The Blessed Bones

by Kathryn Casey

  “Max had to swing by the sheriff’s office for a meeting. He said he’d check in with you for an update later,” Doc said. “By the way, I looked in on your mom earlier. You were sound asleep. Her condition doesn’t appear to have changed. No evidence of more strokes, which is good. As I said, you could have gone home to bed. I told you she was stable for the night.”

  “Yes, I remember that.” I felt wrinkled and worn. My uniform’s starched collar stuck to me, and I wondered if I’d drooled on it during the night. However uncomfortable, I’d managed a few hours of sleep.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother, Chief Jefferies.” Crawford had such a deep voice that he sounded as if he’d just downed half a bottle of whiskey and smoked a carton of cigarettes. “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “Thanks, but Doc is taking good care of her.”

  “Actually, I’ve called in a neurologist who is going to work at stabilizing that brain swelling we discussed,” Doc explained. “He’ll be here late this morning. Once he assesses her, I’ll call and brief you.”

  “Good.” I considered asking more questions, but with Crawford at my side, it didn’t seem like the time. Although I did want to make sure those caring for my mother investigated every possibility. “Doc, Mother appears to have lost a significant amount of weight. I’m worried that she may have other issues that predate this stroke.”

  His face screwed up in thought. “I’m glad you mentioned that. Not having seen your mother in years, I didn’t realize.”

  “I thought that perhaps some other tests might be useful.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Wait just a minute. I’ll get on the computer and put in orders.”

  At that, Doc padded over to his office and closed the door. Through a window, I saw him sit at his computer.

  “Are you and your mother close?” Crawford asked, and I turned and looked at him. It seemed an odd question, perhaps inappropriate since we didn’t know each other well, and I was about to point that out when he mumbled, “I shouldn’t have asked. I was just… well, my own parents died years ago, and I…”

  “Yes, well, let’s talk about the case,” I said, redirecting him back to the autopsy table.

  “We’re taking the skeletons for a CT scan this morning,” Crawford said, peering down at the bones on the table. “Afterward, Doc will take tissue samples to send for tox screening, clean their bones and look for evidence of sharp- or blunt-force trauma.”

  I considered what Crawford had laid out. “The tox screen will take a while to get back, and in her condition, so much deterioration, it may not be reliable.”

  “Yes, of course. You’re right. But it may show something helpful.” As he had the day before, he peered down at her with incredible sadness.

  I watched him, waited, couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, and I said, “You know, I have the oddest feeling that there’s more going on than you’re admitting.”

  Crawford’s lips curled up slightly at the corners, but I wasn’t buying it. A faint flush spread upward from his shirt collar. “That’s absurd. I just—”

  “Why are you so invested in this case?” If eyes truly could burn holes, mine would have set him aflame.

  His response, a nervous chuckle, implied that I’d made a ridiculous suggestion, yet the flush had darkened, and so had his eyes. “This young woman, whoever she is, deserves justice. That’s all. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

  Of course I understood strong emotions. I felt them too. I wanted to find the person responsible as much as he did. But I couldn’t shake my suspicions. So I didn’t respond. Instead, I stared at him, didn’t make a sound. This worked with a lot of folks. Most people try to fill emptiness because the dead air troubles them. As a seasoned investigator, Crawford, of course, was wise to my tactic. While he squirmed slightly, he resisted any urge to talk.

  When he kept quiet, I took over again. “I am wondering if you have information you’re not sharing. Not if you have a crystal ball, but rather prior knowledge. Does this case remind you of another one? Maybe something you’ve worked on?”

  Crawford’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head, that slight smile still there, but fuming. “No. We don’t handle these types of cases at the US Marshal’s office, Chief. You know that.”

  I did know, but there had to be some reason. “Why, then? Do you think this is someone you know?”

  Crawford let loose a short huff, as if insulted. “If I knew who this was, if I could ID this body for you, I promise you that I would!” Dropping any pretense of finding me amusing, he seethed. “I will say this one more time: I don’t know who she is.”

  “And you’re here because?”

  “I want to help.” He shook his head at me, as if I were the most preposterous person. “Why is that impossible for you to believe? If you suddenly stopped being a cop, wouldn’t you feel a loss? Wouldn’t you still want to do what you’re good at? Have a purpose?”

  We glared at one another. He hadn’t said anything wrong. Not a single word. But rather than settle my concerns, Crawford’s responses had amplified them.

  Doc’s voice cut through the tension. “I’ve ordered everything for your mother, Clara, the whole shebang,” he called out as he sauntered back in. I watched Crawford, who smiled. Relieved, I thought, that we’d been interrupted.

  “Thanks, Doc. I’m sure Mother hasn’t had a check-up with a real doctor in…” I considered the options, that my family, like most of Alber’s citizens, rarely went to Gentile doctors and instead relied on Mother’s herbal remedies. “Probably never, actually.”

  “No, thank you, Clara. I should have done that last night. But now we’ll get to the bottom of this,” Doc said, nodding to the body as he hit a lever on the autopsy table that released brakes on all four wheels. “Help me push her to the CT suite. Let’s get this case moving.”

  As the tech worked the machine, the images on the screen were haunting. Crawford and I huddled behind Doc as the CT captured cross-sectional images of the woman’s skull and flashed the outlines of the bone in white on the dark screen. Doc had the tech examine the skull without the chunk first, then the chunk by itself. Then Doc used a fast-drying epoxy to bind them and scanned the repaired skull. Once he finished, he handed a disc with the images on it to Crawford. “You think this will work for the computer’s facial reconstruction program?” Doc asked. “Do you need anything else?”

  “This’ll work,” Crawford replied. It appeared that he’d set aside our argument. All of his attention was focused on the CT screen. “I’ll take off and email this to my friend at the state lab. Get him started. He’s waiting on it.”

  “We appreciate that, don’t we, Clara?” Doc prodded, and I gave the retired marshal a shrug in half agreement.

  “I know the chief is rooting for me,” Crawford said with a somewhat sardonic-looking grin. With that, he was gone.

  Once alone, Doc and I arranged the remainder of the skeleton on the scan bed, and the process started anew. “I wish you’d be friendlier with Marshal Crawford,” Doc mumbled as he stared at the screen. “He’s being of service.”

  “Doc, I don’t trust him. I can’t explain why not, but I’m not buying this boy scout routine of his.”

  Doc gave me an exasperated over-the-shoulder glance, an irritated one. “Clara, we both know that we need the help. We can’t afford to turn away offers like Marshal Crawford’s. Last time I tried to get the state lab to do something cutting-edge like this for me, my case went to the bottom of the queue. It took months to get a report back.”

  With Crawford gone and Doc lecturing me, I’d begun to wonder why I was digging in my heels. Maybe it didn’t matter why Ash Crawford wanted to help, only that he could help. After all, we had a dead woman and child, most likely a murderer to find.

  “Okay, Doc. You’ve made your point. I still don’t like it, but I’ll do my best to work with Crawford, to speed this up. Now, tell me what you’ve found. Are you getting any ide
as about height, race, age?”

  “Yes, look here.” Doc pointed out the ends of the thigh bones, then traced the upper right arm bone down to the elbow.

  Unsure what I was supposed to be looking at, I asked, “What should I be seeing?”

  “The growth plates aren’t closed in the long bones. And the ribs where they meet her breastbone? Rounded. Smooth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That this woman is young.”

  Doc went into a bit of a mini-lecture on how leg and arm bones grow and how the plates close by age twenty-five or so. He talked about how ribs wear and sharpen with age. Our Lady of the Mountain, he said, wasn’t truly a lady at all: rather a teenager.

  “How young?” I asked.

  Doc screwed his lips up and considered. “This is just an estimate, of course, but somewhere between fourteen and seventeen years old.”

  “That’s young to be pregnant,” I remarked, and Doc agreed. “What about race? Height?”

  “Give me a minute.” Using a scale on the CT scanner, Doc measured the humerus. “Her height is approximately five times the length of the bone. So I’d say she was somewhere around five feet two inches. Again, that’s a rough estimate.” Silence, while he brought up images of the skull yet again, turned them on the screen to look at it from all angles.

  “Look here, Clara,” he said. “Based on the shape of the eye sockets, the narrow nose aperture, she’s likely Caucasian. I can’t be certain without DNA analysis, of course, but the balance of probability tips that way, especially considering her prairie dress and the demographics of the area.”

  I’d been taking notes, and I looked down at the pad. “So our victim is likely a white teenage girl, somewhere around fourteen to seventeen, approximately five feet two inches tall with long brown hair. Based on her prairie dress, she’s most likely from a polygamous town. Is all of that correct?”

  Doc considered for a moment, then nodded. “That’s my best guess.”

  “Anything else we can figure out here?”

  “Once we’re done, you can help me load her up and bring her back to the lab,” Doc said. “I’ll get her back on the autopsy table and gather the samples to send to the lab. I should be able to get mitochondrial DNA from her teeth, grind off some pulp. I read about that last night. Decided to do it here instead of sending her to the lab.”

  “Any way to figure out how long she’s been dead? Buried?” I needed some kind of a timeline to use to narrow the cases down when I considered possible matches. Was I looking for a teenager who disappeared decades, years, or months ago?

  Doc’s brow creased and he took a deep, staggered breath. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I’d guess that she’s been out there for at least a year. Based on the acidity of the soil, the condition of the body, the discoloration of the exposed bones and the mummification of the remaining tissue. That some of the dress has survived, not deteriorated away, I don’t think longer than five years. But I’ll request a test to gauge the nitrogen level in the bones to be sure. That’ll give us more information.”

  “What about the baby?” I asked.

  Doc inspected the images taken by the CT. For a while, silence, then he said, “It’s a boy.”

  “Oh.” It felt like those three words had knocked the air out of me. I thought of ultrasounds where mothers and fathers waited in high expectation to hear the three words that revealed the sex of their much-anticipated offspring. “How far along was the pregnancy?”

  Doc looked at the infant’s skull again, lined up a ruler to measure and computed a formula on a pad of paper. “The circumference of the skull is about thirty-two centimeters. What I speculated on the scene was right. This child is somewhere around full-term.”

  “Great. That helps.” I was doing a mental inventory of what I knew about Christina Bradshaw. None of what Doc had said ruled her out. She was fifteen when she disappeared, slight build, just a bit over five feet tall. Maybe it was her. Could she have lived longer than we believed, long enough to carry a baby nearly to birth?

  Doc frowned. The case bothered him. It bothered me, too. I thought of Ash Crawford again. Could it be that he was just as affected by the girl’s death as we were? Was it as simple as that?

  “Wish I had more,” Doc said.

  “No indication of how she died?”

  “No. I’ll have to get a good look at the bones and wait on the toxicology. Maybe something will show up.”

  “This is a good start.” I slipped my notebook into my bag and grabbed my cell. “Call me if you have any more thoughts on the case, if you see anything to indicate manner or cause of death.”

  “Sure, Clara, of course. And I’ll let you know about your mother’s test results, what the neurologist has to say.”

  “That works, Doc. Thanks.” Halfway to the door, he called out to me.

  “Clara!” I glanced back and Doc gave me a stern look. “I know you cops don’t always play well together. That police officers can be protective about cases. Not welcome interference from other agencies.”

  I knew where this was going.

  “Let Crawford open doors for us, so we can get to the bottom of this,” Doc ordered. “This may be your case and Max’s that Crawford has forced his way into, but it’s really not about you. It’s about a dead girl and her unborn baby.”

  Twelve

  The other woman, the sister-wife, slipped a sliver of ice into the girl’s parched mouth. She sucked it down. “Not so fast, Violet. Let it melt,” the woman whispered. “Let it moisten your mouth.”

  “Why can’t I have anything to drink?” she asked.

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know. I do what I’m told. She said only the ice.”

  Violet gazed up at the strange woman. Between contractions, the girl’s body ached but at least the pain lessened. “Please, untie me. I can’t escape in this condition. I can’t even walk.”

  The woman’s frown squeezed her eyes nearly shut. “No. You don’t know what they’re like. What he would do to me.”

  “Please, I…” before she could finish the sentence, the woman had wandered off, leaving her alone again with only her thoughts. Exhausted, she closed her eyes. Soon the dreams continued, memories of that place and what had happened there. Violet pictured one particular day, the one when she’d discovered the hidden staircase.

  By then, Samantha had been moved upstairs to the birthing rooms. Violet had wanted to visit her, but the only way up was a rickety elevator, one kept locked. Nurse Gantt wore the key on a chain around her neck. As painful as it was, Violet had slowly given up hope of ever seeing her friend again. Then, that afternoon, someone left the storeroom door ajar. Violet peeked in and saw stairs. After she glanced around to make sure no one was watching, she climbed the steep steps. The third-floor door opened on to a deserted hallway. The girl paused, unsure what to do. She couldn’t tell which of the hallway’s three doors led to Samantha’s room. If Violet stumbled into the wrong one, whoever was inside could report her. If they did, she’d be in trouble.

  As she hid behind the staircase door and pondered what to do, another door swung open, and Nurse Gantt walked out. Violet watched through barely a slit in the staircase door.

  “Oh, we can’t allow that,” Nurse Gantt said, talking to whoever was inside the room. “You know the rules. Visitors aren’t allowed.”

  The girl inside the room responded, saying something Violet couldn’t quite make out. Was it Samantha?

  “No, not even Violet,” Nurse Gantt responded, her voice projecting weariness at the question. “When I say, ‘No visitors,’ I mean: no visitors!”

  That has to be Samantha’s room, Violet thought.

  Glowering, the nurse slammed the door shut and sashayed down the hall to the elevator, her ample hips rocking back and forth in her too-tight surgical scrubs. Once inside, she pressed the button, and the cranky old thing groaned as it lumbered out of sight.

  When Violet slipped inside the room, Samantha sat
up in bed. She wore a faded gray cotton gown that tied in the back. It barely stretched over her distended belly.

  “Oh, I missed you so much!” Samantha cried out.

  Violet placed her finger across her lips and shushed her friend, then the girls hugged. Samantha felt good in her arms, but Violet thought her friend looked pale and unwell. “Why are you in bed? Are you okay?”

  “I guess. But I sleep a lot. They won’t let me get out of bed. I get in trouble if I do.”

  “Oh.” Violet thought back to when her mothers were pregnant, how they’d cooked and cleaned. She didn’t understand why Samantha was so confined. “Is something wrong with your baby that you have to be in bed?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are they being nice to you?”

  “I feel like a prisoner,” Samantha said, as she ran her hands over her baby bump, caressing it. “I don’t really want to give up my baby. Do you?”

  Violet shook her head, then she’d wrapped her arms around Samantha and held her as she’d wept.

  Thirteen

  “So, you’re still worried about Ash?” Max asked, his voice blaring over the SUV’s speakers.

  “Max, I can’t get past this. I think he’s hiding something.”

  This was a time when Max apparently didn’t share my concerns. “Clara, I’ve never heard anything about Ash Crawford that wasn’t positive. Always that he’s a good cop. Are you sure you’re not reading too much into his reactions? Body language isn’t… I mean, folks don’t always act the way we think they should.”

  “No, they don’t. And I don’t have any evidence.”

  I’d already filled Max in on Mother’s condition, that I’d spent the night at her bedside. In the car, I turned onto the main road leading to Alber, on my way to the shelter, to take a shower and change into a clean uniform.

  “Well, I don’t know what to do about this. It’s not that I don’t believe you, but there’s nothing solid. And maybe I don’t see it as the problem you do. After all, Ash is helping, and maybe you should—”