Devil Bones (30 page)

“I owed it to Jimmy. God knows I didn’t do shit for him while he was alive.”

“Tel me exactly what you did.” Slidel prompted.

“Borrowed my neighbor’s car, drove to Charlotte, waited outside his house, and put the evil bastard out of his misery.”

“How did you find Finney’s address?”

Klapec gave a mirthless snort. “That took about ten minutes online.”

“Describe the weapon.”

“Forty-five-milimeter semi-automatic. A Firestar.”

“Where is it?”

“In a Dumpster behind a Wendy’s, about a quarter mile east of Finney’s place.”

Slidel made a note in his spiral.

“What did you do folowing the shooting?”

“After tossing the gun, everything’s a blank. This morning I woke up in a motel and headed out of Dodge.”

“Where were you going when the trooper puled you over?”

“Home. I wanted to be sitting in my own kitchen in Half Moon when the cops finaly caled.
If
they caled. Doubt they’d waste the time on me.”

Yo!

Again, the whispered heads-up.

I closed my eyes, trying to establish a connection with my lower centers.

No go. Having signaled, my subconscious was now ignoring my cal.

Slidel asked about Gunther. Klapec said he’d never heard the name.

Slidel took a moment to review his notes. Or to pantomime doing so.

Then he started in from a different angle.

“Why were you driving your neighbor’s car?”

“Eva needs ours to get to work.”

“That would be Mrs. Klapec.”

Klapec nodded.

“What can you tel me about the death of Detective Rinaldi?”

Klapec’s knuckles turned an even paler shade of yelow. “That’s the cop that was kiled up here?”

“Where were you around ten last Saturday night?”

Klapec gave Slidel a look of blank insolence. “I’m leveling with you, here. I kiled Finney because the murdering prick needed kiling. Don’t try putting anything else on me.”

“Answer the question, Mr. Klapec.”

Klapec considered. Then, “I was leaving a meeting at South Gum Branch Baptist. My wife can vouch for me.”

“What kind of meeting?”

Klapec dropped his chin. I could see scalp gleaming pink through his close-cropped hair. “I attend a support group for anger management.”

“Where’s this church?”

“A good two hundred miles from here.”

“That don’t answer my question.”

“On Highway Two fifty-eight, about halfway between Jacksonvile and Half Moon.”

Yo!

What? Highway 258? That would put the church near Camp Lejeune. I’d been on the Marine Corps base four years back, digging a dead woman from under a crawl space.

Nothing clicked.

“Hold that thought.” Slidel’s voice brought me back. He was leaving Klapec to rejoin us in the corridor.

Tipping his head toward the window, Slidel asked Ryan, “Thoughts?”

“He’s wrapped pretty tight.”

“Poor bastard just shot the man who murdered his kid.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Slidel’s eyes slid to me, back to Ryan.

“Think he’s on the level?”

“Seems sincere,” Ryan said. “But he could be mental.”

“Or covering for someone.”

“They swabbed his hands for gunshot residue?”

“Yeah. He’s fired a weapon. Dipshit’s either too stupid to scrub down or smart enough to fire a cover-up shot.”

“I’m sure you have a unit checking the Wendy’s Dumpster.”

“You bet your ass I have. And every motel along that corridor.”

Slidel turned to me. “How about you? Find anything in your fandangle photos can help put this whole thing to bed?”

For a moment
I
didn’t get it. Then I practicaly did a ful-on head slap.

The SEM scans of bone from Jimmy Klapec’s femur. Marion Ireland’s envelope was stil in my car. Ryan’s appearance had blown it right off my compass.

“I’m not quite finished.” I looked at Klapec to avoid direct eye contact with Slidel.

“Uh. Huh.”

“I’l have at it again as soon as I leave here.”

“How ’bout that’s right now. This guy’s life’s in the toilet. Least we can do is assure him he got the right witch.”

With that Slidel returned to his suspect.

33

RYAN AND I STOPPED AT A STARBUCKS THEN DROVE TO THE Annex. I got Ireland’s envelope from my car and spread the photos across my kitchen table. Ryan sat beside me, sipping his coffee in a way that grated on my nerves.

As I viewed the SEM hard copy, I explained what I was doing.

“When Jimmy Klapec’s body was stil unidentified, I took samples from his femur and made thin sections for microscopic examination.”

“Why?” Ryan asked.

“To alow me greater precision in estimating age at death.”

“Then the kid was ID’ed by prints and that became irrelevant.”

“Yes.”

Ryan slurped his coffee.

“But on viewing the thin sections I noticed something wrong with some of the Haversian canals.”

“Point of order.” Ryan raised an index finger.

“Haversian canals are tiny tubes that run longitudinaly down compact bone.”

“How tiny?” Slurp.

“Realy tiny. Must you make that noise with your coffee?”

“It’s hot.”

“Blow across the top. Or wait.”

“What are these canals for?”

“Stuff goes through them.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Blood vessels, nerve cels, lymphatics. That’s not important. What’s important, or could be, is that some of the canals exhibit unusual patterning at their rims.”

“What kind of patterning?”

“Weird dark lines.”

“You’re realy hot when you use that scientific jargon.”

I’d have roled my eyes but they were glued to Ireland’s photos.

Seconds passed.

Slurp.

“Next time, could you choose a cold beverage?”

“It’s drinkable now. So what do these mysterious dark lines mean?” Ryan asked.

“With the light microscope at the ME office I could only crank the magnification to four hundred. That’s not enough to realy see detail.”

“Enter Ireland’s big gorila.”

“Mm.”

“We’re now viewing hard copy from her SEM analysis.” Aborted slurp.

“Mm.”

I’d singled out and was studying one photo. A white band at the bottom provided the folowing information: Mag=1.00 KX 20µm EHT=4.00kV Signal A=SE2 Date: 16 Oct

WD=6mm Photo No=18

“What’s that?” Ryan’s face was right beside mine.

“Femoral section 1C magnified a thousand times.”

“Looks like a moon crater circled by frozen waves.” Ryan pointed at a jagged crack shooting from the crater’s center. “That one of your weird dark lines?”

Without answering, I exchanged the photo for another. Femoral section 2D showed two fissures originating within the Haversian system.

One by one I studied every image.

Twelve of the twenty showed microfracturing.

“It’s not an artifact,” I said. “The cracks are real.”

“What caused them?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What do they mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lunch?” Ryan asked.

“But I intend to find out.”

“That’s my girl,” Ryan said.

My mind was already triaging possibilities. No evidence of a fungus. A disease process seemed unlikely. So did trauma, even repeated trauma to the femur.

I reexamined each image.

The cracks seemed to be originating deep within the canals and radiating outward. What could distribute strain so deep and so widespread within bone to cause such a phenomenon?

Pressure?

Ryan placed a sandwich in front of me. Ham? Turkey breast? I took a bite, chewed, swalowed. My mind was spinning too fast to notice.

Vascular pressure? Lymphatic?

A phone rang somewhere in the same time zone.

“Shal I get that?” Ryan asked from far off.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

I heard Ryan’s voice. Didn’t listen to his words.

Pressure due to expansion?

Expansion of what?

Ryan said something. I looked up. He was beside me, palm pressed to the mouthpiece of the portable.

“What might expand and place stress deep within bone tissue?”

“Marrow?”

“I’m talking about inside the compact bone, not in the marrow cavity.”

“I don’t know. Water. Do you want to take this? The caler’s pretty insistent.”

“Who is it?”

“Woman named Stalings.”

Anger flashed from nerve ending to nerve ending.

My first reaction was to order Ryan to disconnect.

Then I changed my mind.

“I’l take it,” I said, reaching for the portable.

Patting my head, Ryan stepped from the kitchen.

“Yes.” Practicaly hissed.

“Alison Stalings.”

“I know who you are. What I don’t know is how you have the audacity to phone my home?”

“I thought maybe we could talk.”

“You thought wrong.” My voice could have flash-frozen peas.

“I’m not trying to compromise your investigation, Dr. Brennan. Realy, I’m not. I write true-crime books and I’m scouting an idea for my next project. It’s nothing more sinister than that.”

“Where do you get off crashing my crime scenes?”

“
Your
crime scenes?”

I was too furious to answer.

“Look, I have a police scanner. When I heard a cal concerning a satanic altar, it caught my attention. Right now people are nuts for voodoo and witches. Then the body washed up at Lake Wylie and I thought the situation was worth pursuing.”

“You’re a paparazzo. You sel photos exploiting personal tragedy.”

“My books don’t make a lot of money. Occasionaly I sel a picture. The income puts bread on the table.”

“Mutilated children always sel. Too bad you didn’t get a close-up of Klapec.”

“Come on, you can’t realy fault me. This thing has al the elements. Satanic ritual. Male prostitution. Fundamentalist Southern politico. Now a murdered witch.”

“What do you want?” Through tightly clamped molars.

“I’m neither a cop nor a scientist. To keep my work accurate I must rely on those actualy involved in the investigations—”

“No.”

“I know you shut me down last time we talked, but I was hoping I could persuade you to change your position.”

I did?

“What did I tel you?”

“Is this a test?” Chuckling.

“No.” Definitely not laughing.

She hesitated, perhaps confused, perhaps searching for the best spin.

“When I asked for your help, you said no and hung up. Then you caled back and reamed me out for showing up at your crime scenes. Frankly, I found it a bit of an overreaction. When I dialed you an hour later, to see if you’d cooled off, you refused to pick up.”

“Did you phone the chief medical examiner in Chapel Hil?”

“Yes.” Wary. “Dr. Tyrel was less than cooperative.”

“What did you tel him concerning our conversation?”

Again, she hesitated, choosing her words.

“I may have implied that you were cooperating.”

The little snake had lied to Tyrel.

“How did you get this number?” I was squeezing the phone so hard it was making smal popping noises.

“Takeela Freeman.”

“You tricked her, too.”

Stalings neither acknowledged nor denied the accusation.

“Did you
imply
to Takeela that I’d want her to help you?”

“The kid’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer.”

Anger made my voice sound high and stretched.

“Never cal me again.”

When I turned Ryan was staring at me through the partialy open swinging door.

“I heard a noise.”

The handheld lay on its convex back, wobbling like an upended turtle. Unconsciously, I’d slammed it to the table again.

“You’re hard on equipment,” Ryan said.

I didn’t answer.

Ryan’s mouth turned up at the corners. “But easy on the eyes.”

“Jesus, Ryan. Is that al you think about?”

“Incoming.” Hunching his shoulders, Ryan ducked from the room.

I sat a moment, wondering. Cal Tyrel? Explain that Stalings had lied about our conversation?

Not now. Now, fired though I might be, Jimmy Klapec deserved my ful attention. And his father.

And Asa Finney.

I spent another ten minutes puzzling over the SEM scans.

And came up empty.

Frustrated, I decided on a gambit that occasionaly worked. When stumped, start over at the beginning.

Opening my briefcase, I puled out the entire file on Jimmy Klapec.

First I reviewed the scene photos. The body was as I remembered it, flesh ghostly pale, shoulders to the earth, rump to the sky.

I viewed close-ups of the anus, the truncated neck, the carvings in the chest and bely. Nothing but fly eggs.

I shifted to the autopsy shots. Y incision. Organs. Empty chest cavity. Strange striated bruise on the back.

I noted the atypical decay pattern, with more aerobic decomposition than anaerobic putrefaction. As though the body was rotting from the outside in rather than the inside out.

Spreading my bone photos, I reexamined the cut mark in the fourth cervical vertebra. Concave bending. Fixed radius curvature sweeping from, not around, the breakaway point.