A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(82)

A resurrected murder victim.

An azure path.

A tiny emerald orb.

Rainbow madness.

Airless captivity.

A pleading child.

Holy shitballs!

I rocketed to my bedroom and yanked open the top dresser drawer.

Yes!



* * *



Gursahani and Bernard had both recommended against operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment for a minimum of forty-eight hours. Out of deference to their training, I allowed Ryan to drive.

By three, we were at UNCC. Though summer session was in full swing, the lawns and walkways were largely deserted. Finding an ace parking spot was freakishly easy.

Crossing from the deck to the building housing the bio-anthropology lab, we saw no students throwing Frisbees to each other or to their dogs. No undergraduates shooting the breeze or hurrying between classes. Here and there, we passed a grad student stooped under the weight of an overloaded backpack, a faculty member lugging a battered briefcase. Most of the latter I knew, some I didn’t. One, a physics professor, wished me an uneventful Friday the thirteenth.

The interior of the Friday Building was blessedly arctic. We rode the elevator to four, and I unlocked the door to the lab. After turning on the overheads, I used another key to open a metal cabinet. Ryan settled in a chair and watched silently.

I removed a small Dremel cutting tool from the cabinet’s top shelf, the kind used by most DNA labs, and grabbed a packet of Carborundum sandpaper. Taking my supplies to a workstation, I lifted the protective cover from the microscope, readied a set of glass slides, and sat down. Ryan pulled out his phone and began scrolling.

After gloving, I slipped a small Tupperware tub from my purse and removed its single tissue-wrapped item. The slender segment of long bone looked worryingly less substantial than I remembered.

Placing the specimen on the scope’s platform, I leaned in to the eyepiece. With a few adjustments to lighting and magnification, details snapped into focus.

The charring was more superficial than I’d suspected upon first seeing the fragment beside the Cleveland County dumpster. Tooth marks were apparent that hadn’t been visible in the dimness under the camo netting.

I slid the partial tibia its entire length, millimeter by millimeter, noting details. Then I removed, measured, and photographed it, marveling at my foresight in holding the fragment back from Slidell.

“Skinny let you keep that?” Ryan was again watching me.

“Not exactly,” I said.

Then it was showtime.

After setting several sheets of sandpaper to soak, I inserted a fine-edged blade into the handheld rotary saw. A quick buzz through the middle of the shaft, then I cut a series of vertical slices. Carefully lining them up on a tray, I began polishing each, starting with rough grit, then easing through sheets with finer and finer coarseness.

When satisfied that my thin sections were adequately smooth and, well, thin, I inserted the first slide under the lens, set the power to 100X, and maxed the brightness, so light would pass through the specimen.

“Explain again what you’re looking for.” Ryan had crossed the room to stand behind me.

“Human cortical bone—”

“The dense part on the outside.”

“Yes. It’s made up of Haversian systems, or osteons, each with a central canal surrounded by concentric layers, or lamellae, of compact bone tissue. When magnified, that’s the arrangement.” I pointed to a poster hanging on the wall by the door.

“Looks like a moonscape of closely packed volcanoes.”

“Exactly. Ungulate bone, that of hoof-toed mammals, has a plexiform, or columnar, structure. When magnified, it’s more like that.” Pointing to a second poster.

“Looks like layers of sausage with bubbles trapped in and between.”

I’d never thought of it that way but couldn’t disagree. Barely breathing, I reengaged with the eyepiece and fine-tuned the focus.

“Crap.”

“What?”

“Sausage all the way.”

“Meaning?”

“Based on estimated size and shape were the bone complete, I think it belonged to a young Odocoileus virginianus.”

“Which is?”

“Bambi.”

“A white-tailed deer.”

I nodded, emotions circling, unsure where to land. Mercifully, the fragment hadn’t come from an immature human skeleton.

“So it’s not a kid,” Ryan said.

“No. But that’s not true of the incisors and molars in that duct-taped pouch.”

“Those teeth definitely came from a child?”

“Yes. Damn it to hell!” Way too harsh.

“It’s not the end of the world.” Ryan placed a calming hand on my shoulder.

“But it is. What physical evidence do I have? This fragment was my last hope, and it’s from an animal. The human teeth were snatched before I could even take pictures. I photographed the folder and the articles on missing kids, but those images are gone with my laptop.”

“You have—”

“I have zero!”

The lab hummed quietly. The building.

“I know what you need,” Ryan said, tightening his fingers.

“How can you think about sex?”

“Let’s go.”