The Bone Yard

by Jefferson Bass

  “I’m just pressing it on,” he said. “I feel it when I bump up against the bone.” He saw me puzzling to take this in. “Here, try it.” He rolled his chair to the side and allowed me to take his place at the computer and grip the stylus. I moved it tentatively back and forth, up and down, in and out, and then in a series of spirals. It moved freely, almost weightlessly, in all directions, with virtually no friction, as the tiny icon flitted and spiraled across the computer screen, floating around and above the image of the skull.

  “That’s cool,” I said, “but I still don’t quite get how you transfer the depth markers onto the skull.”

  “Move it in closer, all the way onto the skull.”

  “But how will I know when I’m there?”

  He smiled. “You’ll know.” I centered the stylus over the forehead and eased it forward, as the icon on the screen mimicked the movement. “Just shove it,” he urged. “Don’t worry; you can’t hurt it.” I pushed the stylus forward; the arm swung freely . . . and then stopped as abruptly and firmly as if it had hit a wall. I pulled it back toward me, then moved it forward again. Again it jolted to a stop when the small icon bumped the forehead. Intrigued, I slid it downward, feeling both friction and undulations as it moved over the contours of the forehead and the brow ridge. Suddenly, as I dragged the stylus across the lower edge of the brow ridge, the arm slid forward and the stylus icon plunged into the right eye orbit. As I watched, astonished, it careened through the opening at the back of the orbit—the opening through which the optic nerve had once connected with the brain—and disappeared from view. I tried pulling it back out, but it resisted my efforts.

  “Help,” I squawked. “What have I done?”

  Mullins laughed. “You’re trapped inside the cranial vault now. You can come out where you went in, or out the nasal opening, or even out the foramen magnum at the base of the skull, where the spinal cord comes out. I’m guessing you know all the emergency exits from a skull.”

  I moved the invisible stylus in various directions, but didn’t manage to free it from the cavity where I’d trapped it. As I struggled to free it, I found myself growing nervous, verging on panic. What if I’d broken the system, trapped the stylus in some permanent, irretrievable way? Finally it occurred to me to close my eyes and move the stylus by feel, exploring the inner contours of the cranial vault. In my mind’s eye, I replaced the stylus with a tiny version of myself—a miniature spelunker within the cavern of a cranium—sliding my hands around the rough-surfaced perimeter, reaching overhead to feel the top of the vault, bending down to probe the gaping pit of the foramen magnum that opened at my tiny feet. My brief panic gave way to delight. The contours fascinated me; as I retraced the right side of the cranial vault, I felt the zigzag seam of the cranial suture where the frontal bone joined the parietal, then, just behind that, the grooves where the middle meningeal artery had once run, bringing blood to the brain. If this had been the first skull Pettis’s dog had found, I might have been able to feel the subtle fracture line that intersected the groove. But this was the second, more damaged skull, so I felt my way to the left side of the parietal bone, where the mastoid process had been broken off by a powerful blow. Sure enough, the stylus snagged on the ragged edges of the break, and I winced as I imagined a slow-motion version of the bone’s shattering.

  “This skull was brought home by a dog,” I told Mullins. “We’re still looking for the rest of the bones.”

  He nodded. “One of the first reconstructions I did was a case like that,” he said. “A dog in Vermont found a skull somewhere in the woods. The sheriff’s office looked and looked, but they couldn’t find anything else. Finally they put a tracking collar on the dog, hoping he’d go back for more.”

  “And did he?”

  “Nope. They never found anything more than the skull. But we got an identification from the reconstruction. Turns out it was a severely retarded boy who’d been killed by his dad. People thought the boy had been put in an institution somewhere, but he’d been murdered and dumped in the woods instead.”

  “It’s possible that this boy, our boy here, was institutionalized and then murdered,” I said. “A reform school. A mighty grim one, by all accounts.” I continued feeling my way around the interior of the cranial vault. “This is amazing.” I’d spent thirty years examining skulls—usually their exteriors, though sometimes their interiors as well—but never before had I explored one in this way, as if I were a spelunker in a cave. The experience was mesmerizing and moving: an intensely intimate encounter with the skull of this unknown young man. Finally, after what must have been several minutes, I realized I was holding up progress on the reconstruction. I imagined the location of the foramen magnum and then imagined myself as a cliff diver, diving down into a small pool of deep water, swimming downward and out to the side. I opened my eyes just as the stylus reappeared on the left side of the skull, hovering roughly where the ear had once been.

  “Amazing,” I said again. “I could spend hours doing that.”

  “It’s addictive,” he agreed. “Like a video game, only real.”

  “Ever see that sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage?”

  “Sure, I have it on DVD.” He grinned. “A submarine full of scientists gets shrunk down to the size of a molecule and injected into a guy’s bloodstream.”

  “Right. What is it they need to do? Blast a brain tumor with a laser beam?”

  “Close; a blood clot,” he corrected, “in the brain of a Russian defector. Cool movie. The wonders and perils of the human body. Wouldn’t that be cool, if we could actually take that trip?” I liked this kid.

  Reluctantly I scooted my chair aside and turned the computer back over to him. “Okay, it’s all yours. How long will it take you to do the reconstruction?”

  “Depends. A week, best case. Two weeks, if you hang around and help.” He laughed.

  “Never fear,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to Tallahassee. But if you can pretend I’m not here right now, I’d love to look over your shoulder for a few minutes while you work on this.”

  “Be my guest. I’ll get the rest of these depth markers on pretty quickly, then start sculpting the muscles of the face.”

  In a matter of minutes—or so it seemed, though maybe it was longer and I just lost track of time—the skull bristled with rodlike depth markers projecting from its landmarks. Thin-skinned areas, such as the forehead, nasal bridge, and chin, sported nubby little markers, less than an eighth of an inch thick; in the fleshier regions of the cheeks and lower jaw, the markers jutted out nearly an inch. Ten markers were positioned along the skull’s midline, and another eleven were arrayed on each side. Mullins rotated the skull to make sure he’d not omitted any, slowly at first, then faster, like a gruesome version of a spinning top.

  After a few moments the skull slowed and stopped, facing forward. Then, using the stylus in click-and-drag mode again, Mullins began grabbing strands of virtual clay from the left side of the screen and pressing them onto the skull’s right cheek. As more and more strands angled downward from the cheekbone toward the corners of the mouth, I realized that they represented bundles of muscle fibers. “So you sculpt every muscle, one by one? You can’t just put on a layer of clay and contour it to the thickness of the depth markers?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Well, you can—I’ve tried that, and yeah, it’s a lot faster—but it doesn’t look right. You just can’t fake the contours of the face. You’ve got to lay the foundation of muscles underneath the skin. No easy shortcuts.”

  Fiber by fiber, as I stood and watched, Mullins continued sculpting in virtual clay. Finally I eased away silently so as not to distract him again. The muscle he was creating as I left was the zygomaticus: the muscle that had once tugged this murdered black boy’s mouth into a smile.

  It had been a long, long time since he’d used that muscle.

  Chapter 12

  The high-powered, high-tech worlds of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children seemed far away as Angie and I bumped and slewed down the dirt road to Winston Pettis’s north Florida cabin for the third time. I hoped this time would prove to be a charm. I’d retrieved my truck from the Tallahassee airport at ten the night before—had it really been only fifteen hours since I’d boarded the flight to D.C.?—and had staggered into bed at the Hampton Inn, which I’d persuaded Angie was more comfortable (and more affordable) than the posh Duval. She’d fetched me at midmorning and—after a quick errand at a sporting-goods store—we’d headed to Pettis’s neck of the Florida woods.

  As we rolled west again on the long, straight stretches of Highway 90, Angie handed me photocopied pages, covered with an uneven, barely legible scrawl. I felt a rush of adrenaline. “Is this what I think it is?”

  She nodded.

  The soggy book had not, she told me, responded well to the methanol soak the documents examiner had tried. After Flo had soaked it in the alcohol and redried it, it had become an even more brittle brick of fused paper. So she’d begun a laborious deconstruction process, one that would require reinforcing and then peeling off the sheets of paper one at a time.

  After carefully teasing off the fiberboard cover, she’d pasted a sheet of Japanese tissue onto the first page in the book—a blank one—by brushing a thin layer of wheat-starch paste onto the tissue. The tissue itself was as thin and transparent as gossamer, yet it was remarkably strong, according to Flo. It was handmade in Japan from the inner bark of the kozo, or paper mulberry, whose fibers were pounded with boards to break them into individual strands. Pasted to a weak, pulpy page of the diary, the Japanese tissue provided a near-invisible web of reinforcement, allowing her to peel off a sheet without tearing it. Thus it was, page by page, a few painstaking sheets a day—paste, dry, peel; paste, dry, peel—that Flo hoped to crack whatever secrets were coded within the buried book.

  As I read the words scrawled on the pages, I felt my heart begin to pound.

  I cant write much. If they catch me at it Ill get a whipping for sure.

  I found this notebook behind the nurses desk when I was sweeping up. It had fell between the desk and the wall and it look like it had been there a long time because there was spiderwebs and dead bugs on it. so I think she forgot about it a long time ago and will not miss it. there was a pencil stub in her trash can. and this Prince Albert tobacco can in the dump. I don’t know why somebody would throw away this can. It has a picture of Prince Albert in a fancy coat and hat, and the lid fits tight, just like on a paint can, but there’s a little metal key like a bottle opener that slides clear around the top of the can so you can pry the lid open whenever you want to. The can still smells good when I open it. Theres a few bits of tobacco down in the bottom. I thought about cleaning them out when I first found the can but I’m glad I didn’t because I like the way it smells.

  Papaw use to smoke Prince Albert and his cloths and his car always smelled like this. One time when I was little I asked him could I take a puff on his pipe. He laughed at me and said lord no, boy, youd be sick as a dog. I didnt believe him so I kept asking and asking until finely he let me. The smoke made me cough and get dizzy and then I threw up. Papaw laughed when I was coughing but when I threw up he felt bad for me. then my ma heard me and came outside. she got mad at me for smoking and got mad at Papaw for him letting me smoke. A 7 year old child should not be smoking she said, and a old man with no teeth should know better than to let him. you both need a good thrashing to beat some sense into you. Papaw said go right ahead but she had better start with him first, and he reckoned even if he was a old man with no teeth, he bet he could still turn her over his knee like he used to when she was just a little shit-tail. she looked even madder when he told her that, but she never whipped me then. she waited till the next day, when he was gone, and then she whipped me twice as hard.

  I can smoke without coughing now. Even cigarets, but I dont smoke much. For one thing its hard to get cigarets here, you have to steal them from one of the guards or staff, and if you get caught stealing it might be the last thing you ever do. Stealing or trying to run away, those are the surest ways to wind up in the bone yard. Thats what Jared Mcwhorter told me, and hes been here almost a year. So he should know. Besides I dont even like the taste of the smoke. its just something to do.

  We got a new boy yesterday, Buck. He is from over at Perry, which is east of Tallahassee, he said. He got caught throwing rocks through some church windows, which is worse than what I done, which was only playing hookie. But it still dont seem worth sending him to this place for. so he mustve got in trouble before. or maybe hes a orphan and they didn’t want him at the orphanage no more. I will find out when I can. but I have to be careful about talking to him. You can get the shit beat out of you for talking. Talking dont get you in as much trouble as smoking, and for sure not as much as stealing or running. But talking is not worth a beating.

  there is nigger boys here, but not in our building. they are in some other buildings just down the road. I wonder if they get treated as bad as what we do.

  I have to stop now or Ill be in trouble for taking me so long to take the trash to the dump. Writing is not worth a beating. But I will write again when I can.

  “Amazing,” I said. “Scary. What do you suppose he means by ‘bone yard’?”

  “Whatever he means, I’m sure it’s not good.” Angie shook her head. “Poor kid.”

  “Kids,” I said. “Plural. He’s just the one who’s writing it down.”

  We turned off the highway for the blacktop county road, then turned down the dirt lane to Pettis’s cabin.

  Jasper bayed and bounded out to greet us, rearing up and resting his paws on the sill of Angie’s open window. Winston Pettis shambled down the steps and leaned his elbows on my window. “Howdy, Doc; Miss Angie,” he drawled through the opening. “What brings you out this way today? Jasper call y’all to say he’d found anything new?”

  “Not exactly,” Angie began as we got out and Jasper inspected her more thoroughly and personally, “but we’re hoping maybe he will soon. We sure would like to find where those skulls came from.”

  “Well, I know Jasper’d be glad to tell you where he found it, if he could. I wish he could talk.”

  “That’d make our job a lot easier,” she agreed. “But since he can’t tell us, we’re wondering if he might be able to show us.”

  “Show you?” Pettis looked puzzled. “I reckon he’d be glad to, but how you gonna get him to do it?”

  She smiled. “That’s where we’d like to ask a favor of you, Mr. Pettis. Would you be willing for us to put a tracking collar on him, see where he goes for a few days? Maybe he’ll bring back another bone, and we can backtrack. See where he got it.” She’d latched onto the idea when I mentioned the Vermont case that Joe Mullins had told me about. Vickery had endorsed giving the technology a try, given that there seemed to be nothing to lose. So while Vickery had headed off to interview local old-timers about the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory, Angie and I had returned to Pettis’s cabin in hope of conducting a field study of canine carrion foraging.

  Pettis rubbed the back of his neck, then rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You’re not talking about one of them shock collars, are you? I wouldn’t feel right about putting a shock collar on Jasper.”

  “No, sir,” Angie assured him. “I’m talking about a GPS tracking collar. Hunters use ’em to keep track of where their bird dogs or coonhounds are. I’ve got one right here in the truck, if you’d like to see it.” Without waiting for an answer, she returned to the truck and grabbed the collar and receiver from the backseat. The collar itself was a black nylon band, about an inch wide, with the word Garmin in white letters on one side. A black plastic housing, about twice the thickness of a shotgun shell, was attached to the lower part of the collar, and a six-inch flexible black antenna stuck up from the top. Pettis eyed the rig doubtfully. “See, there’s a GPS receiver in the collar,” Angie explained. “It pinpoints the dog’
s position by comparing signals from a network of satellites up in the sky.” She paused, giving him a chance to ask questions, but he didn’t. “There’s also a transmitter in the collar that sends us a signal every few seconds, telling us where he is,” she went on. She showed Pettis the handheld receiver, which was about twice the size of my cell phone. “This display screen shows us where he is.” She held out the screen for his inspection. “The black triangle in the middle of the map is the location of this receiver. See that little picture of the dog, beside it? That shows us he’s right here.”

  Pettis looked at her dubiously. “I know he’s right here, Miss Angie. I’m lookin’ at him. And I know that receiver’s right here. I’m lookin’ at it, too.”

  Angie laughed good-naturedly. “Okay, this isn’t a very good demonstration. You willing for us to put it on Jasper, so you can get a better idea how it works?” Pettis frowned. “It’ll just take a minute,” she cajoled.

  “And you’re sure it won’t hurt him?”

  “It won’t hurt him a bit. I promise.”

  “Well. All right, then. If he’s willing. Jasper, you willing to try that thing on?”

  Angie handed the collar to Pettis. “Jasper, set on down,” he said. The dog sat, and Pettis strapped it on, frowning and shaking his head. “I sure wouldn’t want to wear it,” he said. “Jasper, you sure about this?” The dog cocked his head, and Pettis laughed. “Well, if you don’t care, I reckon I shouldn’t care.”

  Angie said, “So, does he like to chase sticks?”

  “Who, Jasper?” Pettis guffawed. “Jasper likes to take naps. You want to track him takin’ a nap?”

  She smiled. “You particular about what he eats?”

  “Well, I don’t much like it when he brings skulls into the bed,” Pettis said. “Besides that, I don’t much care. He’s a dog, you know?”