Secret Remains

by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush

  Branches plunked and thudded all around outside Nick’s patrol car. Emily tried not to imagine how much damage was being inflicted and prayed none of the trees would fall and crush them.

  The tornado’s terror lasted less than a minute, but it felt like an hour. Then, as if someone had turned off a turbofan in a warehouse, the wind instantly stopped. Emily and Nick didn’t move a muscle as they listened to the last few small, stray branches tumble from heights to plink against the patrol car. Soon it was quiet. A sliver of sun and a bird’s chirp finally drew them from the patrol car, where they got the first look at the damage.

  Nick went immediately to check on the construction workers, but they found all of them had already evacuated the site to seek shelter. Smart guys. Emily scanned their surroundings and spied their tent tarp wrapped around the cab of the backhoe.

  Branches—full tree limbs—littered every square inch of the forest floor. More stunning to her was that oddly patterned patches of full-grown trees lay felled in a crisscross arrangement all around them. Nick’s patrol car had been narrowly spared.

  She and Nick picked a path toward the site of the bones where they had been just minutes ago. A giant oak tree lay across it. They shared a terrified, grateful look. They had been lucky to survive. Really lucky.

  “All your limbs intact?” Nick asked.

  “Pun intended,” said Emily, and they shared a nervous laugh.

  They looked over the bone excavation site in silence.

  Emily could tell he was thinking about Sandi.

  “Do you think she ran away?”

  “I told myself that because she had it rough. Jealous, controlling boyfriend, tough home life. In my mind, I guess I wanted to believe she left to find a fresh, new start,” said Nick. Emily could tell from the distance in his look that his mind was replaying the memories of that day.

  “What did you do when you learned she was gone?”

  “Not enough.”

  She let the moment hang, hoping he might expound on his memories. When he didn’t elaborate, she broke the silence. “Once we can get this body to the morgue, we’ll need to arrange for a forensic anthropologist.”

  “What’s that?” She had drawn him from his thoughts. “Why do we need that?”

  “Because I’m not a bone expert. You need a forensic anthropologist on this case. Someone who can properly identify the victim. I know bodies. Not so much old bones. University of Michigan has a great program. Give them a call and have them send their best and brightest,” she said, wiping a strand of wet hair away from her forehead. She must look a mess. “Nick, I cut my father’s funeral short for this. And tomorrow I bury him. I’m taking the day off. And maybe the rest of the week.” Her furrowed brow sent him the message.

  “Fair enough. I’ll call.” He was snippy and distracted, a common defense mechanism for hiding one’s true emotions.

  “I know how you’re feeling about this, Nick. I can’t imagine the burden you’ve been under.”

  “I just know it’s her.”

  “It might not be,” she tossed back at him, then softened some. “You have the power to do something really important here, because that body belongs to someone who’s been missing for a long time. Sandi or not. That’s a detective win-win, right?”

  “Let’s get the remains to the morgue,” said Nick.

  This was Nick at his raw core. A practical protector. A fighter for the underdog. A relentless champion for the vulnerable. She wished she had trusted him with her secret when she was fifteen. Things might have turned out so differently if she had.

  As Emily looked west to a bright-red-and-orange sky that held a sinking sun, its last light filled the woods and made the raindrops on the fall leaves glow like twinkle lights. She was kissed by a memory of something her father used to say. “No matter how grim the day, there is always beauty if you just open your eyes to it.”

  6

  Nick and Emily safely delivered the bones to the morgue that evening. Then Nick drove Emily home, and she crept quietly into the dark house. Cathy was already long asleep. Emily trudged upstairs past a note Jo had left on the kitchen table about soup in the fridge. She drew a bath, where she soaked for an hour before collapsing into bed.

  The next morning, Emily woke up with one thing, and only one thing, on her mind. Where was her mother’s real autopsy file? She needed to know the details of what she had been missing all these years.

  But there was no time. She had to rush to the cemetery by nine AM. They were burying her father in a private ceremony for her, Cathy, and Aunt Laura, who had come up from Chicago overnight.

  * * *

  After leaving the cemetery, Emily went straight to her father’s empty home. Cathy was at Bishop and Schulz taking care of business the rest of the morning, leaving Emily in the house alone. She kept expecting to hear her father clacking away on his computer from the office or shuffling about in the kitchen cupboards. But it was, of course, silent.

  She went into her father’s office and sat at his desk. She pulled open the long center top drawer and riffled through it, looking for a small key that she hoped would open the locked file drawer on her right. Finally, she removed the drawer and dumped its contents onto the desktop. The key plinked out. Small, worn, tarnished brass. She slid it into the keyhole and turned left.

  It didn’t take her long to find her mother’s “hidden” file. It was only two pages in length. Simply stated, with clear handwritten notes over front and back diagrams of a human figure. Manner of death: accidental. Cause of death: transection of cervical spine at level of cervical vertebrae two due to single vehicle automobile collision. Below that the medical examiner had noted incidental findings: carcinoma of the pancreas.

  My mother did have cancer! How long did she have to live? Emily didn’t remember her mother feeling sick or complaining about being tired. She could easily have hidden it from Emily, though. Emily had been fifteen and busy day and night with her studies and high school activities. And obviously she’d hid it from Dad, too. How had it been possible to keep such a secret?

  Her father’s words came back to her. There had been another woman. The details had been eating him up all these years, Emily was certain. What could have been so devastating or so embarrassing or so guilt-laden that he couldn’t tell her sooner? Or maybe he had wanted to, but she’d never come back home or returned his phone calls to make amends. So much lost time.

  Emily slid the death report back into the manila folder and placed it in the file. She’d started to clean up the contents of the drawer and place them in a more organized manner when the doorbell rang. She glanced out the office window, which overlooked the driveway, and saw a white, newer Ford pickup truck. It wasn’t the kind she often saw farmers driving—those were rusted out, dented, their paint peeling off. This truck belonged to someone who had means and liked to show it off. She jotted down the license plate quickly. Her father had run his general medical practice and Freeport County’s medical examiner’s office from his home office. And death wasn’t always a friendly business.

  The doorbell rang again. She went to the front door and peered through the peephole. On the other side she could see a Caucasian male, about sixty, bald, dressed in jeans and blue collared button-down. He didn’t look threatening or angry or anxious. He glanced down at his shoes—loafers—and then back at his truck. He rang the bell again, and Emily opened the door a crack.

  “Hello, may I help you?” she said.

  “Hi, Emily? I’m Hank Wurthers. Friend of your dad’s,” said the man, taking a step back from the door out of respect.

  “I see. Something I can do for you?”

  “I’m also a Freeport County commissioner. And I know this is probably poor timing and all, but in light of the body that was found at Pinetree Slopes yesterday, we need to know if you’ll be taking over your father’s coroner duties on this one or if we need to hire this out.”

  Emily opened the door and stepped out. “Oh, I see. Yes. I sta
rted working on the case yesterday with Sheriff Larson.”

  The coroner was an elected position. The medical examiner was a hired gun. Her father had been serving in both capacities, and for thirty-some years, the commissioners hadn’t had to give it another thought. He was a one-stop death investigation shop that saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn’t have to pay for both positions separately.

  “Will you be continuing in your father’s duties as coroner on this case?”

  “Um … yes. I will,” said Emily, wondering what was brewing beneath all this.

  “Good. For now. But we are going to open up the position for county coroner at the next board meeting. As you probably remember from working with your dad, county coroner is an elected position. So, if you want the job, you need to throw your hat in the ring. Do you think you’ll be sticking around Freeport to do that, young lady?”

  “I’m not sure. When’s the next meeting?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “I know my father’s passing was sudden and has put the county in a bind here. I told Sheriff Larson the county’s going to need to hire a forensic anthropologist to get an ID on the victim.”

  “You’ll have to run that expenditure through the commissioner’s office.”

  “What? How long will that take?”

  “You can submit before then, and we’ll take it up at the meeting.”

  “There’s a bagful of bones in the morgue right now that need to be identified.”

  “We have protocol. Third Thursday. Courthouse, room two-oh-seven. Seven PM. Until then, you’re allowed to operate in the position of coroner for this case and this case alone, under probation, until we elect the right guy.”

  Allow? Guy? Probation? Oh, no. Dad had never had to ask permission to do his job.

  “I want to hand this over to an anthropologist who can make the proper identification,” said Emily. “That has to happen now.”

  “You can argue that with the commissioner’s board in three weeks.”

  Emily just stared in disbelief. She couldn’t decide which offended her more: his chauvinism or his ignorance. Emily wanted to slug him, but she smiled politely and stepped backward into the doorway. “Thank you for informing me.”

  “I’m just saying, that anthropolygist’s fee is gonna come outta your pocketbook if the commissioners don’t approve it.”

  Anthropolygist?

  “My father always undercharged the county for his services. Did you know that?” Emily asked, bracing herself in the doorframe. “His rates were at least half what bigger-city medical examiners charge. And he didn’t charge you extra for his elected title, either.”

  “He did this county a great service. He will be greatly missed.”

  Hank glanced over his shoulder to the driveway. “Is that your peashooter over there?”

  “My car?”

  “Yeah, the deathtrap. If you’re planning to stay up here, you’re gonna need something more rugged to get around in. Stop by the dealership. I’ll set you up with a good deal.”

  With that, Hank stepped away and sauntered back to his truck.

  Emily felt anger surge as she stayed planted by the door to watch Hank Wurthers and his fancy pickup truck pull out of the driveway. Hank would have never treated her father this way. After his white truck drove out of view, she slammed and locked the door.

  Wait. What was she getting herself all worked up about? Yes, things were up in the air. True, she needed to move her things out of Brandon’s new townhouse and find a new place to live. Yes, she should finish her residency. But Dad had built a legacy, one she, as a teenager, had always thought she would carry on. And now she could. Did she want to?

  Stop spinning. I don’t need to decide this all now.

  Like she’d always told her surgical patients, it was best not to make any big decisions after a traumatic event. And oh how the past few weeks had been full of them. Her breakup with Brandon. Her dangerous foray back into death investigation. A new case on her hands. Her father’s passing. And now her mother’s secret to unravel.

  She decided to escape it all under the cozy retreat of a down comforter.

  7

  Emily was wakened from a deep sleep by her phone ringing. Bleary-eyed, she pulled it out from between the couch cushions and checked the caller. It was Dr. Claiborne, the supervising doctor she had been working with in Chicago since she began her residency.

  “Hello, Dr. Claiborne,” she said, clearing her throat. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Emily. But I’m quite concerned about you.” His tone held genuine care, and she immediately felt soothed by the familiar sound of his voice. He had been a father figure to her during the last three years of her residency. “How are you doing? I am sorry to hear about what happened with your father. The medical community lost a great one.”

  “Thank you. Yes. It’s been rough.” She couldn’t pretend with him. He would see right through it.

  “I suppose you have a good deal of things to take care of now in Freeport?”

  “Um, yes, I suppose I do. Although I don’t think I know the half of it yet.”

  “Do you know when you’re planning to return to Chicago?”

  She paused to clear the cobwebs from her sleepy brain. “Oh, I don’t really … have any idea. It’s been a whirlwind around here. I’m still adjusting to the fact that he’s gone.”

  “Yes. I’m sure. And … well, I hate to be the bearer of any more distressing news, but unfortunately I am compelled by the hospital’s human resources department to remind you that you’ve used up your sick time and vacation days since you’ve been gone. Your paychecks will stop at the end of this week. Of course, you can apply for family medical leave. Up to twelve weeks.”

  “Okay. Yes. I could … I guess I’m not sure if that’s enough time.”

  “I thought that might be the case. You realize that will put you behind in your residency. Maybe longer if you have to wait for a spot to open up.”

  It was a very good possibility. Dr. Claiborne’s mentorship was always in high demand.

  “Oh? Yes, of course.” A little panic rose in Emily. She still had two years left.

  “And if you’re not coming back for a while, I’m going to need to fill your spot as soon as possible.”

  “Right.”

  A gnarled pit grumbled from the base of Emily’s stomach. Is that nerves? Or hunger?

  “When do you need to know?” she asked.

  “The sooner the better.”

  Emily didn’t have the brain energy to process the dilemma that had just been thrown into her path. She felt she needed more clarity about her father’s estate, the secret about her mom’s death, and the Pinetree Slopes case before she could answer intelligibly. Her silence prompted Dr. Claiborne to jump in with a solution.

  “Emily, why don’t you do this. Apply for short-term leave. That’ll give you thirty days to figure this out and you won’t lose your spot. Reach out to me in a week or so after things settle and you have a better picture, and we’ll go from there. Sound good?”

  “Yes,” she answered immediately. “You always know how to keep things simple.”

  Emily hung up the phone and slipped on her tennis shoes. She needed fresh air. And something to eat. She headed to her father’s small orchard to search for a late-harvest treat. She had picked a few small apples and wandered back toward the front porch when Nick’s squad car pulled up the drive.

  He joined her, and she handed him an apple. They sat in silence, gnawing away at the crisp fruit. Emily didn’t have the vigor to start a conversation, so she was grateful when Nick spoke first.

  “I think I may have found an anthropologist. Dr. Charles Payton,” he said. “He’s available to come up day after tomorrow.”

  She thought the name sounded like it belonged to an older, distinguished gentleman. “He’s from the University of Michigan?”

  “Yeah. At first he was going to send up a grad student.
But after I told him a bit more about the circumstances, he offered to do the examination himself. He’s a tenured professor, and he’s got a ton of credentials. Not that I understand any of them.”

  Emily smiled. “Great. You’re getting the best, then,” she said, eating her apple down to the core. “Dr. Payton will do the official autopsy and help you make an ID. Then you and one of your detectives can take it from there.”

  “You’ll stay on this case, right?”

  “There’s not much I can do.”

  “It’s not every day we find bones in the woods,” he said, and Emily could read the tension and urgency in his tone. “You’re good at this. I want all hands on deck for this kind of situation.”

  “It may not be a criminal case, Nick. It’s very possible it could be Native American remains. Or an early settler who first logged those woods. They were here long before us.”

  “Please, Em. Just stick with me for a bit on this one?”

  She studied the pleading crease forming above his brows.

  “You didn’t sleep a wink last night, did you?”

  He shook his head.

  “You believe strongly that those bones belong to Sandi Parkman, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Be straight with me. Why?”

  “I talked to Shirley Parkman about it.” Emily didn’t like the sound of involving a family member just yet, but she knew Nick could be a loose cannon when he was nervous.

  “You have to keep this under wraps. What did you say?”

  “I told her they were human, that we didn’t know anything, and that if we discovered anything connected to Sandi’s case, we would contact her.”

  “And of course she said, ‘Thank you, Officer,’ and skipped out of there?” Emily couldn’t hold back on the sarcasm.

  “Em, she thinks about her daughter every single day. Bones turn up in a deserted forest ten years after Sandi disappears and yeah, she’s gonna be a touch curious.”

  Emily relented. He had a point. Who was she to judge a grieving parent’s motives?