by Helen Gray
Three pairs of eyes bored into her for long moments. “You mean we might contaminate the crime scene,” Dack said in dawning enlightenment.
“That’s right.” Hallelujah. They remembered something from class. Or television.
When they were seated, Toni pulled her cell phone from her pocket and speed dialed her principal’s cell, thankful she had saved his number back when she had found herself talking to him regularly as they worked to clear him of suspicion in the death of their superintendent.
“There’s a skull here, as well as other small bones and fragments among the debris,” she said when he answered. “I’m going to call the police. Can someone come get the boys and see that they have lunch with the group?” She wanted to be certain they went directly there.
“I’ll send John right over,” Ken said tersely.
As soon as Toni disconnected, she called Buck Freeman’s private line at the police station that he had given to her after she identified Mrs. Carter’s murderer and was nearly killed for it.
“What can I do for you, Toni?” the Chief of Police asked in his usual gruff tone.
“Some of my students have found some human bones,” she explained quickly. “We’re at the edge of the creek near the end of the park behind the softball field.”
“We’ll be right there.” He disconnected.
John Zachary arrived as she was stuffing the phone back into the pocket of her jeans. “Hey, guys,” he greeted the boys. “It’s time to eat. Come get your share before it’s all gone.”
Dack shook his head. “Do we have to go? We want to know what the police find out.”
“They won’t have any answers right away,” Toni explained. “You don’t want to miss lunch for nothing.”
The boys sprang to their feet, always ready for food and willing to accept Toni’s explanation.
“I’ll be back,” John said quietly, glancing around in curiosity.
“Buck’s on the way.”
John nodded and headed after the boys.
Toni knelt by the log and gazed again at the skull, studying its characteristics and coloration. She was still there when a patrol car sped past on the highway. It careened in at the entrance and cruised back to the edge of the park. She stood and waved a hand to beckon them to her.
When the car screeched to an abrupt halt, Buck Freeman emerged and loped across the lawn to join her.
Toni met him on the lawn. “Hello, Mr. Freeman.”
“Buck,” he corrected. “We’re way past any mister stuff.” He gave her a brief hug, his six foot two height making her feel short. His erect carriage and white hair were distinguished looking. Toni was glad to have him for a friend. He had been her dad’s friend for many years, but her own relationship with him had been cemented over the past few months.
“What have you got here?” he asked, stepping back.
“We’re having an educational field day, sort of a tension release activity following several days of testing. Our science group was having a nature scavenger hunt, and one of the items on their hunt list was a bone. One team, three boys you probably know, reported back with three bones in their possession. When I saw that they looked human, I had them show me where they found them. This is the site.” She displayed the bones the boys had given her. “There’s more.”
He stared at them solemnly. “Show me.”
Toni paced back to the log and knelt beside it. “I found a few smaller bones when I was raking around in the leaves and mulch. But this is what clenched it.” She pointed into the log.
Buck knelt and peered in at the nearly intact skull. “I contacted the coroner as I left the station. He should be here in a few minutes,” he said, backing away and checking his watch. “Where are the boys who found those?” He nodded at the bones she held.
“John took them back to eat lunch with the group.”
“Okay. We’ll talk to them later. Right now we need to block access to this area and tape off the perimeters. That shouldn’t take too long.” He glanced around. “It’s bordered by the creek on one side and barbed wire fencing on another.”
Just then Phil Norton, the school’s resource officer and a member of Buck’s force, came trotting across the lawn. “Just got a call from the station. What’s up?”
“Toni and I seem to have formed a strange alliance, and she’s promoted herself to chief detective,” Buck said dryly. “She has located a human skull and parts of a skeleton.”
“No, I didn’t,” Toni denied. “Three of my students found them.”
“Which students?” Phil asked.
“Dack, Q, and Jeremy,” she enumerated with a telling look.
“I see,” he said, nodding and giving her a knowing grin. “Chief, do you want me to get a roadblock set up and start taping the scene?”
“You bet.” As Phil took off, the chief turned back to Toni. “By chance are you talking about Dack Murphy, Jeremy Barnes, and Quint Lakowski?”
“None other,” Toni confirmed with a smirk.
Buck heaved a sigh, and then his expression turned grave. He gave her a long assessing look. “Okay, Toni, level with me. Has Garrett been dreaming again?”
His reference to her younger son alluded to Garrett’s dream back around Christmas that had caused her and John to go looking in her forensics body farm and discovering the body of their missing superintendent.
“Of course not,” she denied with a vigorous shake of her head. “He’s been…” She paused, something stirring in her memory. “At least nothing ominous,” she amended.
“But he has dreamed something.” It was stated somewhat dryly, but with the clear implication that he wanted to hear about it.
Toni shrugged. “His birthday was March seventeenth, St. Patrick’s Day, and we had a small party for him. He invited a half dozen of his friends, and I made a big sheet cake that I decorated with green shamrocks and some of those chocolate candies wrapped in gold foil to look like coins. You can get them from Wal Mart.”
Buck nodded. “I know what you’re talking about.”
“We grilled hamburgers and had fries with them. They get to choose the menu when it’s their birthday,” she explained. “Anyhow, the next morning Garrett was laughing and telling us about the dream he had the night before.”
Buck waited patiently.
“He said they—I assumed he meant him and his friends from the party—had been playing on the grass, and they found gold. We all laughed about it and made some comments about how our leprechaun must have found his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I’ve sometimes teased him and called him my leprechaun,” she added. “So, you see, there was a dream, but it had no relevance to anything like this.”
Instead of shrugging it off, the chief continued to study her. “Did he by chance say where they found the pot of gold?”
Toni thought back, trying to recall that morning and the conversation. “It wasn’t a pot. He said they found gold…by the water,” she finished in triumph. Then her gaze took in the scene before them.
“By the water, huh?” Buck stared at the creek beyond the ledge where the rotten log lay.
Numbness crept over Toni. She held the bones out before her and stared at them. The experience weeks earlier had changed her in a fundamental way, made her more wary. Now she studied those bones and got a feeling in her own bones that another human being, a member of their small town community, had perished in a violent manner. A frisson of fear crept up her spine.
The scream of a siren claimed their attention. Looking up, they saw the coroner’s vehicle race by and turn in at the grounds entrance. Buck signaled for the driver to pull in behind his patrol car. Another patrol car followed right behind the coroner.
“I tell you what,” Buck said to Toni as the coroner and Deputy Dale Brown came striding across the lawn toward them. “It’ll take hours for us to search the scene and take pictures. Why don’t you go back to your duties, and I’ll talk to you and the boys when we’re finished?”
“I am kind of hungry,” Toni admitted, glancing toward her school group. “And they have food over there.” She headed that way.
“Hi, Toni,” Dale greeted her as their paths crossed. “You cutting out before the work starts?”
“Got work of my own,” she said. “I’ll see you after a while. Hi, Stan,” she greeted the coroner and kept moving.
“I saved you a hamburger,” John said when Toni joined the group at the pavilion, indicating the plastic wrapped paper plate of food on the table. “I’ll get you a Coke.” He went to the cooler.
Peppered with questions from everyone, Toni explained to the students when they gathered around her that the police were searching the scene, and that was all she knew at that point, refusing to speculate about the bones. It was a relief when Kelly assembled the students on the lawn and began their next activity.
Toni stepped over the bench of the picnic table and sat to eat. During her meal she was more forthcoming with her two administrators, who were still there, and John and Dixie. To them she described exactly what they had found and where it was, omitting only the discussion with Buck about Garrett.
“Buck will be questioning the boys after they finish securing the crime scene,” she informed Ken. “He’ll either call or send for them.”
“We’d better go help Kelly.” John tossed his soda can in the trash and loped away. Dixie followed him.
“Ken has told me about your involvement in solving Mrs. Carter’s murder,” Dr. Tate said, he and Ken Douglas having taken seats across the table from her. “It looks like you have another case on your hands.”
Toni shook her head. “No, I don’t. The police have a case.”
“I don’t recall any missing person reports,” Ken said, eyeing Toni closely. “How about you?”
She shook her head again. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“Do you think the police have a good chance of identifying the bones?”
This time she didn’t shake her head. She finished chewing a bite of her hamburger and swallowed. “I would think so. The skull looked to be in pretty good shape. If they’re lucky enough to find a pelvis bone, the chances will be even better. They’ll need to send whatever they find to a forensic anthropologist.”
Toni gazed up into the nearby woods. Spring had come early, and the trees and flowers had started budding and blooming. The redbuds and dogwoods had been a beautiful profusion of color in the wooded areas, and yards had been bright with daffodils and irises. Then it had turned frigid cold. There had been six nights in the week before last when the temperature had dropped below twenty-five, and the toll on plant life had been devastating. The weather was now beautiful, with temperatures in the seventies, but the tall trees stood with blackened crumples of undeveloped leaves on their branches, and the flowers were all killed. The large trees would eventually recover and leaf out again, but the flowers and fruit were gone for the year.
Her thoughts changed track. Someone’s life was gone, and she had no idea who it was. What could have happened? No one dying a natural death would have been in that location or so hidden. She couldn’t stop the questions running through her mind. But she was careful not to make idle speculations to anyone. She would somehow curb her curiosity and let Buck and his men perform their jobs.
“Hey, where did you go?” Ken asked, laughing.
Toni’s attention returned to her companions.
“Looks to me like she’s already caught up in the process of solving a mystery, at least mentally,” Dr. Tate said, giving her a head tilted study.
“No, I was just mourning the loss of so much plant life to the freezing weather. And the loss of someone’s life,” she added honestly.
Her new administrator spoke to Ken. “She did sign on for next year, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Ken said in satisfaction. “I’m glad she decided to stick around.”
Dr. Tate’s brow creased. “There was some question that she wouldn’t?”
Ken gave an elongated sigh. “The truth of the matter is, we had both considered making a change, but that’s no longer the case.”
“I’m going to assume it had to do with my predecessor and leave it there,” Dr. Tate said after a thoughtful moment.
Toni finished her Coke and tossed the can in the trash. “I should go help the others now.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you. I look forward to working with you,” Dr. Tate said as he and Ken rose to leave.
It was about two o’clock when Toni’s cell phone rang. “Bring those boys back over now,” Buck instructed.
She rounded up the trio and informed the other teachers of where they were going.
“We only have about forty-five minutes until time to go home. Don’t worry about coming back,” Kelly told her. “We’ll take care of things.”
When Toni and the three boys returned to the other side of the grounds, Buck was sitting at the table in the middle of the little park. “Have a seat,” he invited.
For several minutes he questioned the boys about their find and whether they had discovered any other items. He made notes and excused them to rejoin their group in time to return to the school for dismissal.
“I’d like to talk to you a little more,” he said to Toni as she rose to accompany them.
“Okay, run along, guys,” she instructed the boys. “I’ll see you Monday in class.”
They took off, and she resumed her seat.
Buck faced her silently for a long, heavy moment. “Okay, science lady,” he drawled at last. “You were over there,” he said, indicating the rotten log with a head jerk, “for quite a while before we arrived, time for you to satisfy your curiosity a bit.”
Toni raised her palms. “I didn’t touch anything after finding the skull.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he responded dryly. “But I’m just as sure that you did some close looking and thinking. Can you give me any kind of jump start guesses at figuring out whose body has been found?”
Toni hesitated, unsure how much to say. “I couldn’t offer any more than a guess or two,” she said slowly.
“I’d appreciate anything you can guess.”
“It’s only an educated speculation,” she warned, “but my best guess would be that it’s an adult white male.”
“Would you mind explaining how you arrived at that?”
“Well, I studied that skull as well as I could without moving it or touching it. To me it appeared that the jaw was somewhat square, with a wide brow ridge, and the mastoid process looked relatively large. All that suggests a strong probability it was a man.”
“What about time? Can you make any kind of estimate as to how long it’s been there?”
Toni shook her head slowly. “All I can say is a long time. From the way everything was scattered around and the clothes completely rotted, I’d estimate more than a year. How much more, I couldn’t say. Now, tell me what you found.”
The grin that had been dancing around the corners of his mouth disappeared. “Not much. We didn’t find a wallet or any kind of personal identification. But we did find quite a few small bones and fragments. The elements and animals have done a lot of damage. We found some clumps of moldy stuff that we figure is rotted clothing. Among some of that we found four buttons and what looks to be the metal part of a zipper.”
Toni nodded. “I wish you had found a pelvis or hip bone. That would have been the most helpful in sex and size identification. But the zipper might indicate male clothing.”
“Okay, thanks for your educated guesses,” Buck said, getting to his feet. “I’ll send the evidence to Farmington and have a forensic anthropologist examine it. And, yes, I’ll let you know when I get anything conclusive—or have more questions. Oh, and I won’t put anything in my notes about Garrett,” he added before turning and heading to his patrol car.
Toni returned to her group, arriving just as the students were assembling to head back to the school.
After classes were dismissed, Toni
met her jeans-and-tee-shirt-clad sons in the front lobby where they waited for her most days after school. They sat on the tile floor, playing tic-tac-toe on a notebook in Gabe’s lap. Gabe, who had just turned eleven two weeks earlier, was slender, about seventy-five pounds, four foot six, and in the fifth grade. He had ash brown hair like his dad, with a tendency to curl if not kept trimmed. A high-energy boy, he had a love and aptitude for athletics. He also was developing a love for music, having taken up the trombone in fifth grade beginner band. The instrument case stood next to the wall near them.
Garrett, a third grader, was nine, about three inches shorter than Gabe, and about fifteen pounds lighter. Toni thought of him as her “tinkerer” because he liked to play with gadgets and could sometimes fix non-working small appliances for her, or devise mechanical solutions to minor problems.
The pair of them kept life full and interesting. She loved them passionately and counted herself extremely blessed to have them in her life. They were responsible and made good grades in school, but they had their moments of unexpected behavior. They sometimes had to be reminded of their assigned chores, but overall they were great kids who dealt well with the fact that teachers’ kids tended to be held to higher standards and watched more closely than their classmates.
“Ready to go?” she called, approaching them.
Gabe made an X on their game paper and looked up. “Just a minute.”
“I’ll be in the van,” she said, grinning and pushing the lobby door open with her hip. Glancing back, she saw Garrett making a zero on the paper.
“I win!” Gabe called out gleefully, making another X and drawing a line across the paper. They both hopped up and followed her to their red minivan in the parking lot.
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked as they drove past the crime scene Toni had just left. It was inevitable that they would notice the yellow tape and patrol cars still there and be curious. She would have to be honest with them.
“During our scavenger hunt a team of my students found some human bones,” she told them candidly.
“You mean someone’s dead?” Garrett asked solemnly from the back seat. It was his turn to sit back there today, a rotation the boys had worked out for themselves.