“Em? Can I get you anything?”
Emily turned to see Brandon by her side. He would be tethered to her all day if she didn’t say something now.
Can I just send him away? No, that would be rude.
“Yes. You can do something. Please don’t ask me anything more about our relationship today. Soon I’ll come down to Chicago and we can discuss it more when I come to get my things. But on my terms.”
“I’m here now, and I want to be with you.”
“I know. But I need some time.”
Brandon did nothing to hide the distressed look on his face. He nodded, then turned on his heel and padded out. She heard the doors click shut and let out a sigh.
After a few more moments of silence, there was a soft knock. Emily turned her head toward the back of the room and saw Nick’s urgent face poking around the door.
“Em, I’m so sorry to interrupt. Do you have a minute?”
“It’s okay. I was just finishing.” She didn’t bother to get up. She was too drained to move.
Nick opened the doors further, and Emily saw a police officer standing behind him. They entered in silence.
“What’s going on?” Emily said as they positioned themselves in front of her. She sat up a little straighter.
“Em, this is Officer Matthews. He’s the police officer I sent to Pinetree Slopes,” said Nick.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, Dr. Hartford. And my condolences on your father’s passing. He was a great man and a pillar of this community.”
“Thank you for paying your respects,” said Emily as she rose to shake his hand, before realizing her own were full of soiled tissues. She drew her hand back.
“He’s not here just to pay respects,” said Nick.
“Oh?” Emily’s inquisitive eyes searched the officer’s.
“It’s about the call from Pinetree development.”
“The ten-fourteen?” asked Emily. “Can it wait?”
“The contractor over at Pinetree found something this morning when they broke ground on a new house. It’s obviously a bone of some kind. We’re just not sure if it’s human or animal.”
“I had them halt all excavation efforts, but we need you to make an identification,” said Nick.
“I … Nick … Please … I don’t think I can … I’m not an anthropologist,” stuttered Emily, who as a surgeon and medical doctor was qualified to act as medical examiner in her father’s stead. And her recent success in the Dobson death investigation had proved her astute for the job. But bone identification was an entirely different science. This day was getting stranger and stranger.
“We need to get to this before sundown,” said Nick. “If it’s something other than animal bones, we don’t have the resources to secure the scene overnight.”
“And the construction boss has been harassing us all morning about how this is delaying him and costing him a ton of money,” added Officer Matthews.
Emily wanted to moan, My dad just died. I don’t give a hoot about your greedy boss.
“Please, Em, you’re the only one I trust on this,” Nick said into her ear. “And obviously, the only one in the county qualified.”
“What time is sundown?” she asked, knowing that October evenings were growing shorter and shorter.
“Sun sets around five thirty, in a little more than four hours.”
“Okay, here’s what I can do,” said Emily mustering some thoughts together. “I suspect you already cordoned off the area?”
“They did,” said Nick.
“I need to attend my father’s funeral reception. In the meantime, take all the photographs you need and collect all the evidence you can without touching the body—I mean, bones. I’ll make my appearance at the reception for an hour, then meet you at Pinetree Slopes.”
“That seems fair,” said Officer Matthews. Emily didn’t care about fairness. This was pushing the limits. Even for her. She hoped this was just a very inconvenient false alarm that would become a minor speed bump to her day.
“Emily? I’m heading to drop off the flowers now,” called Cathy from the doorway. “Everything okay?”
“Ah, yes. Thank you. I’ll see you at the reception.” Emily gave her a weak smile.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but I need to lock up after everybody.”
“Of course. I’m ready. We’re ready,” said Emily.
“After you,” said Nick, indicating that the officer needed to exit first.
Emily turned and took a few steps back toward her father’s casket. Nick stayed at her side, wrapping an arm around her, and she felt truly comforted. The grief would linger for a while. She knew that from her mother’s death.
They turned from Dr. Robert Hartford’s casket and walked slowly together in reverence until they were under the awning outside near the hearse. Brandon’s car was still sitting in the lot. He was in the driver’s seat, eyes locked to his phone, not looking up.
“What do you think about those bones?” said Emily as Nick opened the passenger door of his squad car for her.
“I hope they are from a deer,” he said.
She glanced up at Nick, surprised to find his face drained of color.
5
A little before three PM, Emily and Nick arrived at Pinetree Slopes. Cathy had helped her slip out the back door of the reception after she had greeted a good share of the guests. Even Brandon, who was schmoozing a group of her dad’s doctor buddies, hadn’t seen her go.
She and Nick pulled up to the site, where an officer stood guard on the opposite end of a single plot-sized perimeter sectioned off by yellow caution tape. Emily exited Nick’s patrol car, still in Jo’s heels and black dress. After three wobbly steps over the gravel driveway, Nick reached out and grabbed Emily’s arm to steady her. This wasn’t gonna work.
“Do you maybe have an extra pair of tennis shoes or boots or something in the trunk?” she said.
“I do, but they’re going to be huge on you.”
“Not sure I have a choice. I’ll never make it in these, and we just don’t have time for me to go back home to change.” The weather had shifted from a beautiful, cloudless day to a fairly stiff wind coming from the north. It had dropped the temp a good ten degrees, and the sky was filling with bottom-heavy, dark-gray clouds. They still had several hours of daylight, but this storm would beset them in less than an hour, Emily was certain.
Nick pulled out an old pair of golf shoes and dirty socks. Emily stuffed the socks into the tops of the shoes and slid her bare feet in. She pulled the laces as tight as she could, but still the shoes barely snugged around her narrow size-seven feet. To walk, Emily had to lift her feet a little higher than usual, but she was able to clod her way toward the home site.
Only she and Nick entered the cordoned area. Someone had planted a stake with an orange plastic flag at the site where the bones had been found. Emily and Nick made their way over as the wind picked up and a flicker of lightning flashed, sending a shiver along Emily’s arms. She began to count, a habit from her childhood. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi …
A faint rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. They were racing against time. The storm was only about one mile away.
“Rain’s coming soon. Does anyone have a tarp we can set up?” she called out to the officers and construction crew who had lined up along the perimeter to watch.
“We got one!” one of the crew yelled back, running off to fetch it.
Emily turned back to the site. The first thing she could see was a mandible and partial cranium jutting out from the crusty, red soil. Her eyes wandered south from the skull and spied several phalanges. Long, like fingers; definitely not toes. Nothing else protruded from the earth. Emily knelt down, immediately soiling the hem of the dress. As she bent over to brush away some of the dirt around the skull, the bodice of her dress tightened across her rib cage. She tried to exhale carefully but fel
t a tiny rip at the side seam. Sorry, Jo. I’m gonna owe you a new black dress. Hope you weren’t too attached to this one.
She gently swept away the dirt around the mandible until she could see that it was attached to the calvarium. The teeth were in near perfect condition.
And definitely human. She knew there were differences between the shapes of the male and female jaw, but she wasn’t trained well enough to make this call. They would need to get a forensic anthropologist for an official determination.
“Nick, we’re going to need something to collect this.” She looked up at him with a straight face.
“Not a deer, huh?”
She shook her head. “Human.”
He paused for a moment, and she noticed again the color draining from his face.
“You okay?” She might have expected this look at a more gruesome death scene, but there was nothing gory about a couple of teeth.
“Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got evidence-collecting kits and a roll of heavy-duty trash bags in the car.”
“That’ll have to do. Oh, and a small shovel and a paintbrush would be ideal.”
“I’ll see what I can find. Maybe some of these guys have brushes.”
Nick raced back to the squad car as Emily continued to carefully excavate. Soon she had the entire skull exposed, except for the back, which was still resting in the dirt. She could also see that the skull was attached to a vertebral column. They were lucky. A full skeleton would make identification easier.
The lightning flashed again overhead, and thunder rumbled again, growing closer. Louder. Two construction men returned with a blue tarp and began to stake the ground to install it.
“Careful, please,” Emily instructed. “We have no idea if this body is fully intact. Bones may be spread nearby.”
Still using her hands, Emily scraped away at the dirt clinging to the neck bones. She noticed a fissure in two of them. Until further examination at the morgue under good light and perhaps a magnifying lens, it would be impossible to know if the fractures had happened at death or after death.
The construction guys were now struggling to secure the posts for the tarp, fighting against the wind whipping through the construction site, harpooning sticks and leaves through the air. One of them held the edge of the tarp while the other secured it to the poles. Emily hunched her back toward the wind as Nick ran up with his arms loaded with equipment. He laid everything out a few feet from where Emily was working. By now the tarp was overhead and the thunderclaps were rolling in one behind another. One of the construction guys ran over with a handful of paintbrushes and a small shovel. Emily thanked him and she and Nick got to work, gingerly but quickly, digging and sweeping away at the bones.
“You realize the county is going to need to hire a forensic anthropologist,” said Emily after they had uncovered cervical bones and a shoulder blade.
“How long do you think this body has been here?” he asked.
“I don’t know, honestly. It could be several months to many years, since it’s fully skeletonized. The bones are in fairly good condition. That could mean it’s younger or that it was buried deep enough that the critters weren’t able to get to it.”
They worked for a few more minutes in silence. Emily could tell something was troubling Nick by the way he held his brow furrowed in concentration. His brushstrokes were soft and swift, but Emily noticed a slight quiver in his hands.
“Do you feel okay?” she said when he stopped and sat back on his heels with a big exhale.
“No. I’m … I’m kinda queasy,” he said, rocking back to a cross-legged position on the ground. The wind howled above through the treetops, pelting more small branches and leaves onto the tarp.
“Are you going to be sick?”
“No … it’s not that kind of sick.”
“Low blood sugar, maybe?”
Lightning flashed closer, illuminating the whole site. The crack of thunder that followed made Emily jump. They were losing time. She needed him back to work. “Take a couple deep breaths and get back in here, Larson. The storm’s about to hit, and we need to get this outta here.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” Nick drew in a breath and squatted again. “It’s just … I think I know … who these bones belong to.”
“What?” Emily yelled through the wind.
“Sandi Parkman.”
“Who?”
“A girl from high school. Do you remember?”
“Not really.” The name was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place her.
“She went missing ten years ago. I’m just wondering if this might be … her.”
“These exact bones? How can you be so sure?” Emily challenged. Until a forensic anthropologist examined them, they would not know for certain if the bones were male or female, how old they were, or from what race of people the bones belonged. From what she could tell so far, they looked small, not adult sized. But she was not a bone expert, and it would be crucial to get a complete and proper identification in case this investigation ended up in court. Always good to have an expert second opinion.
“I just have a feeling,” Nick yelled back.
Sandi Parkman. A vague recollection gathered in her mind.
“Was she the girl who lived in the little run-down house down the street from you?” Nick had grown up in the country so “down the street” really meant a quarter mile to the next residence.
“Yeah.”
“What would Sandi’s bones be doing out here?”
“You never heard what happened?” His voice rose above the wind.
Emily shook her head without looking up. They had uncovered the skeleton to the hip bones, which Emily found detached from the femur. She started to place the bones in the thick black garbage bags Nick had brought.
“Well, I guess this would have been two years after you left Freeport. She left home one spring day after school, and no one ever saw her again,” said Nick.
Emily made a quick calculation. Emily had left Freeport when she was sixteen. That was the last time she had seen Nick, too. Now she was newly twenty-eight.
“That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“You know I used to take her home from school now and then. She was a sophomore and I was a senior, and she didn’t have her driver’s license. But a lot of times her boyfriend would drive her, you know? This one day she came up to me at my locker after lunch and asked if I could take her home after school.”
Thunder cracked louder overhead and shook the ground, rattling Emily’s organs.
This is turning into one nasty storm. Emily picked up the pace on her digging. No anthropologist would have approved of her technique, but she didn’t want rain or wind washing away any potential evidence.
“I drove her home that day and … and never saw her again,” said Nick. His digging paused again as he stared at the femur bone emerging from the soil.
“You’re making pretty big assumptions here. Keep those to yourself until we get the bones identified. They may not be Sandi’s remains at all.”
Emily wanted to impress on Nick that he shouldn’t start any rumors a hungry press might pick up on and feed from like they had with the Julie Dobson case. Speaking of the press, she was surprised they hadn’t descended on their investigation already. This was a juicy discovery, and storm or no storm, hungry news hunters would be eager to swarm in. Perhaps Nick had learned from the Dobson case and demanded this stay under wraps.
A bolt of lightning zapped the forest floor fifty feet from their makeshift tent as a deafening crack of thunder gave her insides another good stir. They had to hurry.
Emily glanced over to Nick’s section again. He was still digging away around the right femur. Emily lent her help, and they were able to slide the bones securely into a bag.
“We don’t have much time,” Emily yelled, wedging her shovel into the dirt on the outside of the right tibia that had emerged from the soil. Rain entered their shelter sideways, carried by the wind from the north. The t
emperature had dropped another five degrees, hovering just above the freezing point. Emily shivered in Jo’s short dress and her red jacket. She put it out of her mind and kept digging.
Nick and Emily huddled in the center to keep cover, guarding the collection kits and trash bags of bones the best they could on their laps. The water streamed into the crevices and craters where the bones had been, creating a massive, muddy puddle around Nick and Emily. Wet and cold, her shoes now covered in slippery mud-clay, Emily resigned herself to the elements and inwardly celebrated their successful excavation. She hugged her arms around her sides and felt another tear in the seam of Jo’s dress under her red jacket. It was already completely ruined by mud, so what did one more tear matter? Besides, she could breathe more easily now. She looked at Nick, who seemed far away in his thoughts as he clawed at the muddy ground to extract another bone.
The wind howled above them and the trees shook down leaves and branches. She glanced up at the sky. The grayish-green clouds churned in a circular formation above them. Nick followed her gaze, his eyes widening with alarm.
“We need to get out of here,” Nick yelled over the rush of wind. “We’re gonna get killed.”
“Keep digging!” She was able to release the tibia and handed it to Nick to place in the bag. The foot was buried deeper, and she had to excavate with more care and precision. Working in tandem, they made tiny stabs with the tip of the shovel while Nick brushed away the dirt. Soon they were able to loosen the foot.
Then an eerie stillness broke over the woods. And a faint scream, like a fast-approaching train, pealed in the distance. She and Nick exchanged a panicked look. They had only minutes to clear out before the twister touched down.
* * *
They had just enough time to make it to Nick’s patrol car with the bones when the tornado’s fully formed funnel dipped down over the treetops, snapping thick branches like toothpicks and hurtling them through the forest like javelins.
“Get down!” Nick shouted as they both flattened to the floor of the patrol car, and he covered Emily’s head and back with his torso the best he could.
Secret Remains Page 3