The Wrong Bones (Widow's Island #10)(3)

Startled, Tessa dropped the flap and fell backward. The sight was not what she’d been expecting at all.

Bones can’t hurt you.

She lifted the lid again.

Logan squatted next to her. “What the . . . ?” His dark brow lowered. “It’s a box of bones.”

Tessa took several photos of the box with her phone to mark its location.

“I’ll carry it.” Logan held out his hands and curled his fingers in a gimme gesture.

Tessa gave him a pair of gloves, which he tugged on before picking up the box. Then they returned to the Range Rover, and he drove her through the rear gate of the cemetery and back to the graveside. They got out and walked to the grave. Tessa picked up the abandoned shovel with gloved hands, taking care not to touch the handle. She hadn’t seen gloves on the suspect, and she was hoping to lift fingerprints.

The suspected robber had dug only a small hole, about three feet square and two feet deep, in the center of an unmarked grave.

“This grave is fresh,” Logan said. “The sod hasn’t taken root, and there’s no headstone.”

Headstones weren’t usually erected until at least six months after a burial. The ground needed time to settle.

“A fresh grave would be easier to dig up.” Tessa looked into the hole, but it was empty. The robber hadn’t dug nearly far enough to reach the coffin. She glanced back at the box of bones and understood. “The suspect wasn’t trying to dig up a coffin. He or she wanted to bury the bones in the grave.”





2


Worried, Logan watched Tessa pace back and forth in an examination room of the island’s only medical clinic. A bruise was forming on her cheekbone.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, pointing to his own face.

She waved off his concern. “I’ve had worse.”

They had taken formal statements from the three boys and driven them home before meeting the doctor at his office with the bones. It was now nearly midnight, and Logan was jonesing for coffee.

The box of bones sat open on an examination table. Dr. Henry Powers repositioned his gooseneck medical lamp to shine into the box and donned gloves. Henry was the island’s only doctor, and he’d unknowingly inherited the job of coroner along with his medical practice. “The bones will be sent to a forensic anthropologist. But you probably won’t get the analysis back for some time. Let me see if I can give you any information.”

Unless they found exigent circumstances to warrant asking for a rush, they’d have to wait their turn.

“First of all, let’s make one hundred percent sure it’s human.” Henry leaned over the box.

Logan had seen plenty of animal bones in the state forest. The bones of a raccoon’s paw looked like those from a child’s hand. A deer femur could be confused with a human one. He had no doubt the skull in the box was human.

Henry leaned over the box and pointed at the skull. “Turtle shells can be confused with human skull pieces, but an intact human skull is definitely distinctive.”

After photographing the bones in the box from multiple angles, Henry began to lay them out on the exam table in the general shape of a person, starting with the skull. A white sheet covered the table. Henry would send the sheet with the bones to the medical examiner’s office on the mainland to retain any trace evidence. He bent closer to examine the jawbone and teeth. “We’re lucky that most of the teeth are present. The teeth are straight, and there are several composite resin fillings. Look here.” Henry pointed to the back of the lower front teeth. “This metal bar is a permanent retainer. The victim wore braces at one point.”

“Someone cared about them enough to make sure they received good dental care,” Tessa said.

Henry added pieces of the neck, spine, and pelvis. “A female past puberty, likely older than twelve but younger than eighteen.”

Logan felt a little sick. A box of bones was impersonal, but arranged in the shape of a skeleton, the remains became very human. This victim had been a kid. Someone’s daughter. He pictured a little girl going to the dentist and picking a prize out of a box, then a teenager with a mouthful of braces.

An image of another dead child—a war victim he hadn’t been able to save—flashed in his mind. He felt the heat of the explosion on his skin, choked on the smoke and dust in the air, heard the screams of the wounded.

Stop!

He wasn’t in the army or Afghanistan. He breathed and focused on the room around him. The smell of disinfectant in the air. The slight earthy scent emanating from the box of bones. The sound of Henry moving around the exam table and muttering to himself. The squeak of Tessa’s rubber-soled boots on the tile floor.

The skeleton being pieced together on the exam table.

This child was long past saving, but Logan could help bring her justice.

Tessa made a note in her spiral notepad. Logan could read her scrawl upside down. Female teenager.

“Any idea how she died or how long she’s been dead?” Tessa lifted her pen and waited expectantly.

“Not yet.” Henry added more bones of the arms, legs, and pelvis. He filled in some ribs and portions of the spine. Becoming coroner might have been a surprise to Henry, but he clearly took the responsibility seriously. Logan was impressed with the doctor’s continuous efforts to expand his knowledge.