“No. Sometimes paperwork caught up later. Maybe Lowery’s records arrived in Vietnam after he was killed and his body was shipped home.”

“Any way to tell from the file if X-rays ever existed?”

“Not really. Say a soldier had a periapical or a bitewing done. The X-rays might have been attached to the folder using a two-hole punch. Or they might have been placed into a small manila envelope and added to the file loose. Either way, the films could be lost or misplaced.”

Sudden ominous thought. “Or deliberately removed?”

Something flicked in Danny’s eyes, vanished before I could read it.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I suppose.” Danny lifted and gently scraped at a skull fragment, much as I’d done at Sugarman’s. “Fire damage.”

“Consistent with the reported chopper crash,” I said. “As are the missing hands and feet and the cranial fractures.”

“The biological profile, the trauma, the timing, the body recovery location. It all fit. Thus the ID at Tan Son Nhut back in sixty-eight.”

“Johnson, Dadko, and some writing-challenged medical officer shipped this guy home as Spider Lowery.”

“Weickmann.”

“What?”

“The medical officer’s name was Weickmann.”

“You could read that scrawl?”

“Years of practice.”

“Whatever. Prints from my Quebec floater say they were wrong.”

“Nam was exploding in sixty-eight. The system was overwhelmed.”

Indeed.

Early in the war, a single facility processed all Americans killed in Southeast Asia. When fatalities soared in the spring of ’67, it became apparent that the
status
could no longer be
quo.
Cramped and located in a congested part of the base, the Tan Son Nhut mortuary was inefficient, inadequate, and a hazard to health.

As a result, a second mortuary was opened at the Da Nang Air Base. Beginning in June 1967, remains recovered in the I Corps tactical zone went to Da Nang.

But the Tet offensive shot numbers into the biosphere. In February 1968, the two mortuaries processed roughly three thousand sets of remains, a total greater than for any comparable period to that point.

The upshot was the construction of a modern twenty-table facility on a new patch of ground at Tan Son Nhut. The new facility became operational in August 1968.

Spider Lowery’s Huey crashed at Long Binh in January of that year, shortly after Tet and eight months before the revamped Tan Son Nhut mortuary came online.

In the chaos of war, a mistake had been made.

At a little past one Danny and I took a break. Wanting to accomplish as much as possible that day, we passed up a nice lunch at the Officers Club or the Mamala Bay Golf Course in favor of a quick pizza at the BX. The food hole. There’s a reason for the nickname.

While driving back to the CIL, I called Katy. To describe her as unhappy would be like saying Nixon was a bit bummed by the tapes.

By two fifteen Danny and I were back with 2010-37. For the next two hours we scraped desiccated flesh and fabric from bone, a job I find excruciatingly tedious. And the smell is revolting.

Adipocere is a waxlike substance formed by the hydrolysis of fat during decomposition. I’d about had it when a small chunk of the stuff dropped into the sink from the fragment of upper jaw I was scrubbing. I watched water eddy around it, swirling bits away and down into the drain.

I shifted my gaze to the newly exposed facial architecture. None of the cheekbone survived, and the zygomaxillary suture was unremarkable.

I rotated the fragment.

The upper palate was broad, its intersecting sutures largely unfused.

I inserted my probe into one of the empty tooth sockets. Another crumb of adipocere popped free. My eyes followed its flight path into the sink.

The original chunk had now been reduced by half. I was returning my attention to the maxilla when something caught my attention, more a glint of light than a visual impression.

Reaching down, I scooped the remainder of the original chunk onto my glove. When I poked, the thing split into two halves.

An object lay glistening in my glove.

“W
HATCHA GOT?” DANNY NOTICED ME STARING AT MY PALM.

I extended my hand.

Whipping off his glasses, Danny brought his nose to within inches of my find. Seconds passed.

“Flip her over.”

I turned the thing with my probe. “Look familiar?”

“Nope.”

“Think it’s something?”

“Everything’s something.”

“Profound.”

“Looks like metal. Where was it?”

“Enveloped in adipocere packing the basicranium, below the palate.”

“Good eye.”

“Thanks.”

“M’lady’s penchant for shiny things pays off. Let’s scope it.”

We did, at increasing powers of magnification.

The object was roughly five millimeters long by three millimeters wide by a millimeter or so thick, and appeared to be made of gold. Its shape was irregular, with a lopsided glob on one side and two tapering projections on the other.

“Looks like a duck with a wide-open beak.”

The image didn’t work for me.

I rotated the thing ninety degrees. Danny took another turn squinting through the eyepiece.

“Now it’s a mushroom with two pointy stems.”

I looked. “I can see that. Any idea what it is?”

“Not really.”

“A chip from a filling or crown?”

“Ehhh.” Danny scrunched his face.

“What? Ehhh?”

“Looks too thin and too flat.”

Danny’s eyes flicked to the wall clock. Mine followed.

Five forty-five. I hadn’t noticed the lab grow quiet. Or realized we were now alone.

“Quitting time?” I asked, knowing the answer.

Though Danny had been married almost twenty years now, he and his wife still coochie-cooed like newlyweds. At times I found their giddy-gooey-bliss act irritating as hell. Mostly I envied them.

“Quitting time.” Sheepish grin. Or horny. Or hungry. “Aggie’s making Salisbury steak.”

Danny sealed the mushroom-duck thing inside a baggy. Back in his office, he locked it in a desk drawer.

“Tomorrow we can pick Craig’s brain.” Craig Brooks was one of the three CIL dentists.

After removing our lab coats we headed out, Danny toward beef and gravy in Waipio, I toward gloom in Lanikai Beach.

Katy was on a lounge chair by the pool. I took a moment to observe her through the sliding glass door.

Katy wasn’t listening to her iPod, talking on her cell phone, surfing or blogging with her laptop. No book or magazine lay in her lap. Dressed in the same tank and drawstring pants she’d worn the night before, she simply sat staring out to sea.

In a word, she looked miserable.

Again I was swept by a feeling of helplessness. I knew only time would ease my daughter’s pain, and that a week had yet to pass since news of Coop’s death. I also knew the delivery of that news had been cold and impersonal.

Still.

Steeling myself, I exited to the lanai.

“How you doing, tough stuff?” A childhood endearment.

“Ready for the play-offs.” Flat.

“Where did you go today?” Dropping into the chair beside Katy’s.

“Nowhere.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Got any thoughts on dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

“No I don’t.”

Score one for Katy.

“I’m sure there’s something in the kitchen that I could throw together. Danny bought out the market.”

“Whatever.”

“Or I could drive into Kailua for more sushi.”

“Look, Mom. I know you mean well. But the thought of food revolts me right now.”

You have to eat. I didn’t say it.

“Anything I can do to perk you up? A little Groucho?” I raised my brows and flicked an imaginary cigar.

“Just let me be.”

“I feel so bad.”

“Not bad enough to stay home.”

It felt like a slap. My expression must have said so.

“I’m sorry.” Katy’s hand fluttered to her mouth, froze, as though uncertain of the purpose of its trip. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.”

“It’s just . . .” Her fingers curled. “I feel such rage and there’s nowhere to point it.” Her fist pounded one knee. “At dumb-ass Coop for going to Afghanistan? At the Taliban for gunning him down? At God for letting it happen? At myself for giving a shit?”

Katy swiveled toward me. Though dry-eyed, her face was pallid and tight.

“I know anger and self-pity are pointless and counterproductive and self-destructive and blah blah blah. And I’m really trying to pull out of my funk. I am. It’s just that, right now, life sucks.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Have you ever had someone just blasted off the face of the earth? Someone you really cared about?”

I had. My best friend, Gabby. Cops I’d worked with and cared about. Eddie Rinaldi in Charlotte. Ryan’s partner, Jean Bertrand. I didn’t say it.

“Look, Mom. I know you’ve come here to do a job. And I know Coop’s death is not your fault. But you’re gone all day, then you get back all sunshine and Hallmark compassion.” She threw up both hands. “I don’t know. You’re in the zone so you take the hit.”

“I’ve taken worse.”

Wan smile.

Turning from me, Katy fidgeted with the tie at her waist, finger twisting and retwisting the string.

Overhead, palm fronds clicked in the breeze. Down at the shore, gulls cawed.

Katy was right. I’d dragged her thousands of miles, then dumped her in a place she knew nothing about. Yes, she was twenty-four, a big girl. But right now she needed me.

The familiar old dilemma knotted my gut. How to balance motherhood and job?

My mind flailed for solutions.

Work alternating days at the CIL? Half days?

Impossible. I’d come to Honolulu at JPAC expense. And Plato Lowery was anxious for an answer.

Take Katy to the CIL with me?

Definitely a bad idea.

I started to speak. “Maybe I could—”

“No, Mom. You have to go to work. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“It helps to stay busy.” Gently.

I braced for incoming. Didn’t happen.

“Yes,” Katy said. “It does.”

Suggestions leaped to mind.

No!
yipped a wise sector of gray cells.
Give her time. Space.

Rising, I hugged Katy’s shoulders. Then I went inside, changed to shorts, and strolled down to the beach.

The sun rode low, streaking the horizon and ocean tangerine and pink. The sand felt warm and soft underfoot, the breeze feathery on my skin.

Walking the water’s edge, childhood memories popped into my brain. Summers at Pawleys Island. My sister, Harry. Gran. My mother, Katherine Daessee Lee.

Daisy.

Triggered by the setting and my recent encounter with Katy, synapses fired images and emotions.

My mother’s eyes, green like my own. Sometimes radiant. Sometimes cool, refusing to engage.

A child’s confusion.

Which mother today?

A woman driven by social pretension? The newest spa, the trendiest restaurant, the charity event receiving current social column ink.

A woman in seclusion? Shades drawn, bedroom door locked, sobbing or silence within.

How I hated Daisy’s frantic party mode. How I hated her withdrawal into her lilac-scented cell.

Gradually, closed doors and distant eyes became the norm.

As a child I’d loved my mother fiercely. As an adult I’d finally posed the raw question to myself: Did my mother ever love me?

And I’d faced the answer.

I didn’t know.

My mother loved my baby brother, Kevin. And my father, Michael Terrence Brennan. I was eight when both died, one of leukemia, one drunk at the wheel. The dual tragedies changed everything.

But did they? Or had Daisy always been mad?

Same answer. I didn’t know.

I wanted a closeness with my daughter that I’d been denied with my mother. No matter the irrationality of Katy’s behavior or the unreasonableness of her need, I’d be there for her.

But how?

The cadence of the waves triggered no revelations.

Katy was gone from the lanai when I arrived back at the house. She appeared as I was washing my feet at the outdoor shower.

“You’re right. Moping is stupid.”

I waited.

“Tomorrow I’ll go parasailing.”

“Sounds good.” It didn’t. I preferred Katy safely grounded, not dangling a hundred feet in the air.

“Or I’ll sign up for one of those helicopter rides over a volcano.”

“Mm.” I turned off the faucet.

“Listen, Mom. I really am grateful for this trip. Hawaii is awesome.”

“And I’m grateful you’re here.”

“I took a dozen shrimp from the freezer.”

“Fire up the barbie?” Delivered in my very best Aussie.

“Aye, mate.”

Katie raised a palm. I high-fived it.

One dozen turned into two.