Carved in Bone bf-1

by Jefferson Bass

  The bailiff rattled off what I assume was the routine swearing-in question — I wondered if he dabbled in auctioneering on the side, such was his speed — and I assented. Then Burt DeVriess stood to question me, and I felt my hackles rise.

  I reminded myself that I was here as a witness for DeVriess and his client, but it wasn’t easy to suppress years of animosity. In almost every East Tennessee murder trial in which I’d testified for the prosecution, DeVriess — nicknamed “Da Grease” by local cops — had served as defense counsel. The guiltier you were, and the more heinous your crime, the more you needed Grease. At least, that’s the way things seemed. Serial rapists, child molesters, drug kingpins, stone-cold killers: the dregs of humanity — or inhumanity — were Burt DeVriess’s bread and butter. I had faced him from the witness chair a dozen times before, and his cross-examinations had never failed to enrage me. Some of that anger was a natural response to the legal system’s adversarial structure, which I didn’t much like. It was maddening to do a meticulous forensic exam, then hear it challenged and undermined by the sort of careerist witnesses widely known as “defense whores”: Yes, theoretically, I suppose it’s possible, as Dr. Brockton claims, that the skull fracture might have been caused by the bloody baseball bat found beside the body. However, in my expert opinion, the fracture more likely resulted from the impact of a large, anomalous hailstone…

  Although I resented that sort of far-fetched second-guessing, I wrote it off as a necessary evil. But what I couldn’t forgive or forget was the way DeVriess would skillfully impugn my professional and personal integrity in the slyest, most underhanded of ways. His favorite tactic was to pose an outrageous question that would be struck down immediately…right after it had been etched indelibly in the jurors’ minds. “MISTER Brockton, did you slant your findings to fit the prosecution’s theory, the same way you did in the such-and-such trial three years ago?” (“Objection!” “Sustained.” “Withdraw.”) Every time I squared off against DeVriess I knew an exchange like that was coming, but every time it did, I still got sputtering mad. Which was, of course, was exactly what he wanted.

  So given how thoroughly I despised the man and his tactics, why on earth was I about to testify for his team at a murder hearing? Because he had played me like a fish yet again, this time reeling me over to his side of the courtroom. It had happened a few weeks before, when he invited me to lunch—“to bury the hatchet,” he said — and sure enough, throughout the meal he was gracious and conciliatory, praising my research, praising my students, apologizing for his aggressive defense tactics. Then, during dessert, he cast the bait. He had a case he’d appreciate my advice about, he said, because it involved the most baffling forensic mystery he’d ever seen. He posed a series of innocent-sounding hypothetical questions about skeletal structure and sharp trauma—“When a person is stabbed, the knife blade can leave marks on the bones it contacts, can’t it? Can it leave metal particles from the blade, or residue from a sharpening stone? How much variation is there in the shape of the spine? What about such-and-such?” He paid rapt attention to my answers, then posed incisive follow-up questions. “Yes, but if the knife had a thin, flexible blade? If the victim had curvature of the spine?” After it was too late — as I lay flopping in his creel — I realized that he’d been setting the hook during that entire chocolate-fueled dialogue. Da Grease, clever bastard that he was, had appealed to both my scientific curiosity and my sense of justice. As he settled the tab, he concluded with a litany of troubling allegations about the autopsy Billy Ray Ledbetter had received at the hands of Dr. Garland Hamilton, the Knox County medical examiner. I, DeVriess had insisted, was the only hope for saving poor, innocent Eddie Meacham.

  He was putting me in a delicate position. As an anthropologist, I’m not technically qualified to determine cause of death; in Tennessee that’s a call that can be made only by a physician with a specialty in forensic pathology — and, what’s more, by a pathologist who has been officially appointed as a medical examiner, a position that marries medical expertise with law enforcement powers. In the normal pecking order of the academic and forensic world, a forensic anthropologist with a Ph.D. was considered a rung below a medical examiner with an M.D. On the other hand, there were certain areas in which my expertise far surpassed the medical examiner’s, and one of those was skeletal structure and geometry. In addition to studying thousands of human skeletons and hundreds of corpses — including scores of mangled, murdered ones — I had also spent a year teaching human anatomy to medical students. So if a man’s life hinged on whether or not a knife blade could thread a zigzag path through the human back, spine, and rib cage, I felt confident that my skeletal research and anatomical knowledge more than equaled Dr. Hamilton’s medical degree.

  “Off the record, Dr. Brockton, I’m gonna level with you,” Grease had leaned in and confided. “The vast majority of my clients are probably guilty of the crimes they’re charged with.” Golly, what a news flash that was. “Eddie Meacham is not. He did not kill Billy Ray Ledbetter. He’s being railroaded by an incompetent, impaired medical examiner — and by a prosecutor who doesn’t want to humiliate the ME and compromise his other cases. And for the sake of that, they’re willing to send an innocent man to prison for life. That’s wrong, and if I’ve learned anything at all about you over the years, Dr. Brockton, it’s this: you stand for the truth. Period. I’m begging you, set aside your personal feelings about me and speak the truth about this case and this sham of an autopsy. Eddie Meacham needs your help.”

  God, he was good. For years I’d loathed him — today, settling into the witness chair, I loathed him still — but sitting in that restaurant a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help admiring his skill and what appeared to be his passion. I also couldn’t resist his plea to exercise my best judgment and do whatever I thought was right. Flattery? Probably. But wasn’t it possible to be flattered and right?

  And what was right, I came to decide as I studied Dr. Hamilton’s autopsy report and my own collection of skeletons and corpses, was to take the stand and point out the impossibility of the medical examiner’s conclusions. Thus it was that I found myself on the witness stand this bleary-eyed morning, wielding bones and diagrams to explain skeletal geometry. Grease led me smoothly through it all, ending with the account of my futile attempt, the previous morning, to replicate the wound path described by the autopsy report. “In your expert opinion, then, Dr. Brockton — based on your extensive knowledge of skeletal trauma and on your own experimental investigation — is it even remotely plausible that the blade of a hunting knife followed that zigzag path through the body of the deceased?” It was not, I said. “Thank you, Doctor, for your candor and your courage,” he concluded, his voice breaking slightly with emotion. I half expected a tear to trickle down his cheek as he returned to the defense table and gave his client’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

  At the prosecution table, Bob Roper stared morosely at his copy of the autopsy report, then rose to cross-examine me. Neither of us was looking forward to this. He began by leading me through a grade-school exegesis of the steps in the scientific method: observation, hypothesis, controlled experiment, conclusion. I wasn’t sure where he was headed with it, and I grew impatient as we covered the subject in numbing detail. Then I began to discern the trap he was setting for me. “You’ve done dozens of scientific experiments on human decomposition at your research facility, haven’t you, Doctor?” I acknowledged that I had. I could hear the jaws of the trap creaking open: “Dr. Brockton, do you consider reproducible results to be an important part of the scientific method?” Yes, I hedged, in general I do. “And yet you performed this experiment you’re testifying about today, the one you’re using to impugn the medical examiner’s autopsy, only once, isn’t that correct?” Snap!

  “That is correct, but—”

  “Doctor, correct me if I’m wrong, but if one of your graduate students turned in a Ph.D. dissertation — let’s say, a dissertation about the effects of tempe
rature on the rate of human decomposition — and if that dissertation were based on a single thermometer reading and a single corpse, I’m guessing you’d call that shoddy research. Wouldn’t you?” I had to admit I would. My face burned. Roper spun on his heel and strode back to his seat. “That’s all the questions I have for this witness.”

  DeVriess didn’t even stand up for his redirect. “Dr. Brockton, are you familiar with the Manhattan Project?” Of course I was; back during World War II, much of the top-secret work to develop the atomic bomb had taken place just twenty miles away, in Oak Ridge. “The Trinity test in New Mexico — the single experimental detonation of an atomic bomb before Hiroshima — would you call that shoddy science, Doctor? Or would you call that pretty convincing proof?”

  I could have kissed that slick bastard. “I reckon I’d call that pretty convincing proof.”

  Roper objected, but the judge just smiled and shook his head. Grease moved for an immediate dismissal of all charges; the judge turned him down, too, but did grant his motion to exhume the body of Billy Ray Ledbetter so I could examine it in the flesh — or in what was left of it.

  As the dust settled and the hearing ended, I walked over to Roper, sitting glumly at his table. “Bob, I hope there’s no hard feelings. You do know I feel bad about this?”

  He looked up, his eyes weary. “Yeah, me too. I like it a lot better when you’re sitting over here on my side.”

  “So do I.” I offered my hand, and we shook like good Southern gentlemen. I made to pull away, but he tightened his grip.

  “Bill? I’m…I’m real sorry, Bill.”

  I gave him a smile I hoped was reassuring. “It’s okay. You’re just doing your job the best way you know how.”

  He squeezed again. “I…meant about Kathleen. I should have said something a lot sooner, but I just didn’t know what to say. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I tried to speak but found I could not. I looked away, extricated my hand, and fled.

  CHAPTER 7

  An hour after the walnut-paneled door of the Knox County Criminal Court closed behind me, the stainless-steel door of the cooler at the Regional Forensic Center opened before me. The room was as familiar to me as my own kitchen, and I felt just as much at home here. No: I felt more at home here, I realized, remembering the hours of pacing I’d done last night, trying to escape the painful loss of Kathleen. Here, at least, I was in control; here, death was always close at hand but never close to home; here, only anonymous strangers stared at me with lifeless eyes.

  I extricated the gurney that held the body of my cavewoman, as I’d begun to think of her, and wheeled it down the hall to the decomp room. Parallel-parking it against the wall, I butted one end against the side of a big stainless-steel sink and latched the cart into place with a pair of large metal hooks that clipped onto brackets on the face of the sink.

  At that moment Miranda — fetching in a fresh set of scrubs — walked in with a tray of instruments: scalpels, probes, scissors, tweezers, and, although I doubted we’d need it, a Stryker saw. The Stryker autopsy saw is a truly ingenious power tool: its fine-toothed oscillating blade can lop off the top of a skull in a minute flat, but if it grazes your fingertip by mistake, it delivers nothing worse than a tickle, without so much as nicking the skin. I’ve used one hundreds of times, and every time, the first thing I do is press the chittering blade to the heel of my hand, just to appreciate anew the ingenuity of the design.

  “Playing with your favorite toy, I see,” said Miranda.

  “Simple pleasures for simple minds. You ever notice how similar this blade’s motion is to an electric toothbrush?”

  “Ouch, man,” she said. “Quick way to lose some teeth.”

  “I know, you wouldn’t want to get the two confused. But I wonder which came first, the toothbrush or the saw?”

  “I think the egg came first,” she said. “Then the chicken. Then the autopsy toothbrush.”

  “Okay, I get it, you’re over it,” I said. “You got the X-rays?”

  “Across the hall in the lab. Be right back.”

  Ratcheting the zipper of the body bag down, I marveled once more at how thoroughly the flesh had been transformed into the waxen features of a mummy. In some cultures, a corpse in this condition would have been considered an “incorruptible”—a holy relic or saint, perhaps capable of working miracles. A shrine might be established, to which the sick and the maimed would flock by the thousands in hopes of being made whole again. And all because of a trick of fat, moisture, and temperature. But then again, who was I to dismiss it as a trick? Maybe it was more than that. After all, here she was, almost perfectly preserved, just waiting to be found. Waiting to be identified. Waiting patiently to tell her story and ask for justice. If it was a trick of chemistry, it was a mighty slick one.

  Normally the first step would be to remove the clothing from the body, but the garments had decayed to rotted shards enmeshed in adipocere. As the adipocere came off, so would the bits of fabric. I would start at the head and work my way down.

  My eyes drifted to the neck, and something just below it caught my gaze — a slight bulge at the top of the chest. Just then Miranda brought in the X-rays. “Look,” I said, “I think she’s wearing something around her neck.” She leaned in and we both studied what appeared to be a flat, oblong pendant hidden beneath a veneer of adipocere. Whatever chain or cord it had once hung from had long since crumbled to a greenish-white line of oxide encircling the waxy neck.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “I saw that on the X-rays.” There was an odd note in her voice. On the surface, she sounded nonchalant — practically bored — but underneath, she was almost quivering with excitement. I waited. After a tantalizing pause, she added, “That’s not all I saw on the X-rays.” She switched on a light box on the wall by the door and slipped one of the films into place. Her head blocked my view.

  She turned toward me, still blocking my view, then, with her eyes locked on mine, leaned sideways to reveal the image. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” I breathed.

  “Well, that’s probably not how you should word it in the report, but it is worth noting.”

  “Let’s get to it.”

  We turned back to the gurney and the waiting corpse. The hair mat had slid backward on the skull, shifting the hairline back to the top of the head. Despite being matted with adipocere and discolored by mold, the hair still showed traces of its original fineness and straw-blond color. The ears were mostly gone — with no bone to support them, they had gradually collapsed and merged with the waxy tissue of the scalp. The face looked almost masklike: the adipocere had separated slightly from the underlying bone, creating an eerie effect, as if a skeleton were masquerading as a mummy for some bizarre costume party of the dead. Although the lips were parted in an eternal scream, the teeth were tightly clenched. The eye orbits were filled with lumpy disks of wax, which stared blindly up at me, at Miranda, and at the harsh fluorescent lights that had taken the place of the cave’s velvety blackness.

  The gurney had a lip of stainless steel running completely around its edge, as well as a screened drain near its foot. With the cart latched in place, the drain hung directly above the sink — a morbid but inspired design feature suggested by the person who’d cleaned more decomp spatters off walls and floors than anyone else in the world: me. A spray head, a twin to the one in my kitchen at home, hung from a bracket on the wall. I turned on the water, keeping the volume low but cranking the heat up almost to scalding. The adipocere’s texture was somewhere between wax and soap. Hot water would melt it like a cake of Ivory in a Jacuzzi.

  Working gently, I played the water back and forth across the face. At first there was no effect — the adipocere was cold and almost rock-hard — but gradually it softened and sagged, then began to run, dripping greasily through the drain and down the sink. In the cave, and even when I had unzipped the body bag just moments earlier, I’d noticed almost no odor, but as the hot water began dissolving the adipocere, it unleashed the
stench of decomp, mixed with acrid overtones of ammonia.

  In less than a minute, the lump that had been the nose was gone, exposing the nasal openings in the skull. It didn’t take much longer for the zygomatic arches, the cheekbones, to emerge through the molten cheeks. The maxilla and mandible, the upper and lower jawbones, appeared next. As the connective tissues attaching the mandible to the skull gave way, I held the bone in place with my left hand until it was completely free, then gave it to Miranda, who turned and placed it on a counter lined with absorbent surgical pads. When I finished washing the adipocere off the bones, we’d do an initial examination of the entire skeleton to determine the race and estimate the stature and age. Then Miranda would simmer the bones in a vat of hot water (seasoned with a dash of Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer and a bit of Biz laundry detergent to nudge the process along), followed by a gentle scrubbing with a toothbrush to remove any remaining tissue.

  Having exposed the bones of the face, I directed the spray at the sides and top of the head, gradually peeling the hair mat off the skull, like some bizarre aquatic scalping. As the mat peeled free, I continued rinsing to remove the scalp residue. Miranda lifted the soggy tangle of hair, squeezed out most of the water, and set it on the pad to dry.

  That’s odd, I thought as I studied the upper jaw. The woman didn’t have any upper lateral incisors; she was missing the two teeth that should have flanked her “two front teeth.” I didn’t see any extra space between the central incisors and the canines, nor any signs that the jawbone had filled in any gaps. So it wasn’t that she’d lost them; she’d never had them in the first place. Anomalous absence of teeth, as it’s called, is pretty rare, but it does happen. I kept quiet, waiting to see if Miranda would notice. If she did, she didn’t mention it.