Bloodstream

by Tess Gerritsen

  “That doesn’t tell me how long these particular skeletons have been lying in the ground. When did these individuals die?”

  There was silence.

  Lucy did not seem disappointed by their lack of response. “The correct answer,” she said, “is: We can’t tell. After a hundred years, some skeletons may crumble to dust, while others will show almost no weathering. But we can still draw a number of conclusions.” She reached across the table and picked up a tibia. “Note the flaking and peeling in some of the long bones, where circumferential lamellar bone has natural cleavage lines. What does this indicate to you?”

  “Changing wet and dry periods,” said the Lucy clone.

  “Right. These remains were temporarily protected by the coffin. But then the coffin rotted, and the bones were exposed to water, especially near that streambed.” She glanced at a young man Claire recognized as one of the grad students who’d helped excavate the site. With his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and three gold earrings in one ear, he could easily have passed for a rogue sailor in an earlier century. The one incongruous note to his appearance was his scholarly wire-rim spectacles. “Vince,” said Lucy, “tell us about the flood data for that area.”

  “I’ve searched back as far as the records go, to the 1920s,” said Vince. “There were two episodes of catastrophic flooding: in the spring of 1946, and then again, this past spring, when the Locust River overflowed its banks. I assume that’s how this burial site became exposed. Erosion of the Meegawki streambed due to heavy rain.”

  “So we have two recorded periods of site saturation, followed by drier years, which have caused this flaking and peeling of cortical bone.” Lucy set down the tibia and picked up the femur. “And now for the most interesting finding of all. I’m referring to this gash here, on the back of the femoral shaft. It looks like a cut mark, but the bone is so badly weathered, the gash has lost its definition. So we can’t tell if there’s been a green bone response.” She noticed Lincoln’s questioning look. “A green bone response is what happens when living bone bends or twists while being stabbed. It tells you whether the bone was cut postmortem or antemortem.”

  “And you can’t tell from this bone?”

  “No. It’s been exposed too long to the elements.”

  “So how can you determine if this was a homicide?”

  “We have to turn our attention to the other bones. And here we’ll find your answer.” She reached for a small paper bag. Tipping it sideways, she emptied the contents on the table.

  Small bones clattered out like gray dice.

  “The carpals,” she said. “These are from the right hand. Carpals are quite dense—they don’t disintegrate as quickly as other bones. These were found buried deep and packed in a dense clump of clay, which further preserved them.” She began to shuffle through the carpals like a seamstress searching for just the right button. “Here,” she said, choosing one pebble and holding it up to the light.

  The gash was immediately apparent, and so deep it had nearly cleaved the bone in two.

  “This is a defense injury,” said Lucy. “This child—let’s call her a girl—raised her arms to defend herself against her attacker. The blade stabbed her in the hand—deeply enough to almost split the carpal bone. The girl is only eight or nine and rather small in stature, so she can hardly fight back. And whoever plunged that knife in is quite strong—strong enough to stab right through her hand.

  “The girl turns. Maybe the blade is still lodged in her flesh, or maybe the attacker has pulled it out and is preparing to stab again. The girl would try to run away, but she is pursued. Then she stumbles, or he brings her down, and she falls to the ground, prone. I assume it’s prone, because there are cut marks on the thoracic vertebrae, a broad blade, possibly a hatchet, sinking in from behind. There is also the cut mark in the femur—a blow to the back of the thigh, which means she’s lying on the ground now. None of these injuries are necessarily fatal. If she is still alive, she’s bleeding heavily. What happens next, we don’t know, because the bones don’t tell us. What we do know is that she is lying face down on the ground and she can’t run, she can’t defend herself. And someone has just sunk a hatchet or an ax into her thigh.” Gently she placed the carpal bone on the table. It was only the size of a pebble, the broken remnant of a terrible death. “That’s what these bones tell me.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Claire said, softly: “What happened to the other child?”

  Lucy seemed to rouse herself from a trance, and she looked at the second skull. “This was a child of similar age. Many of its bones are missing, and those we do have are severely weathered, but I can tell you this much: he—or she—suffered a crushing and probably fatal blow to the skull. These two children were buried together, in the same coffin. I suspect they died during the same attack.”

  “There must be records of it,” said Lincoln. “Some old news account of who these children were.”

  “As a matter of fact, we do know their names.” It was Vince talking, the ponytailed grad student. “Because of the date on a coin found in the same soil stratum, we knew their deaths occurred sometime after 1885. I searched the county deed records and learned that a family by the name of Gow owned that entire tract of land extending along the southern curve of Locust Lake. These bones are the mortal remains of Joseph and Jennie Gow, siblings, ages eight and ten.” Vince gave a sheepish grin. “It seems that what we’ve dug up here, folks, is the Gow family cemetery.”

  This revelation did not strike Claire as a particularly humorous revelation, and she was disturbed by the fact several of the students laughed.

  “Because it was a coffin burial,” explained Lucy, “we suspected this might be a family cemetery. I’m afraid we’ve disturbed their final resting place.”

  “Then you know how these children died?” asked Claire.

  “News accounts are hard to come by, because that particular area was sparsely populated at the time,” said Vince. “What we do have available are the county death records. The Gow children’s deaths were both recorded on the same day: November fifteenth, 1887. Along with the deaths of three other members of their family.”

  There was a moment of horrified silence.

  “Are you saying all five people died on the same day?” asked Claire.

  Vince nodded. “It appears this family was massacred.”

  9

  Carrot sticks and boiled potatoes and a microscopic sliver of chicken breast.

  Louise Knowlton gazed down at the barren plate she’d just set before her son and she ached with maternal guilt. She was starving her own child. She saw it in his face, in those hungry eyes, the weak slump of his shoulders. Sixteen hundred calories a day! How could anyone survive on that! Barry had indeed lost weight, but at what price? He was but a shadow of his formerly robust 265-pound self, and even though she knew he needed to lose weight, it was clear to her, the one person in the world who knew him best, that her darling child was suffering.

  She sat down at her own plate, on which she’d piled fried chicken and buttered biscuits. A solid, healthy meal for a cold night. Looking across the table, she met her husband’s gaze. Mel was silently shaking his head. He couldn’t stand it either, watching their son go hungry.

  “Barry, sweetie, why don’t you have just one biscuit?” offered Louise.

  “No, Mom.”

  “It’s not so many calories. You can scrape off the gravy.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “Look how flaky they are! It’s that recipe from Barbara Perry’s mom. It’s the bacon fat that makes them so good. One little bite, Barry. Just try one bite!” She held out a steaming biscuit to his lips. She could not stop herself, could not suppress the impulse, reinforced by fourteen years of motherhood, to feed that pink and needy mouth. This was more than food; this was love, in the shape of a crusty biscuit dripping butter onto her fingers. She waited for him to accept the offering.

  “I told you, I don’t wan
t any!” he yelled.

  It was as shocking as a slap in the face. Louise sat back, stunned. The biscuit tumbled from her fingers and plopped into the lake of gravy glistening on her plate.

  “Barry,” said his father.

  “She’s always shoving food at me! No wonder I look like this! Look at both of you!”

  “Your mother loves you. Look how you’ve hurt her feelings.”

  Louise sat with trembling lips, trying not to cry. She gazed down at the bountiful dinner she had set on the table. It represented two hours of work in the kitchen, a labor of love, and oh how she loved her son! Now she saw the meal for what it was: the wasted efforts of a fat and stupid mother. She began to cry, her tears dribbling into the cream cheese mashed potatoes.

  “Mom.” Barry groaned. “Ah geez. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind.” She held up a hand to ward off his pity. “I understand, Barry. I understand, and I won’t do it again. I swear I won’t.” She blotted away the tears with the napkin and for a few seconds managed to regain her dignity. “But I try so hard and—and—” She buried her face in the napkin, her whole body quaking with the effort not to cry. It took a moment for her to realize Barry was talking to her.

  “Mom. Mom?”

  She gulped in a breath and forced herself to look at him.

  “Can I have a biscuit?”

  Wordlessly she held out the platter. She watched him take a biscuit, split it open, and slather it with butter. She held her breath as he took the first bite, as the look of bliss rippled across his face. He had craved it all along, but had denied himself the pleasure. Now he gave himself up to it, eating a second. And a third. She watched him take every bite, and she felt a mother’s satisfaction, deep and primal.

  Noah leaned against the side of the school building, smoking a cigarette. It had been months since he’d last lit up, and it made him cough, his lungs rebelling against the smoke. He imagined all those poisons swirling into his chest, the ones his mom was always lecturing him about, but in the general scheme of his life in this dreary town, he figured a little poison was hardly worth worrying about. He took another drag and coughed some more, not really enjoying the experience. But there wasn’t much else to do between classes, not since the skateboards were banned. At least out here, standing alone by the Dumpster, no one would hassle him.

  He heard the soft growl of an engine, and he glanced toward the street. A dark green car was creeping by, so slowly it barely seemed to move. The windows were too darkly tinted to see through, and Noah couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman behind the wheel.

  The car stopped right across the street. Somehow Noah knew the driver was staring at him, just as surely as Noah was staring back.

  He dropped the cigarette and quickly crushed it under his shoe. No sense getting caught; the last thing he needed was another detention. The evidence now obliterated, he turned and brazenly faced the unseen driver. He felt a sense of victory when the car drove away.

  Noah looked down at the crushed cigarette, only half smoked. What a waste. He was weighing the chances of salvaging what remained when he heard the school bell ring, signaling the end of break.

  Then he heard the shouting. It came from the front of the school.

  He rounded the corner of the building and saw a crowd of kids milling on the lawn, chanting: “Cat fight! Cat fight!”

  This should be something to see.

  He pushed forward, trying to get a peek at the action before the teachers broke it up, and the two battling girls practically flew right into him. Noah stumbled backwards to a safer distance, shocked by the viciousness of the fight. This was worse than any brawl between two boys; this really was a cat fight, the girls clawing at each others’ faces, yanking at hair. The shouts of the crowd rang in his ears. He looked around at the circle of spectators, and saw their frenzied faces, smelled the blood lust, strong as musk.

  A strange excitement coiled inside him. He felt his hand close into a fist, felt heat rush to his face. Both the girls were bloodied now, and the sight of it enthralled him. Provoked him. He pushed forward, jostling with the crowd for a better view, and was angry when he could not get closer.

  “Cat fight! Cat fight!”

  He began to chant too, his excitement building with every glimpse of a bloodied face.

  Then his gaze froze on Amelia, standing at the far edge of the lawn, and instantly he fell silent. She was staring at the crowd in disbelief and horror.

  Shamefaced, he turned before she could see him, and he fled into the building.

  In the boys’ restroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. What happened to everyone out there? he thought. What happened to me?

  He splashed icy water on his face, and scarcely felt its sting.

  “They were fighting over a boy,” said Fern. “At least, that’s the story I got. It started off with a few insults, and the next thing you know, they were clawing each other’s faces.” She shook her head. “After Mrs. Horatio’s funeral, I was hoping the kids would support each other. Stand by each other. But this is the fourth fight we’ve had in two days, Lincoln. I can’t control them. I need a policeman to stand watch in this school.”

  “Well, it seems like overkill,” he responded doubtfully, “but I can have Floyd Spear drop in a few times during the school day, if you want.”

  “No, you don’t understand. We need someone here all day. I don’t know what else is going to work.”

  Lincoln sighed and ran his hand through his hair. It seemed to Fern that he was getting grayer every day, just as she was. This morning, she had noticed the telltale hairs sprouting among her blond ones, had realized that the face she saw in the mirror was that of a middle-aged woman. Seeing the changes in Lincoln’s face, though, was somehow more painful than confronting her own aging image, because she carried such vivid memories of the man he’d been at twenty-five: dark-haired, darkeyed, already a face of strength and character. The days before Doreen caught his eye. She regarded the deepening lines in his face and thought, as she so often did: I could have made you so much happier than Doreen has.

  Together they walked to her office. Fourth period classes had started, and their footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. A banner sagged overhead: Harvest Dance November 20! From Mr. Rubio’s classroom came the sound of bored voices raised in unison: Me llamo Pablo. Te llamas Pablo. Se llama Pablo …

  Her office was her private territory, and it reflected the way she lived her life, everything neat and in its place. Books lined up, spines out, no stray papers on the desk. Controlled. Children thrived on order, and Fern believed that only through absolute order could a school function properly.

  “I know it’s asking for a manpower commitment,” she said, “but I want you to consider assigning a fulltime officer to this school.”

  “It means pulling a man off patrol, Fern, and I’m not convinced it’s necessary.”

  “And what are you patrolling out there? Empty roads! The trouble in this town is right here, in this building. This is where we need a policeman.”

  At last he nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, and stood up. His shoulders seemed to sag with the burdens they carried. All day he wrestles with the problems of this town, she thought guiltily, and he gets no praise, only demands and criticism. Then he has no one to go home to, no one to comfort him. A man who makes the mistake of marrying the wrong woman should not have to suffer for the rest of his life. Not a man as decent as Lincoln.

  She walked him to the door. They were close enough to touch each other, and the temptation to reach out, to throw her arms around him, was so overwhelming she had to close her hands into fists to resist it.

  “I look at what’s happening,” she said, “and I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing wrong.”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Six years as principal, and suddenly I’m fighting to keep order in my school. Fighting to keep my job.”

  “Fern, I really think it’s just a
temporary reaction to the shooting. The kids need time to recover.” He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat and he turned to the door. “It’ll pass.”

  Once again Claire was staring into Mairead Temple’s mouth. It seemed like familiar territory to her now, the furry tongue, the tonsillar pillars, the uvula hanging down in a quivering flap of pink flesh. And that smell, like an old ashtray, the same smell that permeated Mairead’s kitchen, where they were now sitting. It was Tuesday, the day Claire made house calls, and Mairead was the next to last patient on her schedule. When one’s medical practice is failing, when patients are switching to other doctors, desperate measures are called for. A home visit to Mairead Temple’s smoky kitchen qualified as a desperate measure. Anything to keep a patient happy.

  Claire turned off her pen light. “Your throat looks about the same to me. It’s just a little red.”

  “Still hurts wicked bad.”

  “The culture came back negative.”

  “You mean I don’t get any more penicillin?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t justify it.”

  Mairead clacked her dentures together and glared at Claire with pale eyes. “What kinda treatment is that?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Mairead, the best treatment is prevention.”

  “So?”

  “So …” Claire eyed the pack of menthol cigarettes lying on the kitchen table. In the advertisements, it was a brand usually associated with slim sophisticates, women in slinky gowns trailing furs and men. “I think it’s time for you to quit smoking.”

  “What’s wrong with penicillin?”

  Claire ignored the question, turning her attention instead to the wood-burning stove in the center of the overheated kitchen. “That’s not good for your throat, either. It dries out the air and fills it with smoke and irritants. You do have an oil furnace, don’t you?”

  “Wood’s cheaper.”

  “You’d feel better.”

  “I get the wood free, from my nephew.”