The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(10)

Dr. Feist smiled.

Josie said, “Simplistic is better.”

“Very well,” Dr. Feist said. “Yes, the purple dot. That’s evidence of a Lewy body.”

Mettner’s thumbs froze. He looked up from his phone. “A what?”

Dr. Feist waved him over. He placed his phone on the counter and gazed into the microscope while Dr. Feist explained. “The simplistic explanation is that a Lewy body is an abnormal mass of protein that develops inside nerve cells. These deposits of protein affect chemicals in the brain and that leads to problems with cognition, movement, perception, behavior…”

She drifted off. Josie thought of what Noah had told her about Colette mistaking him for his father—not just mistaking him but going back in her mind to a time when she was married to his father. Sadness engulfed her. A woman as kind as Colette deserved better. She hadn’t deserved to lose her faculties just as her first grandchild was about to be born. Still, had she lived, there might have been treatments or medications that could have improved her quality of life or perhaps extended her periods of lucidity. Now they would never know.

Dr. Feist said, “Josie?”

Mettner had abandoned the microscope and picked up his phone again. He looked back and forth between the two women, waiting for more information to add to his notes.

Josie shook off her grief. “I’m fine. So, she had dementia? Alzheimer’s?”

“Well, Lewy body dementia is a common form of dementia. With Alzheimer’s, I would also expect to see amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain so this may have been Lewy body dementia.”

“May?”

“Well, the other diagnosis associated with findings of Lewy bodies is Parkinson’s. Did Mrs. Fraley have any noticeable physical symptoms? Poor balance or coordination? Trembling of her extremities? Stiffness of limbs or trunk?”

Josie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. Noah never mentioned that, and I never saw her struggle physically.”

“But you said her children were concerned about dementia,” Dr. Feist said.

Again, Josie mentally put aside the emotion that was in danger of taking over. Without meaning to, her eyes drifted once more to Colette’s covered body. She tried to speak but her voice came out as a rasp. Clearing her throat, she tried again, “Uh, yes, she was, um, having cognitive issues. Memory problems.”

Dr. Feist nodded. She stepped directly in front of Josie, blocking her view of Colette. Elegant fingers reached out and brushed Josie’s arm. “Well, I’d have to do an in-depth interview with her family to be absolutely sure, but my initial diagnosis would be Lewy body dementia. Although I’m not sure it’s really relevant now.”

Mettner’s thumbs stopped moving. “Not relevant?”

“Well, yes,” Dr. Feist said. “The finding of dementia is really incidental. It has nothing to do with her death and didn’t contribute to it at all, unless, of course, she wasn’t lucid when the she came into contact with the killer.”

Josie said, “Meaning she may have thought the killer was someone she knew, someone she trusted? Maybe if she had been lucid, she wouldn’t have let him into her house?”

Dr. Feist shrugged. “Perhaps. It really doesn’t matter though. As I told you, the cause of death is asphyxiation; manner of death is homicide. You’ve definitely got a murder on your hands. I’m so sorry, Josie.”





Seven





Mettner and Josie took separate cars to Colette’s house. The crime scene tape had already been taken down. Someone on the team must have removed it for Noah’s sake, knowing he would have to come back. Parking their cars, they walked up the front drive together. “Did you get anything from the neighbors?” Josie asked.

“Nothing,” Mettner said, pulling a key from his pocket as they reached the front door. Unlocking it, he let them in. There was a strange stillness inside that made Josie’s skin crawl. “Nothing unusual at all. Colette’s car was in the driveway all day yesterday. No one noticed any visitors or strangers in the area. The only call Colette made or took was one to Noah in the morning. It lasted about five minutes. From her cell phone. There’s no landline.”

“Did you check her call log going back a few weeks?” Josie asked.

“Of course. Gretchen handled that. We went back a month. There were calls to and from her children; a call to her family physician’s office; calls to three church friends and one call to a Thai takeout place.”

“No red flags.”

“Not one,” Mettner agreed.

The house had been left as Josie had found it. She knew her team had photographed and printed the place, but they had not cleaned up. That wasn’t their job. That would be up to the Fraley children when they were strong enough to face it. Josie followed Mettner out to the backyard where he pointed out an impression in a patch of dirt. It looked like something round had been pressed hard into the soil. Colette’s skull, Josie realized. “Someone held her down,” she said to Mettner.

He nodded. “I think so. And here, the grass makes it harder to see, but there are two indents in the ground.” Both he and Josie squatted down, and Josie saw where two smaller, rounded indentations tamped down the grass. If Josie were to lay down on her back, she’d be able to fit her skull into the larger indentation and the other two would fall roughly on either side of her hips.