never
had the time.
The music stopped, and he stopped eating and stared at his food. The sauce on his sesame chicken, he realized, was nearly the consistency of human blood. He picked up a knife, dipped it, and spattered the sauce across the kitchen table and the wall behind it, as though someone had stabbed the chicken from behind.
The phone rang. Damn. He picked it up. Rosen.
Miss me?
The two words gave him a jolt of pleasure. The only voice allowed to intrude into his solitude was Pete Harrigans any time and any place. Pete, thirty years Jakes senior, was one of only two people on this earth Jake loved. The other was his brother, Sam, and Sam didnt have intrusion privileges.
Sure I miss you. Jake studied the mess on the table. In fact, I was just thinking about you. The influence of knife length on cast-off blood spatter patterns.
Im flattered, Harrigan said. But you should be out on a date. Werent you seeing that fingerprint expert from
Broke it off, Jake said quickly, feeling a flash of pain. Too soon after my divorce.
Trouble with women, trouble in the office. I hear youve had a go-round with Chief Pederson. Too much private work, not enough time serving the city. Harrigan had once been chief himself. Retired now, he obviously still had tentacles inside the MEs office. How is my old friend Charles Pederson? Does he still resent me now that hes replaced me as chief medical examiner?
Still the same where youre concerned, Jake said. Hey, youre the one who taught me any medical examiner worth a damn pisses off the powers that be. Comes with the territory.
And you were my best student. Developed
pissing off
into a specialty. Hows Wally? Harrigan was given to abrupt changes of subject.
Blossoming. The mans a godsend. I thank you for him every day.
Dr. Walter Winnick Wally was a protege whom Harrigan had recommended to Jake. The man had a clubfoot, but his mind sprinted to invariably accurate conclusions; Jake couldnt have handled his workload without him.
Glad to hear it.
Hows Elizabeth? Jake asked.
Fine. The womans going to be New Jerseys next governor. Ever since she married that Markis fellow, though, shes pretty much stopped visiting. If I want to see my daughter, I have to go to New Jersey, and even then I have to make an appointment through her press agent.
There was a pause. Unusual, Jake thought. Pete was generally so voluble Jake couldnt shut him up. He could hear Harrigans labored breathing. Sick, Jake wondered, or in trouble? Whats up?
Lets talk shop.
Sure, Jake said, relieved. You heard about the Carramia case?
As a matter of fact, no. For once Im not calling about your cases, Im calling about one of mine.
Shoot, Jake said.
A hesitation, a cough. I was wondering if youd like to come up here and help me decipher some bones.
* * *
Since his retirement, Dr. Peter Harrigan lived in the hamlet of Turner, a little town on a big lake two hours north of the city. Jake got there at six the next morning. He met Harrigan at his home, a white Cape Cod cottage with yellow shutters, which looked from the outside more like a dolls house than the residence of a globally respected forensic pathologist.
The two men embraced. Well have to take your car even though I hate seeing the street through your floorboards, Pete said. My Suburbans sick. He piled a box of autopsy tools, a camera, and a few body bags into the backseat of Jakes old, falling apart Oldsmobile and brought two mugs of coffee to the front. He was wearing the same blue Polartec jacket Jake had given him seven years ago on the eve of Petes departure; Jake had on the dark green oilskin Marianna had bought him on their only trip to London.
You do realize, Jake said, as Pete backed the Camaro out of the driveway, that you live in the geographical center of nowhere.
Harrigan grinned. Its exciting, though. Big-time crime. Just last week our mayor shot an elk out of season. Towns still debating how much to fine him.
Jake swallowed hot coffee. It was bitter and strong; considering his sleep deprivation he was going to need a lot of it. You lived in New York for over thirty years.
I got over it.
After almost four decades in forensic pathology, Harrigan had retired to the country to please his wife, Dolores, who died less than three years later. Bored with fishing, he had taken on the post of Baxter County medical examiner, which meant signing off on one or two death certificates a week and doing two or three autopsies a month. At seventy-two, he was the oldest sitting medical examiner in the state of New York.
So explain, Jake said. Why did I drive up here in the middle of the night?
To get here before the excavation starts up again.
Excavation of what?
That field in the distance.
And theyre digging on a Saturday morning?
Apparently, Pete said, the building of a shopping mall waits for no man or bones.
They were traveling on a two-lane road, passing trees, not houses. A shopping mall? Up here?
Rumor has it the governors going to give the Senecas rights to build a casino. The town fathers are half mad with the prospect of all those tourists, so naturally they want to give them a place to spend their winnings. And what more appropriate location than in back of the Turner insane asylum?
Jake grunted. Fat chance anyone will win.
Pete glanced at him, amused. You never were much of a gambler, were you.
Only at love. And look what that won me: a monthly alimony check.
Jake still felt the divorce of his parents with almost the same pain hed experienced with his own. He remembered hugging his fathers leg the last time he walked out the door. His younger brother, Sam, had been a baby, couldnt even stand yet, and didnt know what was going on. But Jakes childhood had gone downhill from that moment. After twenty years of being a medical examiner, he was convinced that the biggest risk factors for murder were love and marriage. He believed the marriage vow should say, I promise to love, honor, and not kill you. He had chosen a career as an ME both to improve society and to prove that a delinquent kid could make something of his life. The time it took to make a marriage work wasnt compatible with his goals.
They continued down the road, sunlight just starting to peek through the trees. Theyd just broken ground on their god-forsaken center early yesterday morning, Pete said, when the backhoe brought up the upper part of a skull. The lower jaw, the mandible, was missing, probably carried off with the dirt before the crew realized what they had. In a construction site like this, the first instinct is to ignore anything that gets in the way, but the backhoe driver called the authorities and they called me. I found an ulna and a tibia to go along with the skull and ordered a shutdown. Harrigan shot Jake a look. I leave you to guess what the developer said the delay would cost him.
Jake smiled into his mug. An arm and a leg?
Just so.
Im guessing those arent an old settlers bones or you wouldnt have brought me up here.
You got it. Within an hour, the scene was crawling with people: the developer himself R. Seward Reynolds his lackeys, his lawyers, the mayor, the sheriff, half the town council, and the ever-lovely Marge Crespy, doyenne of the Turner Historical Society.
Good God!
All of them seemed eager for the remains to be a settler. I told them,
Impossible.
I needed to take care of something else I couldnt put off yesterday afternoon. I called you last night for help on this issue.
Jake got the familiar queasy feeling in his stomach that came with the suspicion of corruption. Sure. A settler means no fights over Indian burial grounds, no worries about a crime scene. They can just rebury the bones somewhere else and get on with the mall. He looked at his friend and mentor, feeling the anger in Petes bearing. Do
you
think its a Native American?
I found an incisor. It isnt shovel-shaped. The skull has rectangular eye sockets and a triangular nasal opening. You tell me.
Caucasian.
Harrigan nodded. And a good thing, too, as far as the mayors concerned. He was apoplectic at the prospect of a dispute over native land.
Then whats the problem?
The bones were normal weight and nonporous.
Meaning theyre probably less than fifty years old.
And they werent sticky. The tongue doesnt lie.
Jake imagined Miss Crespys reaction when Pete touched his tongue to the remains, looking for stickiness caused by porous texture and a lack of organic material. The death was recent. You told them that?
Of course. But with all that lovely tax revenue at stake, theyre hardly inclined to take the word of a bone-licker.
Thats why you called me in? To back you up?
Partly. And there are practical considerations. My hands and eyes are no longer as sharp as my mind. My heart isnt getting any stronger. Id already decided to step down as ME at the end of the year. He paused. This may be the last interesting case I ever get. It would be fitting if we did it together.
Hes pleading with me, Jake thought, struck by a tone he had never heard before. Why? It was easy to remember Harrigan as the vigorous pathologist who had mentored him from the moment theyd met at the morgue at Bellevue Hospital; Jake had still been in medical school and the ME office had used the old Bellevue morgue. Now he studied his friend like the scientist Pete had trained him to be.
What he saw was a man whose hands shook with faint tremors, whose skin had become papery and translucent, whose watery eyes had lost some of their clarity and focus.
Hes old. Older and more tired than Ive ever seen him before.
Of course Ill help, Jake said, feeling deeply moved. Im honored.
Pete snorted. Jesus, dont go soft on me. Have some dignity, man.
Be polite, Jake warned, or youre not getting your Johnnie Walker Blue.
Petes eyes widened.
Blue?
Right there in my overnight bag. A little present from your most ardent admirer.
Were here, Pete said, stopping the car. Lets get this over with quickly so we can go back home and drink it.
* * *
There were already more than a dozen cars parked on the scraggly grass at the edge of the construction site, including the sheriffs cruiser. Beyond stretched land that had once been forest. Dozens of trees had already been felled, the logs waiting in neat pyramids to be hauled off to the sawmill. Pete and Jake set off toward the backhoe, a mute monster standing at the side of the field, impotent as a childs toy. Fifteen people were clustered nearby, all men but for one woman, fiftyish and fierce beneath her blue peacoat indubitably, Jake thought, Miss Crespy. Most of the men were wearing jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots, the universal garb of construction workers. Three more were standing a few yards from the rest, two wearing khakis and open-collared shirts, the other a beer belly and a badge. As soon as she saw Harrigan, the woman joined them.
The one on the lefts the mayor, Pete whispered. Next to hims the Reynolds foreman. The others the sheriff, obviously.
The group had clearly been waiting for Harrigan to arrive. They looked at Rosen with the suspicion reserved for strangers in a small town.
This heres Dr. Jacob Rosen from the New York City medical examiners office, Pete said. Mayor Bob Stevenson, Sheriff Joe Fisk, Harry King hes in charge of construction and, of course, Miss Crespy.
All of them shook hands with Jake except Fisk, who turned his back, muttering something Jake couldnt make out.
Dr. Rosen is the best there is, Pete said too cheerfully, Jake thought. Ive asked him to help with the disinterment.
Mayor Stevenson looked less than thrilled. Come on, Pete, he said. You know the town cant afford some fancy New York
Dr. Rosen is volunteering his time as a personal favor to me. So lets 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 didnt find any iron nails or decayed coffin wood like you usually find near a settlers bones, Pete explained patiently, his voice hoarse. Besides, these bones are relatively new.
