Remains Silent mm-1

by Michael Baden

  All of them shook hands with Jake except Fisk, who turned his back, muttering something Jake couldn’t make out.

  “Dr. Rosen is the best there is,” Pete said- too cheerfully, Jake thought. “I’ve asked him to help with the disinterment.”

  Mayor Stevenson looked less than thrilled. “Come on, Pete,” he said. “You know the town can’t afford some fancy New York-”

  “Dr. Rosen is volunteering his time as a personal favor to me. So let’s not waste our opportunity.”

  The group arrived at the edge of the gash the giant machine had made in the ground the previous afternoon. A black tarp had been laid out nearby, bearing two bones and the upper part of a skull. None of the spectators seemed eager to get too close.

  Jake crouched next to the tarp and picked up the skull. It was as Pete described: normal weight, nonporous. Clearly less than fifty years old.

  Miss Crespy stepped forward. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater under her coat, neat blue jeans, and a pair of L.L. Bean rubber boots, reminding Jake of his first-grade teacher, a woman he had loathed. “It could have been in the ground for ages,” she said peremptorily. “Who can tell?”

  “I can,” Jake said, “and so can Dr. Harrigan.”

  “We didn’t find any iron nails or decayed coffin wood like you usually find near a settler’s bones,” Pete explained patiently, his voice hoarse. “Besides, these bones are relatively new.”

  “I say we let Mr. King get back to work,” the sheriff said, standing over Jake like an overseer with a slave.

  Jake looked up into an expression of pure malice. “Not until we examine the bones,” he said. “Right now they represent a puzzle we have to solve.”

  “Can you say for sure the bones are new?”

  “Not yet. That’s why Dr. Harrigan-” He stopped mid-sentence and pointed to the excavated ground, where a wide swath of topsoil had been removed, revealing the dirt beneath. Most of it was dark brown and compact. But to the left of where the bones had been found, patches of earth were lighter, less firmly packed. “Pete,” he said, “take a look at this.”

  Harrigan bent, Jake noted, with some difficulty. “My God,” he breathed.

  “What’s this?” Sheriff Fisk asked, exasperated. “What are we playing, Twenty Questions? You’re delaying the most important project ever to come Turner’s way because you found some bones a dog probably dragged here. It’s inexcusable.”

  Jake stood, making it a point to ignore him. “When you bury a body, it disturbs the ground. Even after you fill it back in, the earth’s never the same. Even if the grass has grown back, underneath the topsoil it’s still obvious.” He indicated the border between the two shades of earth. “You can see here where the ground has been dug up and replaced.”

  “So who gives a damn?” the sheriff snarled.

  Jake stared at him coldly. “You will. Judging by the number of disturbed areas, there’s more than one body down there.”

  ONE BY ONE, the bones were painstakingly brought from the ground and laid on the tarp. Jake examined each of them, heedless of the increasingly hot sun, his mind electric with excitement. It’s like playing with God’s jigsaw puzzle, he thought, placing the bones together in their anatomical positions. Soon he was working by himself. Pete, weakened by the heat, had gone back to Jake’s car for a rest; the others, quickly bored, decided to drive into town for breakfast. The construction workers had been sent home for the day. The foreman stayed and watched from the construction trailer.

  Jake was relieved. The human body was to him magnificent, and its building blocks, its bones, never ceased to enthrall him. There was more beauty in the creation of man than there was in sublime music. He sometimes felt, as he felt now, that the mute bones were eloquent, if only he could fully understand their language. He formed skeletons- three men and, yes, a woman. What stories could they tell? he wondered. Who had brought them to this field and buried them?

  When he was finished, he went back to the car to get Pete. “You won’t believe it,” he told his friend. He knew it was up to them to restore some measure of what the skeletons had lost; it was a debt the living owed the dead. Since these people could no longer speak for themselves, it was their duty to speak for them.

  They walked back to the field together and stared down at the skeletons. Pete had been silent since Jake awakened him; now he seemed in a distant place, transfixed by the evidence of so much death.

  “Look,” Jake said, “the last bone I found was the mandible belonging to the woman. It matches the upper part of the skull the backhoe dug up originally.”

  Pete stared, shuddered. The movement seemed to rouse him from his trance. “You’re right,” he said, as he stooped to examine it with the upper part of its skull. “We’d best get the bones to the morgue. Baxter Community Hospital’s five miles away. I’ll call the others from the trailer and tell them to meet us there.” Pete checked his pockets. “Left their numbers in your car. Be back in a bit.”

  He’s sick, Jake realized. It would indeed be their last case together. He was sure of it.

  ***

  By four that afternoon, the entire group had reassembled in a basement room next to the morgue. The four skeletons were laid out on four stretchers inside the morgue- not complete, Jake knew, but able to tell a partial story. One woman, three men. But there was so much more to be learned from the bones: height, age, race, cause of death, potentially identifying old fractures, and when they had died.

  In life they had had names, faces, jobs, opinions, emotions. Now they were reduced to a series of numbers written on pieces of paper at the foot of each stretcher. The audience stood solemnly; even Sheriff Fisk seemed awed.

  “How do you know Four’s a woman?” Miss Crespy asked.

  Jake indicated the top edge of the socket where the left eye had been. “That’s called the glabella- the brow ridge. In a woman it’s smooth. In men, bumpy.” He saw that some in the audience were feeling their own eyebrows and stifled a grin. Happened every time. “Same with the external occipital protuberance on the back of the skull.” He turned the skull around and ran a finger along its gently curved rear surface. “It’s more prominent in males, smoother in females.” He took a closer look at the upper jaw. “And she was young. Third molars haven’t erupted.”

  Harrington set about taking measurements and dictating notes into a tape recorder. Jake could tell by the expression on his face that he was deeply emotional. “Skeleton Four, most bones present, female. In addition to the unerupted third molars, the lack of fusing of both clavicles medially indicates her age to be under twenty-two. Some clumps of dark hair up to six inches long adjacent to the vertex of the skull. All long bones of the upper and lower extremities are present. Right ribs eight and nine posteriorly show fractures. The amount of healing suggests these injuries were sustained approximately two weeks before death. The pitting pattern of the pubic symphysis indicates vaginal childbirth.” Pete paused, taking in great gulps of air. “Sheriff, this young woman may have a child out there.” His pallor seemed unearthly.

  “Maybe you should get some air,” Jake said.

  Harrigan shook his head. “Let’s finish. That scotch is beginning to sound awful good.” He put the recorder to his mouth. “Skeleton Three. Here, too, most bones are present. Calcification of cartilage of first and second ribs, osteophytes in the thoracic and lumbar spine, and fused skull sutures mean he was at least thirty-five.”

  Jake turned to the group. “Those osteophytes are bony protuberances on the spinal column. They happen as you get older.”

  Harrington picked up the skull. “Here again some dark hair is present; this time it measures two inches in length. Notice the oval-shaped hole at the vertex through the parietal bones at the top of the skull. Looks to be about four by three inches. It’s not postmortem deterioration.”

  “You mean somebody bashed his head in?” Fisk asked.

  “Not precisely. If it were a fresh fracture, the edges would be rough. I’d say
he lived long enough for healing to occur, between two and six months, I’d estimate.” He proffered the skull. “Care to feel it? Smooth.”

  Fisk recoiled. “No, thanks.”

  Jake had learned a long time ago that machismo was no indication of whether a person would lose his cool in an autopsy room. He knew burly police detectives who couldn’t watch him wield a scalpel and petite female MEs who could finish two autopsies and go out and eat sushi.

  “That looks like a surgical procedure,” Jake said. “There probably was a replacement with a metal plate but, if so, we didn’t find it.”

  “Maybe it’s still in the ground,” Harrigan said. “Somebody’s going to have to go back and look.”

  Fisk made a note. “Why would a doctor cut a piece out of someone’s head?”

  “War wound,” Jake said. “It’ll help if you can find the plate.”

  Harrington turned the skull around so it faced them. “Notice the dental fillings. Proof positive that these aren’t settlers. The probable cause of death is this displaced fracture of the second cervical vertebra- the axis- which would have damaged the spinal cord.”

  Amazing, Jake thought. He saw more than I did. Always pay attention to the body. It’s telling you its secrets. “Broken neck,” he translated for the group.

  Harrigan pointed to a dirty band of elastic that encircled the skeleton’s pelvic bones.

  “Is that… what’s left of his clothes?” Miss Crespy asked.

  “Looks like it.” Harrigan gently removed the elastic remnant and handed it to Jake, who had put on new surgical gloves. Jake placed it on a clean paper catch cloth to avoid the loss of any trace evidence.

  “Came from a pair of men’s briefs,” Jake noted. “There’s some writing on it.” He took the elastic to the sink and slowly washed off the dirt into a plastic container. “Could be a laundry mark.” He leaned over it with a magnifying glass. “Can’t quite make it out. Anybody have a flashlight?”

  Fisk handed him his Maglite.

  “It’s hard to read, but I think it’s… T.M.H. 631217. Do you recognize the initials, Pete?”

  There was no answer. Pete was bent over, arms around his stomach; his breathing was ragged, his face white. A word flashed unbidden into Jake’s mind: cancer.

  Pete straightened. “His own initials?” he answered. “Maybe he had monogrammed underpants, like they do for kids at camp.”

  “Maybe,” Jake said. “It’s something to go on.” All he wanted was to get Pete home and in bed, find out if his diagnosis was right, and see what he could do about it. But Pete pressed on.

  “Skeleton Two is less complete than Four or Three. Skull sutures aren’t fused and there’s a lack of rib calcification. Puts him close to thirty.” He picked up the skull. “Eye sockets look Caucasian. The pelvis confirms it’s male. Left humerus present. A little clump of hair is still attached to a small amount of grave wax formed from the fat on the front of the pubic bone.”

  He moved on. “Skeleton One. Defleshed bones of left arm and hand. Not much to work with.” He eyed the group.

  Sheriff Fisk’s face was red. It was obvious he was finding the facts uncomfortable. Funny. You’d think he’d be fascinated. For him, it’s the case of a lifetime. But all Fisk asked was, “What’s this going to mean for the mall?”

  “It means,” Jake said, “your construction site’s a crime scene.”

  Back at the cottage at last, Jake made them a dinner of bacon and eggs. They had eaten the same meal countless late nights in the lab, whipped up on a hot plate in their office’s tiny kitchen, and he was feeling nostalgic.

  Nostalgic and worried. Color had returned to Pete’s face, and there’d been no recurrence of stomach cramps, but still it was obvious his friend was failing. His eyes are jaundiced. Must be drinking or sick. How do I bring up the subject? He’s one proud son of a bitch.

  After dinner, they went to Pete’s study and opened the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, the granddaddy of blended scotches and, Jake knew, Harrigan’s favorite guilty pleasure- that and a foul-smelling pipe. Jake had received the bottle as a gift from the National Organization of Law Enforcement Officers after he’d delivered a lecture on the relationship between police, medicine, and the crime scene. He’d been tempted to sample it but had saved it to share with Harrigan; now he wasn’t so sure it was the right thing to do.

  Pete sipped, puffed on his pipe, breathed contentment. “We had some interesting cases together, didn’t we? Remember the ‘ghost spots’ murder? The Adam Gardiner case?”

  “Use that one to teach about blood spatter,” Jake agreed. “It was one of the first autopsies I watched you perform.”

  Gardiner had been found dead in his garage, naked, facedown in his own blood, a gash over his right eye. His body had more than a hundred red and brown bruises, some small, some large. There was blood in the house as well, smears and drops over the kitchen floor. The police thought it was murder. They shipped the body to Harrigan at the morgue.

  “But the gash on the head couldn’t bleed that much,” Harrigan went on. “And the drops on the floor were evenly spaced. When I saw the blood spatter I knew. Gardiner had been walking slowly; there was no killer coming up behind him. The autopsy findings confirmed it. He had undiagnosed untreated tuberculosis that bled into his lungs; he couldn’t breathe and was coughing blood. He was too drunk to call nine-one-one. The bruises were in different stages of healing, indicative of an alcoholic who keeps hitting edges of chairs and walls. Fall-down drunk, as the saying goes. It’s how he got that gash over his eye: he fell. His death was natural. He killed himself- by drinking.”

  This was the kind of talk Jake adored. He had some of it with Wally, but his assistant would need more experience to know its full pleasure. “They never taught us in med school that when a person coughs up blood, it mixes with air and forms bubbles,” he said. “But you did. So the drops dry with clear centers, unlike blood drops from a cut. The bubble pops when it hits the ground. After it dries, the center appears pale as a ghost. Ghost spots.”

  Pete raised his glass in triumph. “Good work, that. The emphasis today on DNA takes away from the importance of paying attention to small details at the scene and the autopsy. It’s made us lazy.”

  Jake joined him in his salute. “You made me realize a good ME is a scientific detective. The obvious answers aren’t always right, and the right answers aren’t always obvious.” He took a deep breath. “Pete, are you all right?”

  The older man looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “Today, for example. You couldn’t take the sun; you doubled over in the morgue; you were pale as paper. I don’t like it.”

  Pete poured himself another drink, swallowed it in a gulp, and poured again, leaving this one on the desk. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “I don’t believe you. I’ll get off this, I promise, but if you’re sick, tell me.”

  Sadness and pain crept into Harrigan’s eyes. “Jake, I-”

  “Go on.”

  “I miss her, is all. I miss my wife Dolores.”

  That’s not all, Jake thought. Not by a long shot. But if his friend didn’t want to talk, there was no way to force him. Pete had always been secretive, sometimes revealing what he wanted Jake to know only by leading him to that knowledge indirectly. I’ll find out the rest when he’s ready and not until then. Be patient.

  ***

  By Sunday night, Jake was back home reviewing autopsy photos and witness statements in preparation for testimony he had to give in a murder trial the next morning. If it hadn’t been for the court appearance, he’d have stayed in Turner and taken his first vacation day in God knows how long to keep working with Harrigan.

  But the truth was they’d done just about all they could do for the time being. They’d photographed the skeletons, concentrating on the broken vertebra, cracked ribs, and skull defect. They’d collected samples of the soil where the stomachs would have been in hopes of discovering what the decedents had eaten-
a wild chance, they knew, but Harrigan would send it to the lab all the same, along with the hair for toxicology. When Jake finally drove off around seven, Harrigan was still at the hospital, x-raying the bones.

  ***

  Jake didn’t hear from Harrigan again until Tuesday afternoon. It was already past three, and Jake still had two more autopsies ahead of him. He was sorting through messages in his office, putting aside everything that wasn’t marked Urgent, when the phone rang.

  “Have a minute?”

  “Maybe two, but that’s all. What’s up?”

  “There’s been a breakthrough, but it’s a good-news/bad-news situation.” There was tension in Pete’s voice, but at least it was strong.

  “Go on.”

  “The good news is we know where the bodies came from. The bad news is everyone’s so happy with the answer, they’re about to restart work on the mall.”

  “Slow down. How’d you find out about the bodies?”

  “I didn’t. Marge Crespy did. Remember the initials on the elastic?”

  “Of course.”

  “Turns out they stand for Turner Mental Hospital. As long as I’ve lived here, it’s been called the Turner Psychiatric Institute, but Marge is the historian and knew the earlier names- it began as a home for the feebleminded. Anyway, I got in touch with Hank Ewing- Henry Ewing, Nobel laureate, dean of the Catskill Medical School, once head of Turner, friend of mine- and he filled me in on the place’s history. I’ll tell you when we see each other. The point is, they treated nearly ten thousand people over the decades, among them hundreds of indigents.”

  “And Ewing says that when they died they were buried in the field?” Jake asked.

  “It’s not far from the hospital- which is closed down, by the way. I guess they ran out of crazies in Baxter County, or it got too expensive to keep them. Marge found no record of its being a potter’s field, and as far as Sheriff Fisk and Mayor Stevenson are concerned, the case is closed. Indigents. Untraceable. The backhoe rides again at dawn.”