The Bone Man (6 page)

“Better,” he said. He sat on the leather-padded bench that rested against the cubicle wall. He shifted his bulk so the cubicle’s corner embraced him.

I poured him a cup of tea from his stash and popped my Diet Coke.

“Anything?” I asked as I handed him the steaming porcelain cup.

He sipped, nodded, then scraped a hand through his bristly crew cut. “Little. Some trace. Shit. She was a friend.”

I sat beside him and leaned against his shoulder. “I know.” Her bloody image flashed before my eyes. How long would it take to get rid of that damn picture?

“Anything at all on the skull? The restoration?”

His lips thinned. “We think that’s why . . .”

“Me, too,” I said. “Even so, there was a huge amount of anger in her killing. A lot of passion.”

He snorted. “Knew you’d say that.”

“Well, sure. Obvious, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Yeah. I guess. Or the killer’s trying to make us think that. For all the hell we know, the guy was out for bucks. Big market in those things, ya know.”

“Reconstructions? No way that . . .”

“The old skull, Tal.”

“I can’t believe that. But I guess . . . well, I’d believe anything right about now.” I scraped my fingers through my hair. “So, what do you think ‘
bloodfet
’ means?”

He took a sip of tea. “Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’? The words Didi scrawled in her own blood.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Tal.”

I stood. I didn’t get why he was shining me on. “This isn’t funny, Rob.”

He slid his teacup onto his desk before he shrugged on his jacket. “Ya got that right, at least.”

Was I losing my mind?
“C’mon.” I dragged him back to Didi’s bloodstained office. Fewer people. The spatter guys, one of whom was perched on a ladder, were still taking measurements, but Didi’s body was gone. I’d soon be talking to her family. Except . . .

I shook my head. I couldn’t quite see where she’d been resting. I moved forward, slipped under the tape to get a better look.

“So?” Kranak said.

I stared to the right and to the left of markers that indicated where her body had rested. I saw pools of blood congealing on the linoleum, but no words. None.

“This is creepy, Rob. Didi wrote the word ‘
bloodfet
.’ ” I pointed to where she’d inscribed the word. “Right there. I saw it.”

“Hey, Bruce,” Kranak said to the guy on the ladder. “You find any words? Anything like that?”

Bruce shook his head. “Nope, Sarge.

“What about under that pool of blood,” I said. “Maybe it oozed over the word or something.”

The blood spatter specialist peered down at us, shaking his head. “When we get there, I’ll look again. But I doubt it.”

“Well, don’t doubt it. Just find it.” I turned and left.

Kranak said something I couldn’t hear, then followed me. “Bruce’s the best blood guy I know, Tally.”

I stood in the hall, my body flushed with anger and a touch of fear. “Whatever. What about the crime scene photos?”

“They show nothing like you describe.”

“I know what I saw.”

“Bruce’ll check. Promise.”

“Sure. He sounded awfully certain he’d find nothing.” I walked through the keyed door and into the lobby, headed for MGAP. Kranak stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“Hold up, Tally,” he said.

I faced him. “Something hinkey’s going on. I know what I saw. I don’t much enjoy being treated like a three-year-old. Or doubted. Or questioned.”

He snorted. “You’re not. But the word may be gone, Tally. You, of all people, know how the mind imagines stuff.”

“I didn’t imagine this.” I got a pen and a pad at the front desk and wrote out the word I’d seen scrawled in Didi’s blood. “Here. She wrote it. I don’t know why it’s gone, but it matters. Understand.”

“Sure do. But you know as well as I that I can’t do anything without evidence.”

“Just keep an eye out, okay?”

“Promise.” He looked at the paper. “Promise.”

I kissed his cheek, nodded, and looked down. The toe that peeked from my open-toed pumps was stained with Didi’s blood. “Oh, hell.”

It was hard handing off Didi’s sister and brother-in-law to Gert and her team. But I didn’t work there anymore.

Still, I ached for them, for Didi, for her friends and family at OCME. She was this wild-haired wonder, and she didn’t deserve to die that way. Not at all.

Right after the viewing and ID, I slipped back inside the far reaches of OCME to say my farewells. They mattered, at least to me they did, those good-byes. Funerals and such were different. The remains were embalmed to waxy perfection and often dressed and dolled up in clothes and makeup they’d never have worn in life. I remembered seeing a good friend’s nails painted bright red in her casket, her newly manicured hand clutching the Bible, King James Version. She never would have used red on her nails. Nor would she have allowed a Bible in the casket with her.

The remains we all saw at funeral homes were really about the bereaved, not the deceased. Or so I believed.

So I made it a point with my cases and with my friends to say my good-byes privately.

I stood in the large refrigeration room, a place I knew intimately. Didi lay on a steel gurney, just like all the others. She was encased in a white plastic bag, and, I guessed out of respect, someone had covered her with a sheet. She
hadn’t been autopsied yet. I didn’t envy the ME that one. Cutting one of your own was hard.

I sighed and rested my hand on her forehead. I stroked her wiry gray hair that was still matted with blood. “You were crazy, Dee. Just nuts.” I ran my hand up and down her arm, as if that soothing motion might help her. One truth—it helped me to deal.

She was frozen in time, just like one of her reconstructions. I slipped two fingers over the bruise that had bloomed on her cheek. “Who hit you? Why? Who did this to you?”

The mole she’d always talked about removing remained beside her left eye. It was sexy, but Didi was not.

Had the Zuni governor come back? Or maybe the Geographic people? Someone else—who?—wanted to possess that which he shouldn’t. I saw Didi fighting him and . . .

I smoothed my hand across her thin forearm. “Oh, yes, Dee. We’ll find out. That we will. Never fear. We’ll make him pay.”

“What do you mean there are no photos of Didi’s reconstruction and the skull?” I stood, arms folded, and stared at Addy Morgridge until I was sure she’d relent and tell me she was mistaken.

“Sorry, Tal. No.” She waved a hand. “Please sit! You’re obviously distraught and dealing with that terrible sight of Didi’s corpse.”

“No, I’m not!” I said.

“Sit.”

The leather squeaked as my tush landed hard. “I am not distraught. Much. Not too much.” Suddenly I was fighting tears. “Why no photos?”

“The governor. His request, our acquiescence. We had to respect his wishes, Tally.”

“Ah, jeez.”

Addy lit a cigarette. Boy, didn’t I wish . . . “She was something, that one,” Addy said.

I nodded, chuckled. “A character. One of a kind.”

“All that talent, gone.” She inhaled deeply and allowed the smoke to dribble out her nose. “And here. How dare they.”

“Have you called the governor? Told him about—”

Addy nodded.

“Mind if I talk to him?”

She stubbed out the cigarette. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She lit another one. “Sergeant Kranak said you’d be trouble.”

A prick of pain. I was sure Kranak hadn’t said it like that, but . . . funny how those words hurt. I guessed he’d moved on, just like me.

“Sergeant Kranak’s right,” I said. “But I don’t work here anymore, which sure looks like a good thing.” I contemplated telling her about the two snaps I had of the reconstruction, the ones I’d taken with my phone and only pretended to erase. Later. I’d tell her later, after I’d talked to the Zuni governor.

Outside Addy’s office, I made sure I e-mailed the photos home. If they were the only pictures of Didi’s reconstruction, they were priceless.

Once I got home, I brought up my e-mail. There were the two images, one a full face and one in profile. I wished I’d ignored Didi and taken more. Didi. I’d caught her on camera, too. Just her back, bent over some hunk of un-formed clay, her bony hands and slightly hunched shoulders a portrait in intensity.

She was so damned good at what she did. So devoted to her work, to the past she wished to bring back to life.

The photo said it all. Life, there now, then—poof.
Gone. In a blink. I looked at her image again. She was alive there, intensely so. And now . . .

I could not see the value in stealing a skull, a bunch of potsherds and a clay bust. I couldn’t see the value at all.

I failed to find the Zuni governor that night, at least in the flesh, so I Googled him instead. He appeared to be a complex man who aimed to blend old and new Zuni ways into one, much to the frustration of certain young Zuni firebrands.

He carved Katsinas for a living and also for the tribe. I flipped through pages of pictured Katsinas, once called Kachinas. According to Barton Wright, who wrote extensively about American Indian art, Katsinas represented the spirit essence of everything in the real world. White noted that the idea of the Katsina Cult is that all things in the world have two forms, the visible object and its spirit counterpart, a dualism that balances mass and energy. Katsina dolls are never toys—I’d known that—not even when given to Hopi or Zuni children. These spirit “dolls” can assist with prayers. They’re carved from cottonwood root, which had become increasingly scarce, and painted to represent the real Katsinas or spirit beings.

I’d seen Katsinas many times on my visits out West. Governor Bowannie was obviously a master carver. His pieces were sought after by many high-end collectors. They were worth thousands, and I knew the traders and retailers profited mightily. I had no idea what the governor himself received.

I continued searching, in part out of fascination, but found no way to communicate with the governor or learn where he was staying in Boston. Someone at OCME had to know. After all, he was now part of Didi’s homicide investigation.

Since she was killed at OCME, she would fall under state, rather than Boston, jurisdiction. I knew a couple of
detectives I could call. I’d rather leave Kranak out of it, if possible. I’d wait a couple of days, let things settle, then get the governor’s location.

I tapped a few keys and looked up the Steamship Authority’s ferry schedule on my computer. Plenty of ferries were running to the Vineyard. No more phone calls. I’d hop a ferry tomorrow and visit Delphine’s shop myself.

Indian Summer—there was nothing like it. The drive to Woods Hole was spectacular, and Penny and I made the 10:45
A.M.
ferry to Vineyard Haven with ease. On this late-September Wednesday, with the sky a glossy blue and the air crisp with promise, I could hardly imagine murder staining someone’s life.

I stood on the top open-air deck and wrapped my hands around the rail. Gulls wheeled and cawed and dived for tidbits tossed by passengers. It was loud—the crossing always was—with the sea and surf and wind in my ears. I tightened my sweater from the sea-chill.

How I loved the ocean! The sea brought memories of my dad and Veda and the possibility of the infinite.

I laughed and ruffled Penny’s fur. Hank always said he loved when I “waxed poetic,” as he called it. I usually found my yammerings, in retrospect, pretty silly.

We debarked at Vineyard Haven, and I immediately relaxed. I was crazy about the Vineyard, especially when the summer people had fled. Then you could feel her bones. She was old and no matter how much they flossed her up,
her earthiness reappeared each winter. She was a working island, where life was hard and could be cheap. In the old days, folks struggled to survive. I admired their determination and grit.

As I stepped on the dock, I spotted a tall, hearty-looking man with a wispy beard and a seaman’s grin. Dan Black and his wife Belle were dear old friends. She’d grown up on the Vineyard, but of the two, he looked like the stereotypical Old Salt. In truth, he was a cowboy from Durango, Colorado, who’d come east to college on a fencing scholarship.

“Dan!” I waved and was suddenly engulfed in the kind of wonderful bear hug where you can hardly breathe. I laughed and returned it. Penny barked.

“Where’s your lovely bride?” I asked upon my release.

“Putting together some bluefish pate for lunch before you head off on your big adventure. Delish!” He caught my eyes and the smiling glint faded to sadness. “I’m sorry about Doc Cravitz. She was a good one.”

“Yes,” I said. “She was.”

He smoothed a hand over my tangly hair. “Are you all right?”

Was I?
“I guess. It was tough, finding Didi that way. I’ve sort of been possessed by this whole thing, y’know?”

“I hope not too much. Sounds like this was a real nasty one.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take my murders fictional, as you know.” He hefted my backpack and led us through the crowd.

“I want to drive by Delphine’s shop, okay?” I said as I slid into the passenger seat of Dan’s red Jeep Cherokee. The truck backfired, seemingly in protest, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

He snapped me a nod, then took a right, and then another
onto Main Street. I wished we had time to stop in at Bunch of Grapes books and the Sioux Eagle jewelry store, two of my favorite shops in all the world.

“Next time we’ll stop and shop,” said mind-reader Dan.

“Oh, you know me too well.”

He grinned and tipped his cap. “Which is pretty nice, isn’t it?”

“To have friends like that?” I said. “Yes, it is.”

We continued down Main, through the shopping area where I’d once seen President Clinton and Chelsea leave their motorcade and shop for books. At the time, I’d talked to Buddy, the president’s chocolate Lab. He was a handful for the Secret Service agent who held his leash—a wild and sweet dog, and I was saddened when I heard about his untimely death.

Dan turned left, then made a right onto North William Street.