Spider Bones: A Novel

by Kathy Reichs

  “Then?”

  “Got homesick.”

  “You returned to the United States?”

  Spider nodded.

  “Using an eighteen-year-old passport.” Schoon sounded dubious.

  “I got a new one.”

  “How was that possible?”

  “This dipshit crawl out from under some rock?” Spider asked Epstein, voice oozing scorn.

  “Continue,” Schoon said.

  “That’s it.” Spider shrugged. “I been here ever since.”

  “Living as Al Lapasa.”

  “Keeping clean. Paying taxes. Even got a pooch.”

  “Your real identity, sir?”

  Face Mask looked at Epstein.

  Epstein nodded.

  “John Charles Lowery. Born March twenty-first, nineteen fifty, in Lumberton, North Carolina. Father Plato. Mother Harriet.”

  I knew. Still, hearing it sent an electric charge through me.

  “Look, I gotta eat,” Spider said. “How about you scare up some sandwiches, maybe a couple sodas.”

  Schoon looked momentarily undecided. Then, “Perhaps we do need another break.”

  Nickie’s lawyer rose and walked off-camera. I suspected he’d decided it was time to phone his client.

  I turned to face Ryan and Lô.

  For a full thirty seconds no one ventured an opinion. Lô went first.

  “My gut says this asshole’s full of shit.”

  “It has to be Spider,” I said. “Who else would know about Long Binh? The Huey crash? Xander’s reason for traveling to Vietnam?”

  “How could Xander have been on a military chopper?” Lô asked.

  “Civilians hitched rides all the time,” I said.

  “He look right for it?”

  I pulled two pictures from my purse. The snapshot I’d found in Jean Laurier’s desk drawer. The team photo Plato had taken from his album.

  The three of us studied the face of young Spider. That of the man on the screen.

  Both had the same dark eyes and heavy curved brows.

  “Hard to tell with the mask,” Lô said. “Plus this guy’s circling the drain.”

  “The eyes seem right,” Ryan said.

  “If the man’s lying, what’s his motive?” I asked.

  No one had a theory on that.

  “One thing bothers me,” Lô said. “How’d this Spider, not being Samoan, hook up with SOS?”

  Or a theory on that.

  “If he is legit, that would explain Spider’s dog tag turning up with Xander Lapasa’s body,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t explain us rolling Spider’s prints off the Hemmingford vic,” Ryan countered.

  “No,” I agreed. “But it would explain why DNA showed that that man could not be Harriet’s son.”

  “Anyone thirsty?” Lô rose.

  “Diet Coke,” I said.

  “Coffee.”

  “Don’t start without me.” Lô disappeared through the door.

  To pass the time, I looked again at the photos. There was Spider leaning on the Chevy. There he was, a scrolly number 12 on his chest.

  I wondered what position Spider had played. If he’d enjoyed baseball. How often the coach had sent him into a game.

  Plato said a cousin got Spider to join the team, that his son mostly rode the bench.

  What was the cousin’s name?

  Reggie. Reggie Cumbo.

  I looked at Reggie, down on one knee, unsmiling. The resemblance to Spider really was uncanny.

  Plato said the boys were related through Harriet.

  I pictured the old man as he spoke of his wife. Again felt his grief.

  What had Plato said? Harriet had pretty eyes, one brown, one green as a loblolly pine.

  A minute particle popped into being in my brain.

  Fingerprints said the man who died in Hemmingford was Spider Lowery.

  DNA said he wasn’t.

  Army records said Spider Lowery died in Vietnam.

  The man talking to Schoon said he didn’t.

  I remembered the snapshot of Harriet Lowery standing on a pier. Her sun-fried chest. Her mismatched eyes.

  The lone particle was joined by others.

  I remembered my conversation with Harriet’s transplant physician. Macken admitted that irregularities had surfaced during testing for tissue compatibility. DNA showed that Harriet could not be Tom’s mother.

  Plato and Harriet rejected that.

  Tom was Spider’s twin.

  I recalled a court case. An article.

  The particles coalesced into a full-blown theory.

  I stared at the monitor, hardly breathing, willing the man in the mask to look into the camera.

  The door opened.

  Come on!

  Footsteps crossed the room.

  Come on!

  Lô set a Coke in front of me.

  Come on!

  On the screen, Schoon entered and placed a white paper bag on the table. The duo from California withdrew sodas, sandwiches, paper napkins. Popped cans. Opened and squeezed packets of mayo and mustard.

  Do it, you bastard! Look at me!

  Finally, he did.

  And I knew who he was.

  And what had happened.

  I SHOT TO MY FEET.

  “I need to get online.”

  Ryan and Lô looked at me like I’d said I was joining Al Qaeda.

  “Tell Schoon to stall.”

  “Why?”

  “Just keep this guy talking.”

  I hurried to reception and made my request.

  Unruffled, Tina led me to an empty office, typed a few keystrokes, and withdrew without query.

  Moneypenny was all right.

  Logging on, I went to the New England Journal of Medicine, called up an article, and speed-read. Scribbled notes. Moved through link after link until satisfied my understanding was adequate.

  Next I entered a name and followed those loops.

  A second name.

  More loops.

  I practically danced my way back to the conference room.

  A woman had joined Ryan and Lô. She was tall, with short brown hair and acne-scarred cheeks. I placed her age at midthirties.

  Lô made introductions. He didn’t look happy.

  The newcomer was Maya Cotton, an ADA with the Honolulu prosecutor’s office.

  Cotton and I shook hands.

  “Anyway, sorry to spoil your day,” Cotton said.

  “Sonofabitch.” Lô whacked a table leg with one foot.

  “What?” I asked, not really interested, anxious to share my breakthrough.

  “They kicked Pinky Atoa this morning.”

  That surprised me. “He admitted to being involved in the Kealoha-Faalogo murder.”

  Snorting in disgust, Lô gestured to Cotton.

  “It turned out Atoa was actually only sixteen. The confession’s out. Since there’s really nothing else, he couldn’t be held.”

  Down the hall, Schoon was still questioning Face Mask.

  “Did I miss much?” I asked, gesturing at the screen.

  “Spider’s reborn,” Ryan said. “Plans to join the Jesuits.”

  “I know what happened.” I was so jazzed I showed no empathy for Lô’s frustration. “Spider. Xander. Lapasa. I just needed some medical info.”

  “Lecture alert,” Ryan whispered to Lô and Cotton.

  “I’ll keep it brief.” I was too pumped to take offense.

  “And intelligible.”

  “Yeah, yeah. No jargon.”

  Deep breath.

  “In two thousand two a pregnant woman named Lydia Fairchild applied for welfare in the UK. In addition to her unborn infant, she had two children by a man named Jamie Townsend. As part of the application process, Fairchild had to provide DNA evidence that Townsend was the father. Results showed that he was, but indicated that she wasn’t the mother.”

  “Bummer,” Ryan said.

  “No kidding. Fairchild was accused of fraud and
her kids were taken into care. A judge ordered that a witness be present when she delivered, and that blood samples be taken from Fairchild and the baby. DNA indicated she was not the mother of that child either, even though it was a witnessed birth. A breakthrough came when lawyers discovered a similar case in Boston.”

  “Thank the Lord for defense attorneys.” Lô, the king of sarcasm.

  “In fact, it was the prosecutor.” I smiled at Cotton. “In nineteen ninety-eight a woman named Karen Keegan needed a kidney transplant. Her adult sons were tested for suitability as donors. Two of the three failed to match her DNA to the extent a biological child should. More sophisticated testing showed that Keegan was a chimera, a combination of two separate sets of cell lines with two separate sets of chromosomes.”

  “How’d they figure that?” Ryan asked.

  “Different DNA sequencing was found in tissues other than the ones originally taken from Keegan. Fairchild’s prosecutors suggested this possibility to her lawyers, and DNA samples were collected from members of the extended family. The DNA for Fairchild’s children matched that of her mother to the extent expected for a grandmother.”

  “Showing she was the mother.” Cotton looked confused.

  “Further tests showed that while DNA obtained from Fairchild’s skin and hair didn’t match her children’s, DNA obtained from a cervical smear was different and did match them.”

  “Fairchild was carrying two different sets of genes.” Ryan simplified, but basically got it right.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s what this chimera thing is?” Lô.

  “Yep.” I glanced at my notes.

  “This is where she tells us all about it,” Ryan warned the other two.

  “Two types of chimerism occur in humans. With microchimerism only a small portion of the body has a distinct cell line. Typically that arises because foreign cells have managed to stabilize inside a host.”

  “Foreign?” Cotton asked.

  “Could be cells originating from maternal-fetal exchange during pregnancy. For example, the fetus may pass on its stem and progenitor cells to the mother via the placenta. Because they’re undifferentiated, these cells may be able to survive and proliferate in the mother’s system. Maternal stem cells may be transferred to the fetus in the same way.”

  No one said anything, so I continued.

  “Microchimerism can also occur between twins. Actually, the most common form of human chimera is called a blood chimera. That results when fraternal twins share some portion of the same placenta. Blood is exchanged and takes up residence in the bone marrow. Each twin is genetically distinct except for their blood, which has two distinct sets of genes, maybe even two distinct blood types.”

  “How common is it?” Ryan.

  “It’s estimated that up to eight percent of fraternal twins are blood chimeras.” I thought a moment. “Things like blood transfusions or organ transplants can also produce microchimerism in a recipient.”

  “That what happened to these ladies you’re talking about?” Lô asked.

  “No. What Fairchild and Keegan had is a much rarer type, tetragametic chimerism. This occurs when two separate ova are fertilized by two separate sperm and produce two zygotes.”

  Ryan raised a cautioning finger. “Embryos.”

  “Yes, sorry. It occurs with fraternal or nonidentical twins. The embryos fuse very early in development, creating a single baby with two distinct cell lines. One set of DNA may appear in the kidney and another set may appear in the pancreas.”

  Cotton summarized. “So these women, Fairchild and Keegan, each merged with her twin to form one baby with a hodgepodge of genes from both twins.”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy crap,” Lô said. “These people must look weird.”

  “Many chimeras exhibit no overt signs of their condition. Or there may be minor peculiarities, differences in eye color, differential hair growth, that sort of thing. Others aren’t so lucky. Doctors at the University of Edinburgh treated a man who complained of an undescended testicle. When they examined him, they found he had an ovary and a fallopian tube.”

  On-screen, Schoon was asking why Face Mask had been sent to Long Binh Jail.

  Ryan cocked his chin toward the monitor. “What’s this got to do with Lowery?”

  “He’s not Lowery.”

  “Where’s Lowery?”

  “Dead in Quebec.”

  “The DNA says no.”

  “Harriet Lowery was a chimera. She had one brown eye and one green eye. And Blaschko lines.”

  No one asked, so I surged on.

  “Blaschko lines appear as V’s or S’s or loops on the skin in specific parts of the body. They’re invisible under normal conditions, but certain diseases of the skin and mucosa manifest themselves according to these patterns.”

  “Making them visible,” Ryan guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re like, what? Stripes?” Lô asked.

  “Blaschko lines are thought to represent pathways of epidermal cell migration during fetal development. The point is, chimeras often have them, and in one picture in Plato’s album, I could see them on Harriet Lowery’s chest.”

  “Was she sick?”

  “That I don’t know. But she had Blaschko lines. And according to Plato, Harriet also had mismatched eyes.”

  “If she was a chimera, that would explain why her DNA didn’t match that of her sons.” Ryan was clicking.

  “Exactly.”

  “Meaning the guy in the pond was Spider after all.” Again, he indicated the screen. “Meaning this turkey isn’t.”

  “Bingo.”

  “So who is he?” Lô asked.

  I rotated the team photo.

  All three bunched close.

  I tapped a boy standing in the back row. “This is Spider Lowery.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan said.

  I tapped a boy kneeling in the front row. “This is his cousin.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Lô said.

  “They could be twins,” Cotton said.

  “Who is he?” Ryan asked.

  “Reggie Cumbo,” I said. “Look at the man talking to Schoon.”

  Three heads swiveled up.

  “What color are his eyes?”

  “Brown.”

  “According to Plato, Spider’s eyes were green.”

  Ryan worked it over in his mind. Then, “You’re thinking the cousins traded places back in sixty-eight. Spider went to Canada. Reggie went to Nam.”

  I nodded. “The physical resemblance was good enough to fool anyone who didn’t really know them. They either swapped dental records, or somehow Reggie removed them from his file.”

  “I’m lost,” Cotton said.

  “I’ll fill you in later,” Lô said.

  “Why?” Ryan asked me.

  “I don’t know. Probably Spider got drafted and didn’t want to go. Reggie was always the more aggressive and assertive of the two, according to Plato. He may have wanted to join but couldn’t get in. He’d been arrested several times, hadn’t graduated high school. Unless Reggie tells us, we may never learn precisely why they did it.”

  Ryan straightened. “How do you want to play this?” he asked Lô.

  “Let me question him,” I said.

  “No way.”

  “I’m an anthropologist,” I pressed. “You’re a cop.”

  “You weren’t kidding,” Lô said to Ryan. “The chick is good.”

  “I told you.”

  “What I mean is, Reggie may view me as less threatening than you.”

  “I do have a badge,” Lô said.

  “And a gun,” Ryan added.

  “And I’m wearing this shirt.” Lô flipped the hem of yet another aloha delight.

  “You two are hilarious,” I said. “But Cumbo has been granted limited immunity. Right now, he can walk anytime he wants. I can come at him from the JPAC angle. He claims he wants to die with a clear conscience. I can work that, talk about Plato, tal
k about getting Spider properly buried.”

  “How sure are you on this chimera thing?” Lô asked.

  “To be absolutely certain, I’ll need more of Harriet’s DNA. But right now, it’s the only theory that makes sense.”

  Lô looked at Cotton.

  “I lost Atoa. I’d like to hang something on this guy.”

  “I don’t see a downside,” she said. “He’s been Mirandized. He’s got counsel. The army has a legitimate interest. Dr. Brennan’s their rep on this Spider thing.”

  Lô hesitated.

  Sighed.

  “What the hell.”

  I started toward the door.

  “And, hey,” Lô said.

  I turned, hand on the knob.

  “Hit him with everything.”

  CUMBO DIDN’T GLANCE UP WHEN I ENTERED THE ROOM.

  Schoon and Epstein did. The lawyers watched in silence as I walked toward the table.

  Up close I could see that Cumbo was sweating big-time. The collar of his hoodie was soaked with perspiration pumping from his face and neck. His eyes were underhung with flabby half-moon plums. His skin was the color of dun.

  “I’m Dr. Temperance Brennan.” Taking a seat.

  “Doctor?” Epstein looked from me to Schoon.

  “ADA Cotton suggested that I participate in this interrogation.”

  “Doctor?” Epstein repeated.

  “I’m a forensic anthropologist.”

  “I don’t see the relevance.”

  “I work for JPAC.” I spoke directly to Cumbo. “The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  Cumbo didn’t raise his head or acknowledge my question.

  “JPAC’s mission is to locate American war dead and bring them home. And they do a fine job of it.”

  Epstein started to object. I continued to ignore him.

  “I’m involved in the case of a soldier who was killed in Vietnam, eventually buried in his home state of North Carolina.”

  Nothing.

  “That soldier’s friends and family called him Spider.”

  The half-moon plums pinched up ever so slightly.

  “Recently an odd thing happened. A man died in Canada. Fingerprints identified that man as Spider. But Spider was buried in Lumberton, North Carolina.”

  Cumbo began working his thumbnails. I noticed they were yellow and ridged.

  “As you can imagine, this situation created considerable confusion. The army doesn’t like confusion. They opened an investigation to determine how the same man could be dead in two places.”