The Bone Bed

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Whoever did the filming was directly facing the sun,” she says, “and nothing is going to restore the blown-out parts. The best we can do is suspect who the person on the boat might be based on context and circumstances.”

  Suspecting isn’t good enough, and I replay the clip, returning to a stretch of river an hour by jetboat from a sheer barren hillside where American paleontologist Dr. Emma Shubert was digging with colleagues from the University of Alberta when she vanished almost nine weeks ago. According to statements made to the police, she was last seen on August 23 at around ten p.m., walking alone through a wooded area of a Pipestone Creek campsite, headed to her trailer after dinner in the chow hall. The next morning her door was ajar and she was gone.

  When I talked with an investigator from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last night I was told there was no sign of a struggle, nothing to indicate Emma Shubert might have been attacked inside her trailer.

  “We must find out who sent this to me,” I say to Lucy. “And why. If it’s possible the figure in the jetboat is she, what was going on? What’s the expression on her face? Happy? Sad? Frightened? Was she on the boat willingly?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “You’re not going to on this video clip. There’s nothing more to see.”

  “Was she on her way to the bone bed to dig or returning from it?” I ask.

  “Based on the position of the sun and satellite images of that part of the river,” Lucy says, “the jetboat likely was traveling east, suggesting it was morning. Obviously the day was a sunny one, and there weren’t many of those in that part of the world this past August. Not so coincidentally, two days before she vanished, the day she found the pachyrhino tooth, it was sunny.”

  “So you’re thinking the video was taken on August twenty-first, based on the weather.”

  “Apparently she did go to that site that day, traveled by jetboat to the bone bed on the Wapiti River.” Lucy repeats information that’s been in the news. “So the video might have been recorded on an iPhone during the boat ride there that morning. She has an iPhone. Or did. As you know, it was missing from her trailer. It may be the only thing that’s missing, since other personal effects allegedly were undisturbed.”

  “The footage was filmed on an iPhone?” This is new information.

  “And the photo of the severed ear,” Lucy says. “A first-generation iPhone, which is what she had.”

  I’m not going to ask Lucy how she managed to acquire these details. I don’t want to know.

  “She still had the first one she’d gotten, didn’t bother upgrading, probably because of the contract she had with AT and T.” Lucy gets up and returns to the bathroom to rinse our shot glasses, and I detect distant voices down the corridor.

  Then I hear the recorded sound of a police siren, one of Pete Marino’s ringtones. He’s with someone. Bryce, I think, and they’re headed in this direction. Both of them are on their cell phones, only the sounds of their words coming through, and I can tell by the energy in their voices that something has happened.

  “I’ll call you later, will be back before the weather moves in,” Lucy adds, as she leaves. “It’s going to be really bad later in the day.”

  Then Marino is in my doorway. His khaki field clothes are rumpled as if he’s slept in them, his face flushed, and he walks in as if he lives here, talking loudly on his phone. Bryce is behind him, my delicately handsome chief of staff, wearing designer sunglasses on top of his head and faded denim drainpipe jeans and a T-shirt, as if he just stepped off the set of Glee. I notice he hasn’t shaved since I saw him a week ago, before he went to Florida, and facial hair or the lack of it always means the same thing. Bryce Clark is stepping in and out of different characters as he continues auditioning for the star role in his own life.

  “Well, normally that would be a no,” Marino says into his cell phone. “But you’re going to need to get the lady from the aquarium on the line so the chief here can tell her directly and make sure everybody’s on the same page. . . .”

  “We appreciate that and totally get it.” Bryce is talking to someone else. “We certainly do realize nobody’s going to be fighting over it. Maybe you and the fire guys can flip a coin, just kidding. I’m sure the fireboat’s got a Stokes basket same as you. No vacuum bag or cervical collar or whatever needed, obviously. Of course the fire guys are better equipped to hose everything off after the fact with those big bad deck cannons of theirs. Point is? Doesn’t matter in the least to us, but someone’s gotta help get it to shore, and we’ll handle it from there.” He looks at his watch. “In about forty-five? A little after nine? That would really be fabulous.”

  “What is it?” I ask Bryce, as he ends the call.

  He puts his hands on his hips, scrutinizing me. “Well, we certainly didn’t wear the right thing for going out in a boat this morning, did we?” He surveys the gray pinstriped skirt suit and pumps I wore today for court. “I’ll just be a minute, gonna grab a few things because you’re not going out with the Coast Guard in what you’ve got on. Fishing out some floater? Thank God it’s not July, not that the water’s ever warm around here, and I sure as hell hope it’s not been in there long, my least favorite thing. I’m sorry, let’s be honest. Who can stand it? I realize nobody means to get in such a disgusting condition, can you imagine? If I die and get like that please don’t find me.”

  He’s in my closet, retrieving field clothes.

  “That’s the part the boys with the Guard aren’t happy about, because why would they be?” He keeps talking. “Having something like that on their boat, but no worries, they’ll do it because I asked them pretty please and reminded them that if you—and I specifically mean you, the chief—don’t know how to take care of it, who does?”

  He slides a pair of cargo pants off a hanger.

  “You’ll double-pouch or whatever it takes so their boat doesn’t stink to high heaven, just a reminder? I promised. Do you want short sleeves or long?”

  He peers at me from my closet.

  “I’m voting for long, because it’s going to be nippy out there with the wind blowing,” he says, before I can even think of answering. “So let’s see, your down jacket’s a good idea, your rescue-orange one, so you show up a mile away. Always a good idea on the water. I see Marino doesn’t have a jacket, but I’m not in charge of his wardrobe.”

  Bryce carries clothing over to me as Marino continues talking to someone who obviously is out in a boat.

  “We don’t want anybody cutting through knots or nothing, and any ropes would have to be cleated down,” he is saying, as Bryce drapes my CFC uniform across my desk and then returns to the closet for boots. “I’m going to hang up and call you on a landline and maybe have a better connection and you can talk to the Doc yourself,” Marino adds.

  He comes over to my side of the desk as I hear the elevator in the corridor and more voices. Lucy is on her way to her helicopter, and other staff members are arriving. It’s a few minutes past eight.

  “Some huge prehistoric turtle entangled in the south channel,” Marino tells me, as he reaches for my desk phone.

  “Prehistoric?” Bryce exclaims. “I don’t think so.”

  “A leatherback. They’re almost extinct, have been around since Jurassic Park.” Marino ignores him.

  “I don’t believe there was a park back then,” Bryce chimes in louder.

  “Could weigh as much as a ton.” Marino keeps talking to me as he enters a number on my phone, a pair of over-the-counter reading glasses perched on his strong nose. “A waterman checking his lobster pots discovered it at sunrise and called the aquarium’s rescue team, which has an arrangement with the fire department marine unit. When the fireboat got there and they started to pull the turtle in, turns out there’s an unfortunate attachment on the vertical line . . . Pamela?” he says to whoever answers. “I’m handing you over to Dr. Scarpetta.”

  He gives me the receiver, folding t
he glasses with his thick fingers and tucking them into the breast pocket of his shirt as he explains, “Pamela Quick. She’s out in the fireboat, so the connection might not be real good.”

  The woman on the phone introduces herself as a marine biologist with the New England Aquarium, and she sounds urgent and slightly hostile. She just this minute e-mailed a photograph, she says.

  “You can see for yourself we’re out of time,” she insists. “We need to get him on board now.”

  “‘Him’?” I ask.

  “A critically endangered species of sea turtle that’s been dragging tackle and other gear and what’s obviously a dead person for who knows how long. Turtles have to breathe, and he barely can keep his nares above water anymore. We need to get him out right now so he doesn’t drown.”

  Marino holds his cell phone close to me so I can see the e-mailed photograph he just opened of a young woman, blond and tan, in khaki pants and a green Windbreaker, leaning over the side of the fireboat. She’s using a long-handled grappling hook to pull in a line that is entangled with a shockingly massive sea creature, leathery and dark, with a wingspan nearly as wide as the boat. Several yards away from its protruding huge head, and barely visible at the surface of the rolling blue water, are pale hands with painted nails and a splay of long white hair.

  Bryce sets down a pair of lightweight ankle-high black tactical boots with polished leather toes and nylon uppers. He complains that he can’t find socks.

  “Try my locker downstairs,” I tell him, as I bend over to slip off my pumps, and I say to Pamela Quick, “What we don’t want is to lose the body or cause any damage to it. So normally I wouldn’t permit—”

  “We can save this animal,” she cuts me off, and it’s patently clear she’s not interested in my permission. “But we have to do it now.” The way she says it, I have no doubt she’s not going to wait for me or anyone, and I really can’t blame her.

  “Do what you need to do, of course. But if someone can document it with video or photographs, that would be helpful,” I tell her, as I get out of my chair, feeling the carpet under my stocking feet and reminded I never know what to expect in life, not from one minute to the next. “Disturb any lines and gear as little as possible, and make sure they’re secured so we don’t lose anything,” I add.

  five

  DRESSED IN COTTON FIELD CLOTHES NOW, DARK BLUE, with the CFC crest embroidered on my shirt and on the bright orange jacket draped over my arm, I board the elevator beyond the break room, and for a moment we are alone. Marino sets down two black plastic Pelican cases and stabs the button for the lower level.

  “I understand you were here all night,” I comment, as he impatiently taps the button again, a habit of his that serves no useful purpose.

  “Caught up on some paperwork and stuff. Was just easier to stay over.”

  He shoves his big hands into the side pockets of his cargo pants, the slope of his belly swelling noticeably over his canvas belt. He’s gained weight, but his shoulders are formidable and I can tell by the thickness of his neck, biceps, and legs that he’s still pumping iron in that gym he belongs to in Central Square, a fight sports club or whatever he calls it, that is frequented by cops, most of them SWAT.

  “Easier than what?” I detect the stale odor of sweat beneath a patina of Brut aftershave, and maybe he drank the night away, went through a carton of Crystal Head vodka mini skull ornaments or whatever. I don’t know. “Yesterday was Sunday,” I continue in a mild voice. “Since you weren’t scheduled to work this weekend and were just getting back from a trip, what exactly was easier? And while we’re on the subject, I’ve not been getting updated on-call schedules for quite some time, so I wasn’t aware you were taking calls yourself and apparently have been—”

  “The electronic calendar is bullshit,” he interrupts. “All this automated instant bullshit. I just wish Lucy would give it a rest. You know what you need to know, that someone’s doing what they’re supposed to. That someone being me.”

  “I’m not aware that the head of investigations is on call. That’s never been our policy, unless there’s an emergency. And it’s also not our policy to be a firehouse, to sleep over on an inflatable bed while waiting for an alarm to clang, so to speak.”

  “I see someone’s been narking. It’s her fault, anyway.” He puts his sunglasses on, wire-frame Ray-Bans he’s worn for as long as I’ve known him—what Bryce calls Marino’s Smokey and the Bandit shades.

  “The investigator on call is supposed to be awake at his or her work station, ready to answer the phone.” I say this evenly and with no invitation for the argument he is giving me. “And what is whose fault?”

  “Fucking Lucy got me on Twitter, and that’s what started it.”

  When he says “fucking Lucy” I know he doesn’t mean it. The two of them are close.

  “I don’t think it’s fair to blame her for Twitter if you’re the one tweeting, and I understand you have been,” I reply in the same bland tone. “And she didn’t exactly nark on you, or some things I would have known before now. Anything she’s said, it’s because she cares about you, Marino.”

  “She’s out of the picture and has been for weeks, and I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, as we slowly descend through the center of the building.

  “Who is?” I puzzle.

  “The twat I was tweeting, and that’s all I have to say about it. And you really think people don’t sleep when they’re on call? I didn’t miss nothing last night. Every time the phone rang, I answered it and handled it. The only real scene to respond to was the guy who fell down the stairs, and Toby took care of it, a cut-and-dried accident. Then I sent him home. No point in both of us being there. And besides, he gets on my nerves. I can never find him where he’s supposed to be, either that or he’s on top of me.”

  “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. That’s all. I’m making sure you’re okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” He stares straight ahead at smooth shiny steel, at the illuminated LL on the digital panel. “I’ve had things not work out before.”

  I have no idea what things or who he’s talking about, and now is not the time to press him about some woman he met on the Internet, or at least this is what I suspect he’s alluding to. But I do need to talk to him about what I worry could be a breach of professional discretion and confidentiality.

  “While we’re on the subject, I’m wondering why you went on Twitter to begin with, or why Lucy supposedly might encourage such a thing,” I say to him. “I’m not trying to pry into your personal life, Marino, but I’m not in favor of social networking unless it’s primarily for news feeds, which is the only thing I follow on Twitter. Certainly we aren’t in the business of marketing what we do here or sharing details about it or making friends with the great outdoors.”

  “I’m not on Twitter as me, don’t use anything that can be identified to me. In other words, you don’t see my name, just the handle The Dude . . .”

  “‘The Dude’?”

  “As in the Big Lebowski character played by Jeff Bridges, whose avatar I use. Point being, no way you’d know what I do for a living unless you literally do a search for Peter Rocco Marino, and who’s going to bother? At least I don’t use some generic egg avatar like you do, which is retarded.”

  “So you represent yourself on Twitter with a photo of a movie star who played in a movie about bowling . . . ?”

  “Only the best bowling movie ever made,” he says defensively, as the elevator settles to a stop and the doors open.

  Marino doesn’t wait for me or offer anything further as he grabs up the scene cases, one in each hand, and steps out, his baseball cap pulled low over his tan bald head, his eyes masked by the Ray-Bans. All these years I’ve known him, more than two decades now, and there’s never been a question when he feels slighted or stung, although I can’t imagine what I might have done this time, beyond what I just attempted to discuss with him. But he was already out of sorts when he
appeared in my office a little while ago. Something else is going on. I wonder what the hell I’ve done. What exactly this time?

  He was gone all last week at the meeting in Florida, and so there wasn’t anything I might have done during his time away. Before that Benton and I were in Austria, and it occurs to me that’s more likely the root of Marino’s displeasure. Well, of course it would be, dammit. Benton and I were with my assistant chief medical examiner, Luke Zenner, in Vienna, at his aunt’s funeral, and I feel frustrated and next I feel annoyed. More of the damn same. Marino and his jealousy, and Benton, too. The men in my life are going to be the end of me.

  I’m careful what I say to Marino, because there are other people around. Forensic scientists, clerical and investigative staff are entering the building from the parking lot in back and moving along the wide windowless corridor. Marino and I say little to each other as we walk past the telecom closet and the locked metal door that leads into the vast mechanical room, and then the odontology lab, everything in the CFC’s round building flowing in a perfect circle, which I still find tricky at times, especially if I’m trying to give directions. There is no first or last office on the right or left, and nothing in the middle, either.

  We wind around to the autopsy and x-ray rooms, our rubber-soled booted feet making muffled sounds, and then we are in the receiving area, where there are walls of stainless-steel intake and discharge refrigerators and decomp freezers with digital displays at the tops of their heavy doors. I greet staff we encounter but don’t pause to chat, and I notify the security guard, a former military policeman, that we’ve got a potentially sensitive case coming in.

  “Something that involves what appears to be unusual circumstances,” I tell Ron, who is powerfully built and dark-skinned and never particularly animated behind his glass window. “Just be aware in the event the media or who knows what shows up. I can’t predict how much of a circus this might be.”