LC 02 - Questionable Remains (2 page)

"Yes."

"You want to see the murderer caught. We understand
your sadness and sympathy for the Kim family." Again he
gestured with a sweep of his arm, including the jury as if
they were on his side. He shook his head and raised his
voice, drawing out his words. "But, just how can you convince me, and these twelve very sensible people that you
can say for sure it was my client who shot Mr. Kim and not
someone else with bad teeth?"

"Mr. Dalton," said Lindsay, raising her hands to grip the
top of the witness box and leaning forward slightly. "You
had orthodontic work as an adult. You had four teeth
pulled. Two upper second premolars and two lower first
premolars. You wore your braces quite a long time, and the
constant soreness caused you to develop the bad habit of
grinding and clinching your teeth at night."

Gerald Dalton gawked at Lindsay, surprise evident on his
face; his mouth dropped open, speechless for a moment. It
was that moment of surprised hesitation that swayed the
jury. Lindsay could see them shift their gazes to one another the way people do when they simultaneously see and
understand a truth. In that moment she saw Albert nod his
head and turn to whisper something to his mother; she saw
the prosecutor smile and the defendant look around as if
someone told a joke he did not understand.

"Okay, how'd you do it?" Gilbert asked Lindsay, handing
her a cup of coffee from the cappuccino machine in the corner of his office. He grinned broadly. "Your timing was perfect."

"My timing was from desperation."

Gilbert sat down and propped his feet on his dark oak
desk. "But tell me how you did it."

"It wasn't that hard. His theatrics made it possible. The
way he tried to intimidate me, leaning over me, drawing
out his words with that big voice of his, gave me a good
look into his mouth. I saw that he had premolars missing.
When he looked down to clean his glasses, I caught a
glimpse of a permanent retainer behind his lower incisors.
A retainer is used to prevent shifting of teeth."

"And grinding his teeth?"

"His lower incisors were beveled where they ground
against his upper incisors."

Gilbert gave a satisfied laugh. "I'll bet there's going to be
a great gnashing of teeth in his office when the verdict
comes in. With circumstantial evidence and a witness who
only saw in the perp's mouth, of Dalton thought this was
going to be an easy one."

"You think they will find Ferguson guilty, then?" asked
Lindsay. She couldn't quite share in Gilbert's confidence.

"I think so. Of course, I've been surprised and even
shocked by juries before, but I feel good about this. You're a
good witness."

Lindsay took a sip of her coffee. "I can't stay for the verdict.
I have to give an exam. Call me when you know something."
She set down her cup and rose, offering Gilbert her hand.

He stood up quickly and shook her hand with a firm grip.
"Sure. Glad to work with you, Lindsay. We don't usually
have this kind of thing going on in our little town. I hate to
see this kind of crime come in."

"Me, too," said Lindsay. "I'm going to miss Mr. Kim."

Sally, Lindsay's graduate assistant, was setting up the
classroom for the honors course final exam when Lindsay
returned to Baldwin Hall, home of the Department of
Anthropology and Archaeology. Sally's dark blonde hair
was pulled back into a ponytail, one wayward strand falling
into her face. She had on a pair of well-worn jeans and a
black T-shirt showing a white skeleton of a rat on the front
along with the words: Rattus Rattus.

"I like your shirt," said Lindsay.

Sally looked down at the picture on her chest. "Yeah, I do,
too. We're selling them to raise money for the anthropology
club." She paused a moment before she asked, "Is it over?"

"It's with the jury."

"I'm sorry about Mr. Kim, Lindsay."

"So am I." Lindsay tried to fight off the depressing mood
in which the trial had left her. "Did you get students from
the advanced osteology class to help you with the exam?"

"They'll be here in a few minutes."

The graduate students came in, followed by six honors
students from Lindsay's class. There were the usual moans,
groans, and the predictable question, "Is it hard?"

"I don't think so," said Lindsay, smiling. She gave each of
them a long strip of black fabric.

"What's this?" asked one of the students.

"A blindfold," she answered.

"I knew it," said another. "A firing squad. She's going to
shoot us if we fail."

"We have to get our bones somewhere," offered Sally.

Lindsay smiled at the group of four male and two female
undergraduate students as they dropped their backpacks
on the floor and sat down. "Okay, everyone listen up. As
you have probably guessed, your test will be to identify
some selected bones by touch alone. After you've named
each bone, the graduate student assigned to you will write
your answer down for you. You can get extra credit if you can identify the correct side-left or right. Don't try to listen
to what the other students are saying because I've put different bones in each of the boxes on the tables. Now, pick a
box and begin."

Each student picked a spot next to one of the covered
boxes on the laboratory tables and tied their blindfold
across their eyes. Lindsay watched as they removed the lids
from their boxes, reached in, took a bone, and felt for identifying characteristics. She smiled when their faces lit up as
they felt a trochanter or a condyle or when they frowned as
they searched with the tips of their fingers for a fossa or
muscle attachment. Sometimes they would roll the shaft of
a bone in their hands to determine the shape of the cross
section. After a while she left the exam in Sally's supervision
and went to her office.

Lindsay's office had no windows. The walls beside and
behind her desk were lined with bookshelves filled with
books and journals. Her walnut desk had belonged to her
grandfather, the only other archaeologist in the family. The
brown, straight-grained wood surface was marred, and the
left front leg still had her father's initials carved into it
where he had tried out a new pocketknife on his ninth birthday. Her mother had wanted to have the desk refinished
before they gave it to her, but her father had said no.
Lindsay was glad because the marks left on artifacts reveal
their history in a kind of code that she took pleasure in deciphering. The coffee cup rings told of her grandfather's long
nights sipping coffee and working on articles. The cuts and
scratches were evidence of the stone tools he laid out on the
surface to examine and catalog.

The desk faced the door to the archaeology lab. An oak
filing cabinet inherited from the previous occupant stood
behind the door. On the other side sat a single stuffed
leather chair next to a brass floor lamp. Her grandfather's
trowel rested on a bookshelf, and an old photograph hung
on the wall behind the chair, showing her grandfather as a young man dressed in a tie and rolled up shirtsleeves, holding a shovel and standing in front of an Indian mound in
Macon, Georgia.

There were no artifacts or bones displayed in Lindsay's
office. The only artifact she possessed was in an old cigar
box inside her desk. It was a treasured possession: the first
Indian artifact she had ever found. When Lindsay was five,
her grandfather had taken her on the first of their many
trips to do surface collecting. She had earnestly examined
the freshly plowed ground as she walked beside her grandfather getting hot, tired, and restless. Then, there it was: the
tip of a point partially covered by the moist earth. She had
dug it out with her fingers and wiped off the dirt that clung
to it. The point was beautiful, and it was huge, longer than
her hand and almost as wide, made from black flint.

"It's a Clovis point," her grandfather had told her. "The
oldest point there is. It could have killed a woolly mammoth." Lindsay had held on to her find so tightly the edges
had cut her hand, but that didn't matter because she had
found something wonderful. Since that day she had found
many things, but no discovery had ever made her feel as
she did that time she found the Clovis with her grandfather. From that day on Lindsay knew she would be an
archaeologist.

Lindsay was reaching for a term paper to grade when a
figure appeared in her doorway. She thought it was a student before she recognized Gerald Dalton's cocounsel.
Lindsay hadn't gotten a good look at her in court. Now she
saw that she was a small, fine-boned woman, not over five
feet four inches tall. Lindsay guessed she wore a size two.
She looked as if she had the hollow bones of a bird, she was
so thin and delicate looking. Her short, glossy-black hair
was cut in a pageboy, and her skin looked as though it
would be translucent if her makeup were washed off. She
stood stiffly in the doorway, still in the snug-fitting dark
blue suit she wore to the trial.

"Can I help you?" asked Lindsay.

"Have you heard the verdict?" Her voice belied her small
frame. It was low and husky.

"No, I had to give an exam....

"Yes. I saw your blindfolded students. I suppose that fits
... teaching them that they can make a positive identification without looking." The woman walked into Lindsay's
office and stood, put her palms on the desk and leaned forward.

"Is there a point to your visit?" asked Lindsay.

"I wanted to be the one to tell you that the jury found
Dennis Ferguson guilty. I hope that pleases you."

Lindsay frowned. "Nothing about this event pleases me."

"What really gets to me is that you don't have any misgivings about convicting a man on the flimsiest of evidence."

"I was sure."

"How can you possibly not have doubts? Are you that
arrogant?" She stopped and looked at Lindsay for a
moment, her green eyes clearly showing her anger. "God,
you are, aren't you? You've set yourself up here as some
great. . . bone ... guru, haven't you? And that performance
today really topped it."

"Performance?" asked Lindsay.

"The way you pulled the rabbit out of the hat on the
stand. It was the drama that convinced the jury, not the
facts.... It was the damn show you put on. You are the
most arrogant, manipulative woman I have ever met."

Lindsay started to speak when the woman turned on her
heel and left.

Sally, who had been standing just outside the doorway,
watched after the retreating figure before she came into
Lindsay's office. "Well, who peed in her Wheaties?"

"I suppose I did," replied Lindsay.

Lindsay finished grading the papers and tests, turned in
the final grade sheets to the department, and locked her office. Before going home she put on her running clothes
and drove to Memorial Park where she jogged on the wooded trail that wound around the duck pond. It was a cold
February day, and there weren't many people on the trail.
She was glad for the solitude and content to empty her
mind of everything but running. After twenty minutes of
jogging she slowed to a walk and went back to her car.

Driving through the town of Trowbridge, she passed Mr.
Kim's grocery. It had been closed following Mr. Kim's murder. She saw Albert Kim walking down the sidewalk
toward the store. She pulled her Land Rover into a parking
place and got out.

"Albert," she said. He turned from unlocking the door of
the grocery store to greet her. "How's your mother?"

Albert smiled and nodded. "She's better. Thanks to you
and the jury, she's better."

"Are you going to stay here and run the store or go back
to school in Chicago?"

Albert shook his head. "I don't know. I will have to stay
here for a while anyway, you know . . ." He paused, not
knowing what to say, and seemed filled with despair.

"You could transfer to the university here. If you need a
letter of recommendation, I would be glad to write you
one," Lindsay offered.

"Thank you. You're very kind. I may ask you..."

They turned to look as a woman with shopping bag in
hand crossed the street, waving at Albert. "It looks like you
have a customer," Lindsay said. She took her leave and
drove home.

Home was in the middle of thirty-six acres of oak, hickory, walnut, and pine trees. Lindsay had moved a nineteenthcentury square-logged cabin onto her property and was in
the process of restoring it. She had added the modern conveniences of electricity, plumbing, bathroom, and kitchen.
The dark, oak-log cabin sat on the edge of a small pond
where Lindsay often fished.

Mandrake, Lindsay's horse, stood behind the white
board fence, tossing his head as she drove up. The black
Arabian stallion was a birthday gift from her mother.
Lindsay loved the horse, but it was not the horse that to her
was the best part of the gift. It was the fact that Ellen
Chamberlain bred, raised, and trained the horse for her. It
took seven years to bring Mandrake to the level of training
that Ellen wanted for her daughter's horse. During that
time Lindsay, of course, had seen Mandrake, but had had no
idea he was to be hers. Seven years of patient training-that
was what Lindsay found so remarkable about her mother's
gift. She got out of her car and, hugging herself against the
cold wind, walked over to Mandrake with an apple she had
not eaten for lunch. He took it from her hand, and she
stroked his soft nose as he ate. She made a mental note to
call Susan Gitten to house-sit for her when she went on her
summer vacation. Susan, a trainer herself, was one of the
few people with whom Lindsay trusted her horse. She was
a reliable woman a year younger than Lindsay's twentyseven years, honest, pleasant, and totally lacking in sense of
humor. Seeing a friend or watching a horse do what she
trained him to do would bring a smile to her face, but jokes
were lost on her. Lindsay thought Susan must be completely bewildered by sitcoms and comedians.