Joie de Vivre

by Micheala Lynn

  Caroline took her hand in hers and gently patted it. “That’s okay. Just start wherever you want to and we’ll sort it out together.”

  Lisa took a deep breath and before she knew it the entire story came pouring out. “…and that’s when I first got the feeling Riley was hiding something.”

  “Hmmm.” Caroline tapped her chin with her finger. “That’s odd, but you know Riley—sometimes she’s a million miles away.”

  “That’s what I thought to at first too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on.”

  “Maybe…maybe…” Caroline bobbed her head as if in thought. “I know Riley and Susan got into it about something while we were in watching the game. Susan wouldn’t really say what, only that Riley needed to come clean about something. Could be that damn lawsuit for all I know.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Although Caroline may be right, somehow it didn’t quite ring true. If it was that, why wouldn’t Riley have simply said so? And what did she have to come clean about anyway? No, something more was going on. “If that’s all it was, I could leave it at that. But ever since then I’ve had the feeling that Riley has been walking on eggshells whenever she’s around me. These last few weeks haven’t been the best. First Alicia dies and then Riley weirds out, barely talking to me as if she doesn’t know what to say.”

  Caroline winced. “Well, you know Riley…”

  You know Riley…you know Riley…that seemed to be all she ever heard. Apparently, that was part of the problem—she didn’t really know Riley. At least that’s what it felt like. If this were standard behavior for Riley then maybe she didn’t really know her after all.

  Caroline leaned in, gently covering Lisa’s hand with hers. “Look, Lisa, I’ll be the first to admit that Riley is not the easiest person to understand. Hell, she’s not even the easiest person to get along with half the time. I’ve had my fair share of times when there was nothing I would rather do than to choke her. But I have never seen her care about anyone until she met you. And I do know Riley cares about you.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why she left in the middle of the night.” She could feel her frustration building again. If it weren’t for Caroline sitting right in front of her, she’d probably jump up and start pacing back and forth through the gym like a crazed lunatic.

  Caroline stared at her, baffled. “Riley left in the middle of the night? That doesn’t make much sense. Did she say anything?”

  Lisa snorted. “She just left a note that said, ‘Something came up, have to go.’ How’s that for you? Not exactly a lot of detail there, huh?”

  “And she didn’t say anything else?”

  “Nope, not a word. She just left.”

  “I’ll give you, that’s odd, even for Riley, but maybe it’s not what you think. Maybe it has something to do with her job.”

  “Her job? What on earth could Riley’s job have to do with it? What, was there some emergency dig that just needed her presence at two in the morning?” Her voice grew more bitter with each word. “Did she suddenly remember that she had to speak at a conference in the middle of the night? Was there some emergency departmental meeting about banning microwave popcorn that just couldn’t wait until the sun came up? Am I supposed to believe any of that?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Caroline leaned back, her eyes growing wide. “I’m not saying anything of the sort so don’t take my head off.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  Caroline took a deep breath. “Look, Lisa, all I was saying is that maybe, just maybe, Riley had to do something pertaining to work. You must admit, that job of hers is pretty strange.”

  Lisa let out a cry of frustration, sending a couple of other members the next row over scampering for cover.

  Caroline’s eyes then narrowed. “You do know what Riley’s job is, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, I’m not that oblivious. She is a professor of anthropology. She teaches at State and goes on archaeological digs for fun. What more is there?”

  “Um, Lisa, sweetie…” Caroline softened her voice, much as someone would when talking at a loved one’s deathbed. “You need to talk to Riley. You need her to tell you what she does for a living.”

  “Why, why, why? What else is there? What don’t I know?” She slammed her fist down on the weight bench. She knew she must look deranged now, but why couldn’t anyone be straight with her? It seemed as if the whole world were keeping secrets from her. “Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

  “I know, sweetie…” Caroline blew out a long, deep breath. “I wish I could tell you, but you really, really need to talk to Riley.”

  When Lisa left the gym forty-five minutes later she was no closer to figuring out what was going on than she had been when she got there. Although Caroline had been emotionally supportive she still wouldn’t budge when it came to telling her what this was all about. All she would say was that she really needed to talk to Riley, which left her with the impression that Riley lived some sort of double life. If it were any more absurd, it would be some sort of cheesy spy movie. Riley, the lesbian who shagged me. If she had to speak to Riley to find out what was going on, then so be it.

  So as she pulled out into traffic she grabbed her cell and speed-dialed Riley. Before it rang, it went directly to voicemail—“Riley’s phone, leave a message.” She pitched her cell into the passenger seat and screamed, beating her fists against the steering wheel. How the fuck was she supposed to talk to Riley when she wouldn’t even answer her damn phone?

  * * *

  Riley leaned low, her head less than a foot from the small body on the examination table. Her eyes burned, mostly from exhaustion. She hadn’t slept since early Sunday and it was now late Monday night. She wiped her latex-gloved hands on the grime-covered lab coat and probed the cadaver yet again, looking for clues, evidence, anything they could use to piece together this child’s life and death. She could smell the sickeningly sweet heady odor of decomposition rising from the remains—there was no other smell thing like it. Some people smeared Mentholatum under their nose to mask the overpowering odor but it no longer bothered her. It was just part of the job.

  “What do you think, Grace?”

  Facing Riley across the table, Grace held an X-ray of the skull toward the viewer. “All deciduous teeth are present. It looks like the anterior, posterior, sphenoidal and mastoidal fontanelles are all closed. But the spheno-occipital synchondrosis and the calvarial sutures are open. That being the case, I’d say between five and six years old.”

  “Very good. I’d put it at closer to five.” In other words, a kindergartener. Riley thought of the young children in Lisa’s class. This very well could have been one of them. “What else?”

  “A Caucasoid approximately three feet two inches in stature, probably male judging from the overall skeletal structure but hard to tell.”

  “Good. It is hard to tell gender on children. The usual gender markers—differences in pelvic structure and skull markers—are absent at that age. But I agree, the overall skeletal structure, being heavier, probably indicates a male but not always. Remember that.” Riley had to hand it to Grace, she was doing a phenomenal job considering this was her first child case. She remembered her first. She had been a doctoral candidate, much as Grace was now, at the University of Tennessee under Dr. William Bass. That case had haunted her for months afterward. Even all these years later she still couldn’t forget it—an eight-year-old girl who had been tortured then murdered. She had been found months later. If she closed her eyes she could see that little girl as clear as if it were yesterday. She had no doubt Grace would find this case the same for her.

  Grace switched X-rays and squinted. “There’re spiral fractures in both forearms.”

  Riley leaned in beside her. “And what does that tell you?”

  “The arm was twisted until the radius and ulna crossed and then fractured in that classic spiral pattern. This one is remodeling so it happened weeks if not
months before he died.”

  “Very good. In cases like this where the victim is a child, there is often a history of long-term abuse. We can see that in the bones like here”—Riley pointed to the image of the right femur—“see this healing greenstick fracture?”

  “Yeah. They’re all over the body.”

  “Barring any strange medical conditions such as osteogenesis imperfecta—brittle bone disease—which this child doesn’t have, this pattern of greenstick fractures, spiral fractures, fractures to the hands and feet, cranial fracture, all indicating different degrees of remodeling is a sure sign of a long history of severe physical abuse. Remember, the bones tell the story, we just write it down.” Riley now walked slowly around the table, examining the body from all angles. They had spent over two hours reassembling the disarticulations. “Have you determined how the body was dismembered?”

  Grace held up a macro shot of the proximal end of the left humerus, near the shoulder joint. “It was done with a fine-tooth saw with 18 teeth per inch—common hacksaw.”

  “Excellent, Grace. You’re doing an amazing job.”

  Grace smiled, although she looked tired. Riley could certainly understand. This was a difficult case even by their standards. She still needed to determine the approximate time of death but unlike a medical examiner who dealt in minutes, hours, sometimes days, she dealt in weeks, months, years, sometimes centuries. And the more closely she could estimate that date, the better the likelihood for a positive identification. She nodded across to Grace. “What is your ETD?”

  Grace stared at the body, deep lines of concentration creasing her forehead. “It’s complex—wrapped in plastic then buried. Each effects the rate of decomp. And the fact that it was buried under a deck, out of the sun and heat, also changes the rate, not to mention soil temp. But I’d guess it was buried about four months ago.”

  That had been Riley’s estimate as well thanks to her experience working at the University of Tennessee’s famous body farm. “I concur. Due to the advanced state of putrefaction where subcutaneous fat and internal organs have mostly liquefied, the loss of most soft tissue—eyes, skin and internal organs—and overall separation of musculature from bone, we’re looking at between sixteen to twenty weeks, which puts us at the end of July or early August. With that, they might be able to narrow down the ID from missing persons reports for that time.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to ID the child?”

  “Maybe. Children very rarely go missing without a report. However, in cases of abuse such as this one…” Riley merely shrugged. “We’ll have to see.”

  * * *

  Lisa sat on her couch, wrapped up tightly in a thick blanket all the way to her chin, staring at the blank TV screen. Could this day get any worse? After school she had spent over an hour talking and crying with Alicia’s mother who had stopped in to say thank you for all the school had done. Although it had been heart-warming, it was also draining. Then just tonight on the news, a child had been found murdered in Lake Odessa. Her grandparents had lived there and she had spent the summers swimming at their cottage on Jordan Lake. Not that it would be any better if it had happened somewhere else but it seemed to hit her even harder since she had a connection to the area. A horrible start to the workweek.

  All day she had been hoping, praying that Riley would just somehow be home when she got there, but no luck. She kept getting her voicemail. Now, it was eleven p.m., so unless Riley planned on getting home in the middle of the night, she would be sleeping alone…again. And that wasn’t even what was bothering her the most. The simple fact was she didn’t know—she didn’t know where Riley was, she didn’t know when or if she was coming back, she didn’t know why she had left, she didn’t know…she didn’t know…she didn’t know.

  She let out a scream, kicking and flailing her legs while beating her fists into the couch. She might look like a frustrated toddler having a tantrum, but that’s how she felt at the moment. With Jessie, she knew that she would lose her. They had their time to say everything they wanted. They had their time to say goodbye.

  Breslin came sailing around the corner, his tail fuzzed and his back hunched. Seeing her, he cocked his head to the side and let out a long yowl. “I’m sorry, buddy.” He yowled again and trotted over, leaping up into her lap and immediately headbutted her under the chin as she scratched behind his ears. Since Riley left, Breslin had been wandering about the house from room to room and caterwauling all night long.

  “You miss her, don’t you?” She scratched him behind his ears again.

  Breslin looked up at her and meowed softly in answer. It stabbed her through her heart and she brushed away the tears now spilling down her cheeks. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

  * * *

  Riley clapped her arm around Grace’s shoulders as they walked out of the forensics lab. Thank God, they were finally done. They had identified the victim as a five-year-old boy by the name of Devon Walker who had disappeared from Jackson Michigan, about sixty miles away, on July the twenty-third. From his picture he looked like any other five-year-old—happy, full of life. But the story in his bones showed anything but that. The thing that troubled her the most though, he could have been one of Lisa’s students. Lisa had been devastated with the death of the little girl with leukemia, how would she be with a death like this? Could she deal with it at all?

  Riley was utterly exhausted and from the look of it, Grace was too. It was now Tuesday evening. That call from Len early Sunday morning seemed weeks ago now. Neither Grace nor her had slept since then, taking only small breaks and chugging coffee by the gallon. But she couldn’t have been prouder of Grace who had risen to the challenge better than she could ever have expected. “Hey, kiddo, good job.”

  Grace gave her a tired, lopsided smile, her dreads tied together on top of her head. “So doc, now what?”

  “Now, we go home.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” Grace shook her head and took a deep breath. “How do you go on from here?”

  Riley’s heart went out to her. Grace was usually so self-assured, so full of life, but now she looked beaten and lost. Grace had just asked the most important question that she needed to answer for herself—how do you go on from here? She stopped and spun Grace around to face her, staring directly into her eyes. “Grace, I know this isn’t easy but trust me here—go home, get laid, smoke a big bag of dope, go out and adopt a new kitten, whatever you have to do to push this out of your head for now. You have to separate your life from what we do here. If not, this job will eat you alive.”

  Grace smiled again, that same tired, lopsided smirk. “All I want to do, doc, is go home and snuggle up with my cat, Mr. Giggles, and sleep for a week.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” She smiled as she recalled Grace’s last Christmas card. It had a picture of the two of them and Riley had mistaken Mr. Giggles for a very ugly scarf.

  Grace’s eyes narrowed and the smile faded from her lips. “Hey, doc, I know you said I need to try to forget about everything for now, just push it out of my head, which I’ll try to do, but how do you live with it weeks, even months down the road? How do you sleep at night when that’s all you see when you close your eyes?”

  Riley took a long, deep breath before answering. “Well, Grace, that’s a tough one. Just remember, there is more to life than dead people.” She had to fight the urge not to roll her eyes. Hadn’t Susan given her that same advice not long ago? “Focus on the positives in your life, embrace them, hold them close…that’s what’ll get you through those times. Never lose your joie de vivre, your zest for life. As Langston Hughes said, ‘Life is for the living. Death is for the dead.’” She gave Grace a light squeeze on the shoulder. Now if only she could believe those words herself, especially when it came to Lisa. How could she possibly risk Lisa’s zest for life with her job of dealing with the dead? Was it even possible?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Riley stifled a yawn as she walked to the courthouse with Rod
St. James, the University’s lawyer, at her side. Tall and with a confident stride, Rod was the epitome of a professional lawyer right down to his hundred-dollar haircut, sterling silver cuff links and his well-worn Salvatore Ferragamo leather briefcase. Riley would’ve given anything for this deposition to be on a different day. Even though she had made it home late last night, she was still exhausted. She had thought about going to Lisa’s, but she wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet. What would she say? How could she explain everything? And what would Lisa think when she found out why she had left?

  Rod leaned over in his hand-tailored dark-gray Brunello Cucinelli three-piece suit—no off-the-rack for this guy—and stared hard at Riley. “Are you ready for this, Dr. Riley?”

  “Yeah, as much as I’ll ever be.” She hid yet another yawn behind her hand. “Sorry about that. I haven’t had much sleep.”

  “Been worried about this deposition, huh? I can understand.”

  This deposition, this entire case as far as that went, was more of an irritant and inconvenience. In the grand scheme of things, it meant exactly bupkis compared to the forensic case she had just finished. Worried? Hardly. Pissed? Definitely. “It’s not that at all, Rod. We had a really hard child case in the forensics lab.”

  “Ah.” Rod merely nodded his head and left it at that. “So, any concerns before we get in there?”

  “Nope.” She felt she had this well in hand. If all went well, that should derail Mr. Evans’s lawsuit once and for all.

  “Great.” Rod smirked a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour smirk. “Just remember everything we’ve talked about and you’ll do fine.” He then reached out and opened the door at the end of the hallway, waving Riley in first.

  The room was plain, a table in the center with chairs along both sides. Another chair set off in the corner was occupied by a woman of about fifty with gray-streaked short brown hair. A young woman sprang up as they entered the room. Somewhat provocatively, she wore a dark red skirt a good five inches too short and a light silk blouse with two buttons undone to reveal the lace of her red bra. She looked no more than twenty-five, her face covered in thick makeup and her nails airbrushed in a wild swirly pattern. With a disingenuous smile that would have made any game show host proud, she offered her hand. “Wonderful, wonderful. I’m so glad you could make it. I’m Bobbi Jo Montgomery, counsel for Mr. Joshua Evans, but you can call me Bobbi. You must be Dr. Riley.”