The Bone Yard

by Jefferson Bass

  I laughed. “Come on down; we’ll put you to work. The pay’s great. Even better than the slave wages UT pays you.”

  “So that means I’d actually have to fork over money to come work my butt off?”

  “Just about. The pay stinks. So does the work. But hey, the hours are long, the air’s like a steam bath, and the mosquitoes hunt in packs.”

  “Who could resist?”

  Next I spent a while on the phone with my son, Jeff, making sure that my grandsons had not, through some series of unfortunate events, been shipped off to a perilous reform school during my absence. “Gosh, Dad, thanks for the vote of parental confidence,” said Jeff.

  “Hey, no offense,” I said. “This case down here just reminds me how fortunate we are, and how vulnerable kids can be. Give ’em a big hug from Grandpa Bill.”

  I met Angie at the crime lab at eleven. I was picking her up for an early lunch, at a place she described as “one of Tallahassee’s national treasures.” She wouldn’t tell me what delights the menu held, but she’d sounded so sure I’d like it that I’d skipped my free breakfast in anticipation.

  First, though, she signed me into the lab and led me down the hall past the photo lab, to a door marked DOCUMENTS SECTION. She rapped briefly on the door, then led me in without waiting for an answer.

  Inside, a gray-haired, bespectacled woman sat hunched over a table, peering through the magnifying lens of a desk lamp. It was exactly the type of lamp and magnifier I had on the desk in my office under the stadium for examining bones. I half expected to see some bone fragment in the circle of light, but the woman was peering—and frowning mightily—at the muddy book I’d fished from the ground the prior afternoon. “Hey, Flo,” said Angie. “This is Dr. Brockton, the forensic anthropologist who found the book. Dr. Brockton, this is Florence Winters, our documents examiner.”

  “Nice to meet you, Florence,” I said. Her frown twitched. “You don’t look too happy. Is the book not telling you anything helpful?”

  “Call me Flo,” she said, without glancing up. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s telling me I’ve made a mistake. I put it under an exhaust hood overnight to dry out, and now the pages are fused together. So instead of a book, what we’ve got is a brick. A brick of old, brittle paper.” To prove her point, she tugged gingerly at the covers, which refused to part.

  On the table beside the lamp was a tray of tools. Two of them resembled miniature kayak paddles made of stainless steel. They sported thin, flat blades at each end, joined by a slender round shaft. One of them was smaller than the other—its blades were about an inch long, and the shaft connecting them measured perhaps six inches in length; I vaguely remembered using something similar in chemistry lab, thirty years before, to scoop bits of powder onto a balance-beam scale. The tray also held an ordinary-looking butcher knife and an implement that appeared to be an oversize letter opener made of white plastic. “I’ve tried prying the pages apart with the microspatula, the regular spatula, the knife, and the Teflon spatula,” said Flo. “The metal spatula blades are so small they just tend to break the paper apart. The Teflon spatula’s too blunt; if I forced that in, it’d turn some of the pages to mush.”

  Angie pointed to the butcher knife. “What about that? Can’t you slide that in and give it a twist?”

  “That’s what I was hoping,” Flo said, “but the pages aren’t actually flat—see how they ripple?—and the paper’s really fragile. I tried going in at that corner, but instead of separating the pages, the knife was slicing through them.”

  I leaned down and studied the corner and saw a small, straight incision cutting through the crinkled layers. “So there’s no way to open it up without destroying it? It might be the Rosetta stone, or might just be a bunch of blank pages, but we’ll never know which?”

  Flo smiled slightly. “Never say never. Just before you got here, I was talking with a documents conservator at the National Archives, in Washington. She’s been working on a similar problem—some waterlogged codebooks from World War Two.”

  “Codebooks?” I’d not spent a lot of time pondering the work of the National Archives; I knew they had a bombproof vault that contained an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, but aside from that, I suppose that if I imagined anything about the archives, it would be warehouses filled with boring bureaucratic file cabinets. This secret-code project, though, cast a new, moodier, and sexier light on the Archives. “Whose codebooks?”

  “The U.S. Navy’s.”

  I was puzzled. “But doesn’t the U.S. Navy already know its own codes from World War Two?”

  “Probably,” she answered, “but all they could tell from the book’s cover was that it contained classified information. So they needed to see what was on the pages to know what sort of classified information, and whether they could declassify it.”

  I’d always had an interest in World War II history, so even though it was a complete digression, I stayed with it. “And where’d they find this soggy codebook?”

  “Originally it was on a navy destroyer, the USS Peary, sunk by the Japanese in a surprise attack.”

  “The Peary was at Pearl Harbor?”

  “No, Australia. Two months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked U.S. and British ships in Darwin. It’s sometimes called ‘the Australian Pearl Harbor’—they actually dropped more bombs on Darwin than they did on Hawaii—but the attack wasn’t so crippling. This destroyer, the Peary, was one of eight ships they sank.”

  “Fascinating though the history and cryptology lesson is,” Angie began.

  “Cryptography,” I corrected.

  “Cryptography. Right. Whatever. How does the Seventh Fleet’s secret code for ‘soggy pages’ help us with this?”

  “I was just getting to that,” said Flo, sounding peeved. I wondered if she was peeved at Angie for interrupting, or peeved at me for digressing. She might also, I realized, have been peeved at me for finding such a problematic project for her. “She—Lisa, the woman at the National Archives—suggested a couple of things to try. First thing, which might or might not work, is to soak the book in methanol, then dry it out again.”

  “Hmm,” Angie commented. “I’m not sure ‘might or might not work’ inspires a huge amount of confidence. That’s the best the National Archives can offer? Aren’t they the brain trust for this sort of thing?”

  “They are. But every project’s different,” Flo countered. “At least, that’s what she said. The methanol might make the pages a little stiffer. And that might make them easier to pop apart with a knife or a spatula.”

  “But it might not,” I said.

  “It might not,” she confirmed. “If not, we go to Plan C.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” said Angie. “What’s Plan C?”

  “Wet the book again.”

  “At the risk of sounding dumb,” I asked, “isn’t Plan C the same as Plan A?”

  “Actually, this was Plan A,” Flo observed, rapping a knuckle on the dry book of fused pages.

  “But he’s got a point,” said Angie. “What do we gain by going back to where we were?”

  “We get another chance. Like Thomas Edison, when he was trying out different materials for lightbulb filaments.”

  Angie looked doubtful. “Didn’t it take him, like, a hundred tries?”

  “More like a thousand,” Flo said.

  “A thousand?” Angie’s face fell. “You think it’s worth it? I’m not sure the results are going to be all that illuminating.”

  I smiled at the bad pun—there were few things I liked better than bad puns, except worse puns—but Flo looked peeved again. “Never know unless we try.”

  “Maybe not even then,” Angie replied.

  “Maybe not even then,” Flo agreed. “But somebody went to some trouble to hide this. If I can, I’d like to find out why.”

  Peevish or not, I decided, Flo was good people. “Angie and I are about to grab some lunch,” I said on the spur of the moment. “You want to go?
Stu—Agent Vickery—is meeting us there. Bringing a criminologist friend, too. Why don’t you join us? Angie says the place is really special.”

  “Can’t,” she said. “Got two forgeries to work on after this. Thanks, though. Where you going?”

  “Shell’s,” said Angie, smiling, then raising a shushing, “top secret” finger to her lips.

  “Ah, Shell’s,” said Flo. “That is someplace special.”

  Chapter 9

  What I held in my hand was halfway between bone and flower: cold and hard as stone, but scalloped, sinuous, and lustrous. It was beautiful, in a rough-hewn way, but at the moment my fear was trumping my aesthetic appreciation.

  Angie and I were lunching at the Shell Oyster Bar—better known to the locals as “Shell’s”—and it was indeed special, in its own sort of way. Shell’s was a ramshackle little café on Tallahassee’s south side, just across the proverbial tracks. The parking lot was small, which was just as well, since the restaurant itself could seat only about thirty people. I glanced around the interior. The linoleum on the floor and the beige paneling on the walls looked forty years old, and half a dozen of the acoustic ceiling tiles were stained and sagging from roof leaks. “You picked this place for the ambience, right?”

  “I picked this place because it’s the real deal. Great oysters, reasonable prices, and no fancy airs.” She was right about the lack of airs: the customers who jammed the place were eating directly off cafeteria trays, drinking beer straight from the can, and wielding flimsy plastic forks. I didn’t actually mind the ambience, despite my sniping comment. What I minded was the oysters. I felt moderate concern about the eleven raw ones glistening on the plate the waitress had set on the table between Angie and me, and I felt high anxiety about the twelfth oyster, the runt of the litter, which I had slowly lifted toward my mouth as Angie watched.

  “I don’t know about this,” I said.

  “Oh, come on. You spend half your time up to your elbows in bodies and gack, and you’re scared to eat an oyster?” She looked simultaneously amused and appalled.

  “The difference is, I don’t put the gack in my mouth,” I pointed out. “I ate a raw oyster once a long time ago, and all I can say is, I haven’t felt moved to eat another one. Chewy and slimy, that’s what I remember—like a cross between gristle and a loogey.”

  “Eww, that’s disgusting.” She grimaced. “Clearly that was not an Apalachicola Bay oyster you had. Probably some inferior product from the Chesapeake or the Pacific Northwest.” She spooned a dollop of horseradish from a tiny paper cup onto the largest of the oysters, squeezed a lemon wedge over it, and then plucked the shell from the plastic tray and waved it in my direction. “Look, this is a thing of beauty.” The oyster quivered moistly beneath the fluorescent lights. Angie raised the shell to her lips and tipped it up, slurping slightly as the oyster slid into her mouth. She chewed a few times and then swallowed. “Yum.” She beamed. “You better move fast, or you’ll lose your chance. There’s only ten more on the plate.”

  “And this is it? This is all we’re having for lunch? A dozen raw oysters?”

  “Maybe not.” She shrugged. “We might need two dozen. I’m kinda hungry.”

  As Angie reached for another oyster, I noticed a thin, faint line on the side of her index finger. “How’d you get that scar? Mind my asking?”

  She looked puzzled until she saw where I was looking; then, in the space of a few seconds, her face shifted through half a dozen expressions: amusement, wistfulness, sorrow, anger, confusion, peace. “I nearly chopped off my finger when I was ten,” she said. “My sister Kate—she was seven at the time—was trying to cut down a tree. She was flailing away at it with a hatchet, but not really doing much beyond bruising the bark. So I took the hatchet from her and said, ‘Here, let me show you how to do it.’ I put one hand on the tree, for balance, I guess, and reared back and took a whack. Lucky for me I just caught the edge of my finger with the blade. An inch higher, and my coworkers would be calling me ‘Stumpy.’ As it was, I got off with just a few stitches.” She traced the scar with her other index finger, smiling slightly. “God, I haven’t thought about that in years. ‘Here, let me show you how to do it.’ Famous last words, huh?” She shook her head. “We were so close when we were kids. I was so protective of her. How the hell did I let her down so badly? How’d I let her get in so far over her head?” She jabbed at her eyes with the flimsy paper napkin. “Dammit.” She set the empty shell down on the tray.

  I set mine down, too. “I’m sorry, Angie.” Mortified by my clumsiness, I stared down at the oysters pooled in their brine. “I didn’t mean to remind you of it all over again.”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay. How were you supposed to know? Besides, I don’t want people tiptoeing around, walking on eggshells for fear they’ll say something—who knows what—that might remind me of Kate. I’d hate that.” She fingered the scar again. “This is my reminder of an adventure, a story we shared. It’s a souvenir I’ll carry on my skin for the rest of my life. Like a tattoo, carved by a hatchet. How cool is that? But it gets invisible to me, and I forget it’s there. So thanks for reminding me. I’m glad you asked.”

  “Me, too, then.” I looked up at her, no longer mortified. “I won’t tiptoe.” An unexpected wave of memory and emotion washed over me suddenly—a rogue wave that hit me almost hard enough to capsize me—and I turned away.

  “What? I thought you promised not to tiptoe.”

  “I did. I won’t.” I turned back toward her. “I know what it’s like when people tiptoe around you. Makes you feel invisible but also hugely conspicuous at the same time.” She waited. “My father killed himself when I was three.”

  Her eyes widened, and she nodded once, very slowly. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t actually know much about it. He’d invested heavily in the commodities market—soybean futures or pork bellies or something; I don’t know what. Not just his own money, but a lot of money for other people, too—friends who wanted in on what was starting to look like a sure thing. And then the price went into free fall and he lost everything. He went into his office and shot himself.” I shrugged. “That’s about all I know. We never talked about it. That was the one unspoken rule at my house growing up: don’t talk about it; tiptoe around it. ”

  “Did your mother remarry?”

  “She did. Actually, she married my dad’s brother, my uncle Charlie.” I smiled. “Charlie was a fine man. Treated me like a son. I thought of him as my dad; I called him Dad. Although . . .” I hesitated again. “The older I get, the more I miss my father; the more I wonder what kind of relationship I could have had with him. It makes me feel a little disloyal to Charlie, but I miss my father.”

  “Nothing disloyal about that,” she said. “There’s room in a heart for a lot of people. I’ve got another sister, Genevieve—the oldest—who’s still alive. Would I have more love to give Genevieve if I didn’t still feel love for Kate? I don’t think it works that way. I think it works the other way around—I think I’ve got a bigger heart for Gen because of Kate. And I bet you’ve got a bigger heart for Charlie because it’s growing to take in more of your father. Loss can make you smaller, or it can make you bigger. Just depends on what you do after it.” She dabbed at her eyes, then looked at the ruins of her napkin and laughed. “God, they really do need better napkins at this place.”

  I lifted my paper cup of iced tea. “Here’s to getting bigger, not smaller.”

  She reached for her cup, but didn’t lift it. “You mean that?” There was a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  “I do.”

  “Let’s see about that.” Letting go of the cup, she lifted another oyster from the tray and held it toward me. “To getting bigger, not smaller.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “There’s no graceful way out of this for me, is there?”

  “The best way out is all the way in.” She grinned.

  I studied the remaining oysters. My inc
lination was to reach again for the smallest. Instead, I forced myself to take a big one. I spooned on a dab of horseradish and squeezed a lemon wedge over it, as I’d seen Angie do, and then—for good measure—sprinkled a dollop of cocktail sauce on top. I lifted it by the edges, careful not to slosh the brine. “To bigger, not smaller,” I said, clicking my oyster shell against hers. I brought the shell to my lips, feeling the roughness of its outside against my lower lip and the pearly smoothness of the inner shell against my top lip. The shell was cold from the bed of crushed ice in the platter. As I tipped the shell slowly, the brine—salty, lemony, and tangy—trickled into my mouth.

  “Don’t think about it,” Angie coached from across the table. “Just do it.” I tipped the shell higher, and the oyster slithered into my mouth. “Chew three times, then swallow.” The memory of my one prior oyster tasting came rushing back, and I nearly gagged, but then I bit down, and my distaste and fear were swept away by a wave of flavor and texture that somehow seemed to embody the ocean itself: salty, clean, and—to my amazement—light and slightly crisp. How could an oyster—a mollusk, for heaven’s sake—be light and crisp and clean?

  I laid the shell down slowly. “So,” she said, “what do you think?”

  “I think maybe you’re right,” I said. “I think we might need two dozen.”

  We were just polishing off the first dozen when Angie’s phone rang. “Hi, Stu. Yeah, we’re still here. Y’all come on. But you better hurry. I’m not sure how well stocked Shell’s is, and our friend here has decided he likes oysters.”

  Vickery brought with him a patrician-looking man who could have been either a well-used sixty or a youthful seventy. He wore silver hair, black suspenders, a red bow tie, and alert, sparkling eyes. He extended a hand as Vickery made a no-nonsense introduction. “Dr. Bill Brockton; Dr. Albert Goldman.” I wiped the oyster brine from my hand and shook. “Dr. Goldman teaches law and criminology at FSU’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights,” Vickery told me, although Angie had already briefed me on his credentials while we were waiting, “and one of his specialties is juvenile justice. If anybody can give you the skinny on reform schools in the 1950s and ’60s, it’s Al.”