The Bone Bed

by Patricia Cornwell

  I take a chair next to Benton and across from Val Hahn, who is in a khaki suit and a serious mood, and she nods at me. Next to her is Douglas Burke, in black, and she doesn’t give me so much as a glance. Turning on the HD display in front of me, I look at Briggs’s rugged face on my monitor as he explains what the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Edmonton, Alberta, is doing as a courtesy because we don’t have jurisdiction.

  “We could argue it, but we won’t.” Briggs has a way of assuming authority and making people believe it. “We’re not going to have a pissing match in a case where it’s an ally capable of conducting a competent forensic investigation. This isn’t Jonestown or American missionaries murdered in Sudan. It will be a fully coordinated effort with our Canadian friends.”

  I can tell from the military coin and memorial flag displays on the shelves behind him that he’s sitting at his desk inside his port mortuary office at Dover Air Force Base. He’s in scrubs because his work isn’t done, a planeload of flag-draped transfer cases scheduled to arrive by the end of the day, I know from the news. A chopper shot down. Another one.

  “His role is to observe, to be a conduit between them and us,” Briggs is saying, about the AFME’s consulting forensic pathologist in Seattle.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.” I speak to my monitor, and Briggs is looking at me and he’s looking at everyone.

  “Let me fill you in, Kay.” He informs me that Emma Shubert is dead.

  Her decomposing remains have been found not even five miles from the Pipestone Creek campground where she was last seen by her colleagues on the night of August 23. Dr. Ramon Lopez is being flown to Edmonton, and the AFME consultant, the retired chief of Seattle, a friend of mine, will be in touch with me as soon as he has information.

  “Some kids looking for dinosaur bones.” Briggs describes for me what he’s already explained to everyone else. “Apparently, they were exploring a wooded area off Highway Forty-three and noticed several small bones. They thought at first they’d discovered another bone bed, and they had, in a sense. Only these bones weren’t petrified or old. Small human bones of the hands and feet, most likely scattered by animals. Then a human skull near a pile of rocks accompanied by a foul odor.”

  “When was this?” I again apologize for what he has to repeat.

  “Yesterday late afternoon. Most of the body was under rocks that someone obviously piled on top. So she’s not completely skeletonized, as you can see.”

  Briggs clicks through an array of photos that are large and graphic on the wall-mounted flat screens. Small human bones, carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges, what look like white and gray stones in a dry creek bed overwhelmed by trees, and a skull wedged under a shrub as if it rolled there or perhaps an animal nudged it.

  A pelt of matted grayish-brown hair at the edge of piled rocks, and then the shallow grave is exposed, revealing the remains in situ, a body in a blue coat and gray pants curled up on its side. Areas not protected by clothing, the head, the hands, the feet, likely were preyed on and gnawed on by insects and wildlife, and were disarticulated and scattered.

  “What about boots or shoes?” I inquire.

  “Not on the clothing inventory I’ve received.” Briggs types on a keyboard I can’t see and puts on his glasses. “One blue rain jacket, one pair of gray pants, a bra, a pair of panties, a silver metal watch on a blue Velcro band that believe it or not is still ticking.”

  “No shoes or socks,” I comment. “Interesting, because at some point before she died, Peggy Stanton was barefoot.”

  “Psychological hobbling,” Benton says, and I wonder how long he’s known. “Rendering the victim submissive and dominated.”

  “And also making it harder to run,” Douglas Burke says to him and no one else.

  Her wide-eyed stare brings to mind a wild animal, a rabid one.

  “It was a cool and rainy summer in northwest Alberta.” The most powerful forensic pathologist in the United States resumes briefing me. “And of course it’s been quite cold during the month of October. So two months out and most of the body is reasonably intact because of temperatures that almost mimic refrigerated conditions, and also clothing and rocks protected it somewhat. If she’s a stabbing, a shooting, blunt force, possibly even strangulation, there may be enough soft tissue for us to tell. ID by dental charts has been confirmed, and we’re awaiting DNA, but there doesn’t seem to be a doubt it’s her.”

  “Any apparent injuries?” I ask.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he says. “We know she wasn’t shot in the head. No skull fractures.” He’s looking at a computer on his desk, obviously scrolling through an electronic file. “No projectiles, no fractures on x-ray. They haven’t autopsied her yet, are waiting for Dr. Lopez.”

  “The Canadian authorities understand we believe she’s not an isolated case,” Benton says to me, and when we were on the elevator earlier and I mentioned that Emma Shubert is dead, he knew it was true.

  He knew it for a fact. It was he who instigated this meeting.

  “They understand she’s linked to at least one homicide here, possibly two, possibly more,” Benton fills me in, and I have no doubt the Grande Prairie detectives and Royal Canadian Mounted Police working Emma Shubert’s disappearance would have contacted the FBI the instant they realized the remains were hers.

  She was an American citizen. A disturbing jpg image and video file possibly relating to her were anonymously e-mailed to me two days ago, and the local police and RCMP are aware of that. I suspect Benton was notified and got in touch with General Briggs, who contacted the OCME in Edmonton and also Dr. Lopez. The AFME would want to know about the Emma Shubert case because ultimately the Department of Defense would want to know. If my office is in the middle of a serial murder investigation that is federal jurisdiction and linked to a homicide in Canada, General John Briggs has to be informed. He will demand every detail and constant updates.

  “The timing. Am I the only one who finds the timing as in-our-face as a billboard?” Burke says, and her eyes are glassy.

  Pseudoephedrine, or she’s excited by something far more dangerous, dressed in a suit with a very short skirt and a red scoop-neck sweater that’s so tight it seems airbrushed on. Directly across from Benton, she arranges herself in such a way as to give him an eyeful and give me one, too, and possibly Briggs, depending on the angle of her camera and what is displayed on his desktop screen.

  “Both bodies are found on the same day?” She is emphatic with Briggs, almost argumentative. “Peggy Stanton’s body turns up here in the Massachusetts Bay the same day Emma Shubert turns up in Canada? Isn’t that a little too coincidental, John?”

  “Exactly that, a coincidence,” Briggs states, in his calm, unflappable way, and her feminine attributes wouldn’t be lost on him as much as they would be completely dismissed. “It stands to reason whoever piled rocks on top of her out in the middle of the woods had no control over the timing of when kids searching for fossils, for dino bones, would happen upon it.”

  “It’s different,” Benton says, but he’s not saying it to Burke. “The killer wanted Peggy Stanton’s body found when it was and intended to shock whoever attempted to recover it from the bay, possibly intended exactly what he got, which was the thrill of a highly publicized spectacle. His handiwork was all over the news. In contrast, when he murdered Emma Shubert he did not intend to shock whoever found her remains, because he didn’t intend for them to be found at all. He carried or dragged her body probably from the highway and into the woods and covered it with rocks.”

  It’s at this point I mention Mildred Lott. I describe the parallel of missing pets that later turn up, and her fear of being kidnapped and her husband’s assertion that it would be extremely difficult for someone to pull that off. She would rather be shot on the spot than comply with an attacker, according to him, and those who knew her found her condescending and overbearing, I explain.

  She didn’t treat all people kindly or fairly, and Peggy Stant
on seemed to have withdrawn into the confined space of her own private grieving, not venturing out much unless it was to perform acts of charity. Emma Shubert had a singular focus, impassioned by hard, cold remnants of a prehistoric past, with very little evidence she connected with anyone.

  “All three of these women are unlikely candidates for abduction and murder,” I suggest. “They were going about their business, on their own property, or carrying out their usual routines when they vanished. They were formidable and not necessarily accessible or sociable, and they weren’t quick to trust. In fact, I get the impression they weren’t trusting at all.”

  “You’re pretty certain it’s one perpetrator, Kay,” Briggs doesn’t ask but states.

  “I think that’s what we’re going to discover and need to keep in mind.”

  “It’s one person,” Benton agrees. “And Emma Shubert was a victim of opportunity. I don’t think he planned her well in advance, or at least that what happened to her was premeditated to the degree the other two were. I suspect he was out of his normal habitat, was in the Grande Prairie area for a reason.”

  “Something that ties him to northwest Alberta and also to Cambridge,” Burke asserts, as if she’s answering a question that’s not been asked.

  “Maybe they met. Maybe they didn’t. But they encountered each other somehow,” Benton tells Briggs as if it’s fact, because there’s no other way it could have happened.

  Emma Shubert came to the killer’s attention, became a target, and she probably had no awareness of it. He may have stalked her, followed her, and likely was waiting for her in the remote wooded campground where she was last seen alive.

  “There’s no lighting. Just the ambient glow of small trailers widely spaced in the woods,” Benton says. “And it was solid overcast and raining that night.”

  thirty-seven

  VAL HAHN OF THE FBI’S CYBER SQUAD DESCRIBES SUMMER days in Grande Prairie as endless, with dawn coming early and darkness descending as late as ten p.m. due to the region’s northern latitude.

  “The night of August twenty-third,” she tells the image of General Briggs streaming live to us, “it was pouring rain and cold enough to see your breath. By the time Emma was returning to her trailer from the chow hall after having dinner with her colleagues, it was pitch dark in the campground.”

  The mosquitoes were bad, and there were warnings about bears, she adds, and the paleontologists were reminded in an e-mailed memo not to let the wet miserable weather deter them from hauling garbage to the Dumpsters.

  “‘Hungry bears don’t care if they get wet,’ the e-mail read.” Hahn continues to set the scene for us. “And the night before, a bear had gotten into bags of trash left on a picnic table and had tried to break into a trailer. According to Emma’s colleagues, she was afraid of bears. She listened for any noise and looked for any movement, anything at all that might be a bear. She would not have approached her trailer or even continued walking toward it had she heard or noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Obviously someone stealthy.” Douglas Burke says it as if she has a certain suspect in mind. “Stealthy as a ghost. Someone with the skill sets of a paid assassin.”

  “The campground and the weather that night,” Benton says, as if Burke said nothing. “Ideal for a violent offender who wants to be invisible and silent and completely unanticipated. One might expect a bear but not a human predator.”

  “Assuming he knows about the place.” Briggs has his glasses on again and is looking down at his desk. “It’s off the beaten track if you’re from out of town. Unless you’re into camping, seems to me.”

  “One has to assume he knew. Yes, sir, I agree,” Hahn replies. “When the paleontologists are subjected to the worst weather, they work and eat late. So did the perpetrator know that? I’m thinking he did. I’m thinking he had to be aware of their habits.”

  She continues to give us a snapshot of Emma Shubert’s daily life when she spent her summers in Alberta’s Peace Region, a name that couldn’t seem more ironic now. During downpours or high winds, she and her colleagues typically would stay in the campground trailers, what those working the bone beds think of as temporary barracks, cramped, sparsely furnished, with electricity supplied by gasoline-powered generators. Early mornings the scientists would meet in the chow hall for breakfast, then cross a footbridge over Pipestone Creek and slog through woods and mud to the pachyrhinosaurus site.

  It can be a monsoon, Hahn says, and the scientists are going to dig as long as they are physically able to access an excavation site, and they could always access the local one. Muddy and as slippery as hell, but it’s not a sheer riverbank or hillside that requires a long drive or jetboat ride and rock-climbing gear. They’re going to dig somewhere, going to scrape away sedimentary mud and chip away shale, unearthing what appears to the untrained eye to be nothing but rocks, in a part of the world where the months one can work outside are limited because it’s not possible once the ground freezes. Late fall, winter, and early spring, the paleontologists are in the labs. They teach, and like Emma Shubert, many of them return to where they’re from.

  “According to interviews made available to us and other research I’ve done,” Hahn says, “on August twenty-third the paleontologists had been digging in a sea of mud at the Pipestone Creek site, a pachyrhinosaurus bone bed discovered twenty-something years ago, what’s believed to be a mass grave where hundreds of the dinosaurs drowned, were wiped out by some natural disaster. The rain made it impossible to access the hilly slope of the Wapiti site where Emma usually excavated. Even on a good day you need ropes to get up there, so in a downpour, forget it.”

  “Which was where she wanted to be,” Benton says. “A relatively new site, one she’d staked out as her territory. The Pipestone Creek site has been around much longer, as Val has said.”

  “It was picked over, or at least this was how Emma thought of it, based on interviews with her colleagues,” Hahn says, and Briggs is looking at something else, possibly e-mail.

  “What’s important,” Benton adds, “is the weather dictated Emma’s routine. If she traveled by jetboat or car an hour each way to the Wapiti bone bed, then she didn’t typically stay in the campground. The trailers she and some of the other visiting paleontologists used were mainly for the convenience of staying near the Pipestone Creek bone bed if that’s where they were working, which was an easy walk from the campground. The Wapiti bone bed, where Emma made the important discovery of a pachyrhino tooth two days before she disappeared, is some twenty miles north of Grande Prairie. And often after she’d worked there Emma would stay in town, in a studio apartment she rented in College Park.”

  “Meaning if it hadn’t rained,” Briggs comments, “she might have gone up the river to her usual site and stayed in town and maybe she’d still be alive.”

  “If it hadn’t rained, she would have excavated her usual bone bed,” Benton confirms. “It might have saved her life, but it’s hard to say. Maybe impossible to say.”

  “Sounds to me like she was being stalked.” Briggs is looking down at his desk again, and while I can’t see what’s on it, I know him.

  He’s multitasking. If the FBI is willing to go over the details of their investigation, he’ll listen. He’ll listen to the most obscure minutiae as long as he’s taking care of whatever’s in front of him, which is always something.

  “Watching her at any rate, yes,” Benton is saying. “Enough for the killer to know her routines, unless he was just damn lucky she happened to be staying in the pitch-black mud hole of a campground the night he decided to grab her.”

  “It makes me wonder if it’s not someone local.” Briggs reaches for something.

  “Or has been in and out of the area.” Burke has her own theory.

  I can look at her and know she has something to prove, probably to prove to Benton, who wants her transferred to another field office, maybe one in Kentucky. I don’t know if he’s told her yet, but I suspect he has, based on her
demeanor, stony and stubborn and seductive. I can feel her anger smoldering as she continues to flaunt her opinions and herself.

  “Someone who knew the area,” she says, “and had reason to know details about Emma and that the paleontologists don’t work the Wapiti site in bad weather.”

  “Sedimentary argillite,” Benton says to us and not her. “River clay. The aboriginal people made tobacco pipes out of it, and it cakes on shoes and clothing like cement. After digging at the bone bed the last day Emma was seen alive, no one had cleaned up, including her. They’d walked directly to the chow hall, and when she finally headed to her trailer she would have been extremely muddy, dressed for the weather, including a blue hooded rain jacket that appears to be the one the body has on.”

  “At night,” Hahn tells us, “the campground is so dark people use flashlights if they’re walking around because you can’t see a thing unless the moon is full, which it certainly wasn’t that night. Just a soupy darkness described by her colleagues as noisy, like a shower going full blast.”

  “It would have been very easy to park a vehicle nearby,” Benton says. “And grab her.”

  “Especially if she were incapacitated first,” I point out.

  “Unless we’re talking about a person she would go with willingly,” Briggs suggests, and it appears he’s reading and initialing reports.

  “I doubt that was possible without her colleagues knowing,” Benton answers him. “Without her mentioning something to someone, and based on interviews that have been relayed to us, based on her e-mails, her voicemails, Emma was completely focused on her profession. She wasn’t seeing anyone romantically, had only professional associations while she was working in the bone beds or the lab. When she left the chow hall that night, she said she was tired. She was turning in and would see everybody in the morning and maybe they’d get lucky and the rain would ease up. She walked back through the campground alone.”