Buried: A Bone Secrets Novel Part 12

The sheriff rubbed a hand across his mouth. "The woman. Elena. They never married. That's no big deal, and having a kid while not wed wasn't a big deal to most around here. They looked happy whenever I saw them. Can't say I've ever seen him smile since she died-"

"What's his name? The boy?" Jamie interrupted again.

The sheriff's eyes widened. "You don't know his name? Jesus H. Christ. That's a h.e.l.l of a brother you've got there. The boy is Brian."

Michael watched Jamie's lips move as she silently spoke the name. Her eyes grew wet.

"I can't believe he wouldn't tell you," Sheriff Spencer snorted. "Why in the world would he refuse to tell you Brian's name?"

"I didn't know about him. Brian. I didn't even know he existed." Jamie's voice drifted off.

"That's even worse." The sheriff shook his head, wonder in his eyes.

"What were you about to say about Jacobs?" Michael brought the sheriff's focus back to the matter at hand.

A blank look crossed his face for a split second. "c.r.a.p. Lost my train of thought. I was about to say people think Chris was in the car with Elena when it crashed. Maybe somehow caused the crash. He had a big bruise on his face that day, but claims he'd accidentally whacked himself with something...I don't remember what. It was enough to make people talk, wonder why he'd not admit to being at the scene of the accident. Made him look guilty in some way."

"He said he wasn't there?" Michael asked.

"He said he was home."

"Why would he want to cause an accident? You said they seemed happy."

The sheriff shrugged. "Elena was a Mexican gal. Probably illegal. I figure that's why they never married. She just appeared around town one day, no family, looking for work. I'm not certain how she hooked up with your brother. Anyway, some stuff didn't make sense at the accident. The pa.s.senger door was open. Elena's blood was on the outside of her door, but her door and window were shut. Someone had been there after the accident. Jacobs seemed the most likely. The accident happened close enough to their home. He could have easily walked home."

"Who found her?" whispered Jamie.

"Dean Schmidt. Driving by. Swears he didn't touch the driver's door. He'd noticed it was b.l.o.o.d.y when he got there. He checked Elena from the pa.s.senger side and said that door was open. He had to drive a few miles to get a cell signal to call it in."

"He could have messed up the scene," stated Michael.

"He could have," the sheriff agreed. "Dean is eighty-eight years old and sharp as a whip. I guess he watches CSI all the time, said he knew not to touch anything. He checked for a pulse and that was it. A lot of the blood had already dried, and she was nearly cold by the time he found her."

"So anyone pa.s.sing by could have tampered with the scene."

"I'd usually agree with that statement, but that road only goes to the Schmidt place or your brother's place. The chances of anyone else driving by are slim to none."

"Chris was never arrested for anything, right?" Jamie asked.

"Nope. I was the one to deliver the news. I saw the look on his face. That was the look of a man who'd just lost the love of his life." The sheriff blinked hard. "I asked some questions and was satisfied he knew nothing of the accident. I'm not sure who first spread the story of him causing the accident-I'd like to kick their a.s.s. d.a.m.n town loves gossip."

"And telling us? That's not spreading gossip?" Michael raised a brow.

"I've never repeated the story to another person, and I've told plenty of people to shut up about it. I'm just giving you some background on what your brother's experienced here because you're related. I'd say he's rather bitter. Now you know why."

A waitress set two huge platters of food on the table. Michael inhaled. Christ. It was heaven. He didn't even look at Jamie as he dug in. "Holy s.h.i.t. That's good."

Jamie nodded, her mouth full.

Sheriff Spencer grinned and pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. "Here's your directions. Like I said, watch the odometer, otherwise you'll never know which road to turn on." He stood, picked up his hat, and glanced at his watch. "Kinda late to drive out there tonight. You're gonna want better light. I'd wait till morning. It's up to you. Hotel's just down the street."

Michael stood to shake his hand. "Thanks for your help."

The sheriff touched the brim of his hat at Jamie. "Good luck."

Michael sat back down with a sigh and picked up his fork. Tomorrow morning was fine with him. He wanted to eat and then sleep. Nothing else.

"All this cheese," Jamie said, focusing on her plate. "I'm gonna have a ton of calories to work off."

Michael suddenly lost his need for sleep.

Mason Callahan did not like autopsies. He sat in his car outside the medical examiner's office, air conditioner blasting, and wished for a cigarette. His partner, Ray, was home with a nasty flu bug, so Mason was on his own today. It was easier when Ray came along. It gave him someone to man up to. By himself, it was too easy to wimp out, stalling by sitting in his car, no peer pressure to get his a.s.s inside and listen to what the ME had to say.

He tried to attend the autopsies related to his cases, but usually it was a single victim. Today, it was the adults found in the pit by the bunker. Was this even called an autopsy? What do you call it when there are just bones left? It's more like a puzzle to put back together instead of a body to take apart. That should be the opposite of an autopsy.

Christ.

Can you say stalling?

It was just bones. But he still didn't like stepping foot in the building. It had that smell.

He forced himself out of his car, felt the heat slam him in the face, and put on his hat. People always asked how he could wear a hat in this heat. He liked his hat. The brim shaded his eyes and his neck, and the light straw color reflected back the sun. Without his hat the top of his head got hot.

He'd taken two steps when his phone rang. An unfamiliar number showed on the screen. Any other day he'd let it go to voice mail, but maybe this was something important. Something that needed him to get his b.u.t.t there right away. Away from the ME's building.

"Callahan," he answered.

"Detective. This is Maxwell Brody."

Mason instinctively stood straighter. "Yes, Senator. What can I do for you?"

"After our talk the other day, I've been thinking hard, trying to remember if there was anything else odd going on when Daniel disappeared."

Here it comes again. Mason closed his eyes. There was always something the family held back, feeling it was none of the police's business or had an aspect too embarra.s.sing to reveal. What in the h.e.l.l had the senator waited twenty years to talk about?

"I had to go back to my calendar. In my type of position, there's always a permanent calendar, a permanent record of what I'd done that day."

Mason heard another male voice speaking in the background.

"Hang on, Detective." The senator's voice was m.u.f.fled as he answered the other male. He came back on the line. "I'm sorry. My brother, Phillip, is here. He's been helping me review my calendar and diaries from that time."

Mason stood straighter, fighting the need to remove his hat. The governor was there, too? This was what you'd call a power phone call.

"A few months before Daniel vanished, I started having problems with...well, I guess you'd call it a stalker."

Mason's ears perked up.

"I always a.s.sociate the word stalker with a woman being followed, but I don't know how else to describe what I had to deal with. It started simple. The usual c.r.a.p in the mail. Bulls.h.i.t letters. The kind of stuff we roll our eyes at but always date-stamp and file away. Just in case."

"What type of letter would you call a bulls.h.i.t letter?" Mason asked.

"Oh, stuff like he hated my policies, I don't remember which in particular. Someone always hated everything. The eye of G.o.d is upon me. I'm not doing G.o.d's will, or I'm leading the people away from the path of righteousness."

"A religious fanatic," Mason stated.

"Believe me, I've heard them all. You can't survive in this position without a very thick skin. I don't engage the odd ones. You get a feel for it after a while. You instinctively know who isn't playing with a full deck, and you don't engage."

"This was a half-decker?" Mason heard the senator snort and then turn to repeat the question to his brother. Low laughter rumbled in the background.

He'd made the governor laugh. A proud moment.

"Definitely a half-decker. Anyway, the letters came more frequently, and then the phone calls to the office started. His message was always the same. 'G.o.d will punish you.' Like I said, I don't remember which issue he believed G.o.d had it in for me. I ignored it until the calls started going to the house."

"Do you know how he got your phone number?"

"No, I never figured that out. But then he started showing up outside the building at work, then at the house. He must have followed me home one night."

"s.h.i.t. No kidding? You called the police, right?"

"Of course. He left by the time they showed up. He never came up to the front door, but I saw him pacing outside the gate. You've been to the house; you know the iron gate at the walkway entry to the yard."

Mason remembered the gate. He'd had to hit a buzzer to get a maid's attention and then show his badge and ID to the camera before she'd unlock the gate.

"He didn't ring the buzzer?"

"No. We didn't have the buzzer and cameras at that time. He could have easily pushed the gate open and walked up to the house, but he didn't. We added them soon after Daniel vanished."

"So why do you a.s.sociate this guy with your son's disappearance?"

The senator was quiet for a moment. "I guess it's the timing more than anything. And his phrasing that G.o.d will punish me. I don't know what punishment is stronger than the death of a child."

Governor Brody spoke low in the background.

"I'm getting to it, Phil," the senator said. "Detective, this guy was arrested for trespa.s.sing at the capitol building, so there is a record of who he is. But after his arrest, I never saw him again. I haven't contacted Salem police to try to track down the arrest record. I thought I'd run it by you first."

Mason scribbled in his little flip book. "I'll look into it. You said this happened within a few months of...of the disappearance date? How close to the date do you think the arrest was?"

"I'm guessing within four weeks."

Mason wrapped up his power phone call. The senator didn't have much other information. He scanned his notes from the call, an odd buzzing in his stomach. It wasn't the buzz he got when he knew he had a hot lead. This was different. This was a dire, impending buzz.

Or maybe his stomach felt that way because he was still outside the medical examiner's building. And now he was late.

He hustled across the parking lot and through the double doors. The girl at the front desk waved him in. "They were just asking if I'd seen you. They're in op six!" she hollered after him as he strode down the hall.

"Sorry!"

Mason took off his hat and wiped at the sweat on his temples. The building was icy cool compared to the stiff heat outside. He wrinkled his nose as the smell entered his nostrils. There was no getting away from it. Tonight, he'd have to wash his pants and shirt and take a shower before going to bed. It didn't matter if he was in the building for thirty minutes or three hours. The scent still clung. Dr. Campbell claimed the building had the best air filtration system available. And he didn't doubt her. Clearly, nothing had been invented to eliminate the odor of decaying flesh.

He added a medical examiner's perfect air filter system to his mental list of how to make a million bucks.

Mason paused outside of op six, took a deep breath through his mouth, and pushed the door open with his shoulder. Dr. Victoria Peres and Lacey Campbell were shoulder-to-shoulder, bent over a skull on one of the silver tables, as Dr. Peres pointed at the nasal opening. Dr. Campbell was nodding emphatically, her brows narrowed in concentration.

Scanning the room, Mason took in four other tables with full skeletons. Each arranged as if the person had simply lain down and his flesh had melted away.

How had they separated the skeletons?

The pit had been one giant hole. The bodies tossed in like trash, their bones and flesh commingling over the years.

"Mason. Over here." Dr. Campbell gestured, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

Actually, he figured her eyes were already bright from her fascination with the case. It took a special breed of person to get excited over old bones. Dr. Campbell was one. Dr. Peres was another. They were so deep in bone heaven, they probably hadn't noticed he was very late.

Dr. Peres nodded at him. "Detective." She glanced at the clock on the wall.

Scratch that. The forensic anthropologist missed nothing.

He moved closer, his boots sounding too loud on the hard floor. "Morning, doctors." He stopped next to Dr. Campbell and forced himself to take a good look at the remains. The bones were a muddy brown, not the ivory color he'd expected. He glanced at the other tables. The other skeletons were the same. "Why are they dirty?"

Dr. Peres bristled and Dr. Campbell smiled, putting a calming hand on the other woman's arm. "They aren't dirty. They absorbed the color of the dirt they were buried in for twenty years. It's pretty common. And they've been cleaned. There was some tissue still attached in a few places."

Mason grimaced. "Tissue? There was still flesh left?"

"A bit. A simple soaking in a few different solutions takes care of it."

Mason knew she'd purposefully left out details. In the past, he'd stepped into the room when bones had been simmering to remove the flesh. It'd smelled like a restaurant. He swallowed hard.

"How'd you get them separated? How do you know you have the right bones grouped together?" he asked.

"Very carefully." Dr. Peres spoke. "I'm glad I was there for the unearthing. That's where the first mistakes are always made. Luckily, he'd buried them one at a time. There was a small layer of dirt between each skeleton, enough to help us keep each separate."

"Layers of dirt? How long apart between each burial?"

Dr. Peres bit her lip, and Mason knew she was frustrated that she didn't have a perfect answer for him.

"I can't tell. We can have each dirt sample a.n.a.lyzed, but I'm comfortable saying all five were buried within a ten-year period."

Mason nodded. Once they had identified the bodies, he had a hunch each one would have been reported missing around the same set of years. He needed to get them identified first.

"What else can you tell me?" He pulled out his notebook and pen.

Dr. Peres's face shifted into lecture mode. "This is number three. He's a Caucasian male, approximately eighteen to twenty-five. Six feet tall with a well-healed fracture of his tibia." Dr. Peres pointed at a bone in the lower leg. Mason bent closer and saw the thickened, slightly lumpy area along the sleek bone. "It can take three to five years for a break to look this good. It's an old one...compared to this one." Dr. Peres moved to a different table and indicated the smaller lower arm bone.

The bone had a jagged break that ran across the bone. "This happened pretty close to death. And this particular break on the ulna usually indicates a defensive wound." She lifted her arms and crossed them in front of her face as if protecting her head. "Imagine defending yourself against a swing from a baseball bat. Where is the impact going to be?"

Mason nodded. Her visual worked very well for him. "But how do you know it didn't happen while transporting the bones? Old bones have got to be brittle. I wouldn't think it'd take much to accidentally break one."

Dr. Peres smiled and picked up the thin arm bone. "Every break tells me a story. See here?" She ran a gloved finger along the break. "See the darkness? It's a stain from the bleeding because of the break. The broken ends would be a lighter color than the outer bone if it happened during the recovery or transport because there would be nothing to seep in and stain the break. And see how notched the broken surface is? When fresh bone breaks, the ends are jagged and angled. When a bone breaks long after death, the break is almost flat, because the bone is brittle...like a dry stick snapping. Ever try to break a green tree branch? It's a jumbled mess. A fresh stick will never break cleanly. Same with bone."