The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  “So you only got a couple hours of sleep, too?”

  “Yeah.” Piper unsuccessfully tried to stifle a yawn. “I’ll be drinking coffee all day, JJ. Caffeine in my veins and—”

  “Delivery, Sheriff!” Drew Farrar poked his head through the doorway. “I put it on your desk.” He glanced at the table and visibly shuddered. Drew was the first-shift dispatcher, and he’d celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday at lunch Friday with Piper and half the department. An errant helium balloon from the festivities clung to the ceiling near where he stood, the curl of green ribbon hanging down. “Helluva thing, finding bones in the park. Any idea who—”

  “No,” Piper and JJ said in unison. “We’re just starting,” Piper added.

  “Ummm, we picked up another complaint about the Mailbox Mauler over in Gentryville. The old bat took out three with her Buick. Are we going to arrest her this time? One of the maulees is seriously pissed and says we have to do something. Second time since the first of the year that she’s whacked his mailbox. Said he’d spent sixty bucks on a fancy one.”

  Piper made a face. “Yeah. We’re gonna arrest her this time. Send Diego pronto.”

  “Will do,” Drew said. “But she’s not going to like that. Diego being—”

  “Yeah, Diego being,” Piper said with a smile. “Diego will forgive me. I’ll take him to lunch next week.” Send the lone minority… that’ll frost her eighty-some-year-old prejudiced cookies. Serves her right for destroying property. Again. “How many mailboxes does this make for her scorecard?”

  “Eleven since the first of January, Sheriff. Last year, before you came on, she—”

  “Lovely.” To JJ, “I’ll leave you to catalog all this, take more pictures. Put it back in the evidence bags when you’re done. It’s possible the coroner might want to look at this stuff, but she didn’t say anything about it last night. Too bad we couldn’t get any fingerprints, but that long underground—” A pause. “I’m happy for you. I know you’ll love the coast.” Was JJ a good enough detective to tell that Piper was lying?

  5

  Five

  The delivery was a big wicker basket decorated with a rosy satin bow and filled with goodies. Piper glanced at the contents—two packages of Eight O’clock Dark Italian Coffee, a jar of sea-salted cashews, box of chocolate-covered raisins, shimmery glass bottle of Avon Haiku cologne, a lottery ticket, pair of fuzzy socks with pug dogs printed on them, three large oranges, and a potted African violet in full bloom.

  Next to the basket was a stack of memos from Drew. Leafing through them, she noted some were from Teegan from the night before. Commissioner Ayers. Councilman Sampson. Councilman Sampson. Councilman Sampson. Commissioner Ayers. Her father. Ayers and Sampson were no doubt promoting their “candidate” for the open deputy position. Good thing they hadn’t yet discovered there was now also an opening for detective.

  “Drew,” she said. Piper knew the dispatcher desk was close enough; she could talk without needing to pick up the phone. “Set up two interviews for me tomorrow, all right?”

  “You already have two interviews scheduled,” he called back.

  “Two more. Fill up my afternoon.”

  “Ah, need to get Sampson and Ayers off your back. Will do.”

  She’d talk to Sampson’s nephew and Ayer’s son-in-law—and keep an open mind about them despite being badgered. Get it out of the way so the phone calls and messages from the local politicians would stop. Ayer’s son-in-law looked good enough she should consider him anyway. Sampson’s nephew might also be worth a look. Mollifying the local politicians was important, as she wanted to cover some new items in her budget.

  Piper stopped herself from diving into the raisins, sat at her desk, and opened the laptop. She started typing JJ’s letter of recommendation. It wasn’t the most pressing thing—the bones were, and Mark the Shark’s claim. But she’d learned in the military to address the little things right away, knock ‘em out fast and move on before they got buried under more tasks coming in. One page, short and sweet; she saved it and would give it a proof this afternoon before PDFing it and passing it along to her departing detective.

  Then she called up monster.com, jobsgalor.com, policeone.com, and jobrapido.com. There were other sites she could use, but these would suffice for the first wave. She posted the same job advertisement on each—Sheriff’s Department detective opening, asking for candidates who had experience with investigating and prosecuting drug crimes, as she really wanted to tackle the county’s meth problem. She added the necessary requirements—must be twenty-one, high school diploma or GED, US citizen, valid driver’s license, must complete a pre-employment drug screen, no felony convictions, good physical condition, must meet all state requirements for certification as an Officer to include: able to complete a timed agility test, full range of motion, able to operate firearms, eyesight 20/20 natural or correctable, night and peripheral vision certified by a physician, and must be able to read, write, and speak fluent English.

  Hope to fill soon, she added.

  As soon as possible, actually.

  Then she included a few tidbits about Spencer County. Let the applicants know just how rural this place is. Let them know where they might be landing. This time she wouldn’t promote from within. Not that she didn’t have a few deputies that might be able to handle the detective job; she just didn’t want to cause the same discord again. Hindsight—she should have advertised just like this before handing JJ the job. Piper hit ENTER on each job site and then called up the webpage for the local weekly newspaper and pasted the same notice. She also emailed the vacancy to the public affairs office at Fort Campbell, in case someone there knew a veteran leaving who might be a good fit. Hopefully someone from outside the county—with fresh, wide-open eyes—would answer the listing. Finally, she printed it out for the office bulletin board. She’d have to look at any locals—including her current deputies—who applied, but she wouldn’t have to take them. She doubted anyone from around here would have the drug credentials.

  Piper stretched for the box of chocolate-covered raisins and saw an envelope tucked underneath it. She pulled it out and opened it. Happy May Day, it read. Dinner tonight at 6 in your father’s kitchen. I will prepare Chả Lụa and Gà Nướng Xã, extra spicy just for him, and we’ll have red velvet cake for desert. Call if this plan is not good. Nang.

  Piper grinned, reaching for the violet, and recalling what Mark the Shark said—“Maybe you’ll get a bouquet from your feller. You probably got a feller, right?”

  Piper enjoyed Nang’s company, and they’d been dating since Valentine’s Day—when he took her to Charlie’s Mongolian Barbeque in Evansville. This basket was the first gift. She hoped it didn’t signal that Nang was getting serious. She wasn’t looking for serious, didn’t want anything to threaten her notion of eventually returning to Fort Campbell. But a home-cooked Vietnamese dinner sounded like a good plan.

  Job interviews and Mark the Shark and bones on the bluff. The Mailbox Mauler was icing on that proverbial cake. At least the workload had stopped being boring. And dinner tonight? Piper’s stomach growled in anticipation. Things were looking up.

  6

  Six

  The bones were displayed on a stainless steel table in the autopsy room. Oren was puzzled why he had to come here to see them laid out. There wasn’t any flesh to autopsy, yet Dr. Annie Neufeld had insisted on toting the remains to the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s facilities. Spencer County lacked such equipment, and so typically transported its dead either here to Evansville or across the border to Louisville, Kentucky, for examination. He thought they could have just as easily spread the bones out on a table at the sheriff’s department and sent what they wanted to the state lab for testing. It would have saved them both a fifty-minute drive.

  But maybe this was protocol. Despite all his decades in law enforcement, he’d never dealt with a skeleton—and he hadn’t dealt with all that many bodies until the recent exception of the serial killer.
Before that there had been only a few murders during his four-decade tenure, and those corpses had been intact, the cases easy to solve.

  At least these remains didn’t stink; all he picked up was the scent of cleaning antiseptic and his own musky aftershave.

  The coroner stood on the other side of the table, staring at him. “You’ve lost some weight,” she said. Dr. Neufeld wore scrubs and gloves, the mask pulled down and dangling around her neck. He didn’t think she needed her official get-up, nothing she could catch from the bones, and there was nothing she could infect. But who was he to talk? He practically lived in his uniform. She had prominent dark circles and age creases at the edges of her eyes—to Oren she always looked tired, rarely bothering with makeup to smooth her features. She’d colored her hair though, a soft brown that looked good on her, the customary gray streaks gone. She’d retired as a pediatrician seven years ago, citing rising malpractice insurance costs, took a year or so off, then ran for coroner because she needed something important to do. She was his age, and in her second term. And she was one of his closest friends.

  “Thirteen,” he said. “Pounds down.”

  “Because—” The word hung as a question.

  Oren growled softly. “I’m not sick, Annie, if that’s what you’re asking. I ate too much over the holidays, into January, first of February. Uniform got tight and so I bought this book, Skinny Bastard. Really, that’s the name of it. Skinny Bastard. Found it on the sale table at the Barnes & Noble in Owensboro when I had a couple of gift certificates to spend. Hard to follow for me, this diet. It really pushes that vegan stuff. But it made me take a look at some of my not-so-healthy choices. Another dozen down and I’ll call it done.”

  “You look good,” she said. “But now your pants are a little baggy. Keep going and you’ll have to take them in. Haven’t seen you since—”

  “Yeah, since then. I know. I know. We should’ve gotten together before now, and under better circumstances. My fault. Just been… busy.” Oren knew Annie meant since winter and the end of the CCK as she’d dubbed it, the Christmas Card Killer who’d plagued Spencer County and had ranged down into Kentucky. She’d done most of the autopsies, and Oren, who’d been seriously wounded by the killer, had attended all but one. Annie had come with Oren’s wife to visit him every day while he was in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound. The three of them had talked about the “good old days” and whether it was time to retire.

  “It’s just bones, Annie. Why’d you bring them here?”

  She made a tsk-tsking sound. “I don’t do anything half-assed, Oren Rosenberg. You know that. We’re doing a complete study.”

  He rolled his eyes. Bones, he mouthed.

  “I’ve already had them X-rayed.”

  “It’s not all there, the skeleton.” Oren heard music start, probably coming from the adjacent office. It was modern-country, someone singing about girls drinking beer in the back of a pickup truck. It wasn’t Annie’s music. “We’ve still got people out at the bluff, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to find anything else. It looks like this is it. But we’ll keep digging for a while, just to be sure.”

  The skull was at one end of the table, but was missing the lower jaw; extending down from it some vertebrae, the shoulder blades, clavicle, sternum, arms, eight ribs that he counted, only a few finger bones. The pelvis was there, along with one femur, one tibia, and pieces that Annie had set at the ends—ankle and toe bones, and definitely not all there.

  “Enough of it is here. Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “Animals probably got parts of it.”

  “A kid, right? The skeleton’s a—”

  “Sure. And I’ll guess he—the pelvis suggests to me that it was a he—between ten and twelve. I’m basing that on the size of the skull and femur length. Thirty years in pediatrics, I’d say I have to be close.” She took a step back. “But Dr. Abernathy will be more precise.”

  Oren cocked his head. “You? Call in another coroner? I’m surprised that—”

  “Ha! You’re right. I wouldn’t call in another coroner. Dr. Ulysses Abernathy is a forensic anthropologist teaching here at USI. Sort of famous, actually. Your granddaughter goes to USI, doesn’t she? Maybe she’s been in one of his classes.”

  Oren growled again. His granddaughter was the same age as Piper Blackwell. Annie had just reminded him that he worked for a twenty-three-year-old. “Yeah, she graduates with a master’s this coming Saturday. Got accepted to Maurer law school in Bloomington. She’ll start there in August.” Softer, “And I’ll probably have to pony up for the tuition. Maybe I’ll make that her graduation present. We haven’t gotten her anything yet.” Oren was going to have lunch with her before heading back to Spencer County.

  “Congrats. She’ll make a good lawyer.”

  “Wants to work in a district attorney’s office somewhere. Maybe a big city—Chicago, New York. I hope not Indianapolis. Her mother lives in Indy.”

  Annie smiled warmly. “And you’re proud of her.”

  Oren gave a nod. His three children had all married, but only his daughter—who had married twice and divorced twice—had a child. Oren had always been proud of his granddaughter.

  “Dr. Abernathy should have been here by now. I’ve never met him, but the Vanderburgh Coroner consults with him regularly, especially on those bones they find at Angel Mounds.”

  “The Indian site.”

  “Native American site,” she politically corrected. “Sometimes people find bones in the area and Dr. Abernathy comes in to confirm if they’re prehistoric.”

  “These aren’t that old. Found a belt buckle from the early fifties with them, some coins. We’re guessing maybe the boy was buried forty to sixty years ago. I’m leaning toward sixty.”

  “And I wish you would have brought all of that stuff over here to help Dr. Abernathy date these bones.”

  Oren shrugged. “You didn’t say anything about that last night on the bluff. You were there when we started pulling stuff.”

  “Honestly, I didn’t think about it then. Never dealt with something like this before,” Annie admitted. “Bet you haven’t either. So, you going to wait for him?”

  “Dr. Abernathy? Nothing else planned for the day. Besides lunch with my granddaughter.” He looked to the door. “I’m gonna get some coffee. You want—”

  “Black with two sugars. No. Just one sugar, you skinny bastard.”

  In the hallway outside the antiseptic smell wasn’t as strong.

  Oren leaned against the wall. The conversations they’d shared in his hospital room in January swirled. Should he retire? His wife had encouraged him to do just that; she’d been traumatized over his shooting. Admittedly, he’d come close to dying, to ending up on some table like the unknown boy’s skeleton in the autopsy room. Annie had argued against the notion, saying, “Piper Blackwell is pleasant enough, but damn well not experienced enough to be sheriff.” He’d memorized Annie’s words. She said the department—and the county—needed Oren. He didn’t want the extra time on his hands that retirement would bring—not yet. He was learning to tolerate Piper, doubted he would ever respect her because of her age. But he respected the sheriff’s department and loved the work. Maybe he’d work until the day he ended up under Annie’s knife. He shuddered at that thought and headed to the coffee machine.

  On his way back down he met Dr. Ulysses Abernathy—who looked more the age of a college student than a college professor.

  Oren had only managed three or four hours of sleep. But he doubted that was the reason he was feeling particularly old today.

  Dr. Ulysses Abernathy wore frameless oval glasses tinted blue-gray. Oren guessed he was five-eight or five-nine and was a little on the pudgy side. His ash brown hair was shaved on the sides and had a styled curly mound on top that likely had been doused with a liberal amount of hairspray or mousse; Oren swore he could smell it. His cheeks were dotted with freckles, standing out because his skin was so light. A dime-sized gold skull and crossbones h
ung from his pierced left ear, and his clothes were casual—jeans and an orange pocketless, oversized polo.

  Young, Oren thought, and then corrected himself when he noticed the crinkles at the edges of Abernathy’s eyes and lips. Young-looking, but probably late thirties, maybe even a touch over the forty-year mark. A little more scrutiny, and he spotted some gray in the buzzed sides. That made Oren feel a little better.

  “Dr. Neufeld,” Abernathy said with a nod. “Good to meet you.”

  “And I’m happy to meet—”

  Abernathy took a position by the table and plowed ahead, interrupting Annie’s pleasantries. “Interesting,” he said. “See the dent on the right side of the skull here? Forceps were used during delivery. The bone was deformed. As a person grows, the bones thicken. The skull is normal on the inside. But the dent on the outside. Forceps. No lower teeth and jaw available for inspection. Would make it a little more challenging for a facial reconstruction. But the upper teeth on cursory examination suggest that your remains are that of an eight- to ten-year-old. The teeth are not permanent, they are deciduous—milk teeth, some call them.” His voice was low-pitched and strong. Oren figured he would do well in front of a classroom.

  “Because permanent teeth are in by age twelve,” Annie said.

  Abernathy hummed. He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, put them on, and picked up pieces of vertebrae. “T1 and T2, broken. Yet to determine if post mortem, but not likely.” He looked up at Oren. “These are the first and second vertebra in the thoracic spine.”

  Replacing them, he slid farther down the table and picked up the femur. “Note the diaphysis.” He pointed with his free hand. “And the epiphyses at each end? There is no fusion there, definitely a child. Look here.” Abernathy replaced the bone and indicated the arm. “Not joined, no fusion, under the age of twelve.” He made a clicking noise. “It’s the ribs. Fortunately we have the desirable third, fourth, and fifth ribs. You were lucky with these bones, Dr. Neufeld. Count your stars providential. But I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know. I understand you were a pediatrician for many years. For the sheriff here—”