Authors: Kathy Reichs
A chain wrapped the cauldron’s exterior, just below the rim. A machete leaned against its left side. A sheet of plywood was propped against its right.
I moved to the plywood and squatted. Symbols covered the surface, executed, I suspected, with black Magic Marker.
Next in the row was a cheap plaster statue. The woman wore a long white gown, red cape, and crown. One hand held a chalice, the other a sword. Beside her was a miniature castle or tower.
I tried to recal the Catholic icons of my youth. Some manifestation of the Virgin Mary? A saint? Though the visage was vaguely familiar, I couldn’t ID the lady.
Shoulder to shoulder with the statue stood a carved wooden effigy with two faces pointing in opposite directions. Roughly twelve inches tal, the humanoid figure had long, slender limbs, a potbely, and a penis upright and locked.
Definitely not the Virgin, I thought.
Last in line were two dols in layer-cake ruffled gingham dresses, one yelow, one blue. Both dols were female and black. Both wore bracelets, hoop earrings, and medalions on neck chains. Blue sported a crown. Yelow had a kerchief covering her hair.
And a miniature sword piercing her chest.
I’d seen enough.
The skul was not plastic. Human remains were present. The chicken hadn’t been dead long.
Perhaps the rituals performed at the altar were harmless. Perhaps not. To be certain, proper recovery protocol had to be folowed. Lights. Cameras. Chain-of-custody documentation to ensure possession could be proved every step of the way.
I headed to the stairs. Two treads up I heard a noise and raised my eyes. A face was peering down through the opening.
It was not a face I wanted to see.
4
ERSKINE “SKINNY” SLIDELL IS A DETECTIVE WITH THE CHARLOTTE-Mecklenburg PD Felony Investigative Bureau/Homicide Unit. The murder table.
I’ve worked with Slidel over the years. My opinion? The guy’s got the personality of a blocked nostril. But good instincts.
Slidel’s Brylcreemed head was turtling over the tunnel’s opening.
“Doc.” Slidel greeted me in his usual indolent way.
“Detective.”
“Tel me I can go home, knock back a Pabst, and root for my boys on SmackDown.”
“Not tonight.”
Slidel sighed in annoyance, then withdrew from sight.
Climbing upward, I recaled the last time our paths had crossed.
August. The detective was entering the Mecklenburg County Courthouse. I’d just testified and was heading out.
Slidel isn’t what you’d cal a fast thinker on his feet. Or on the stand. Actualy, that’s an understatement. Sharp defense attorneys make hamburger of Skinny. His nervousness had been apparent that morning, his eyes circled with dark rings suggesting a lot of tossing and turning.
Emerging from the ladder wel, I noted that Slidel looked marginaly better today. The same could not be said of his jacket. Green polyester with orange top stitching, the thing was garish, even in the subterranean gloom.
“Officer here says we got us a witch doctor.” Slidel lifted his chin in Gleason’s direction.
I described what I’d seen in the subcelar.
Slidel checked his watch. “How ’bout we toss this thing in the morning?”
“Got a date tonight, Skinny?”
Behind me, Gleason made a muffled sound in his throat.
“Like I said. Six-pack and Superstars.”
“Should have set your TiVo.”
Slidel looked at me as though I’d suggested he program the next shuttle mission.
“It’s like a VCR,” I explained, yanking off a glove.
“I’m surprised this hasn’t drawn attention.” Slidel was looking at the opening by my feet. He was referring to the media.
“Let’s keep it that way,” I said. “Use your cel phone to cal CSS.”
I puled off the torn glove. The heel of my thumb was red, swolen, and itchy as hel.
“Tel them we’l need a generator and portable lights.” Both gloves went into my kit. “And something that can lift a cauldron of dirt.”
Head wagging, Slidel began punching his mobile.
Four hours later, I was pouring myself into my Mazda. Greenleaf was bathed in moonlight. I was bathed in sweat.
Emerging from the house, Slidel had spotted a woman shooting with a smal digital camera through a kitchen window. After dispatching her, he’d chain-smoked two Camels, mumbled something about deeds and tax records, and gunned off in his Taurus.
The CSS techs had left in their truck. They’d deliver the dols, statues, beads, tools, and other artifacts to the crime lab.
The morgue van had also come and gone. Joe Hawkins, the MCME death investigator on cal that night, was transporting the skuls and chicken to the ME facility. Ditto the cauldrons. Though Larabee would be less than enthused about the mess, I preferred sifting the fil under controled conditions.
As anticipated, the large cauldron had posed the greatest difficulty. Weighing approximately the same as the Statue of Liberty, its removal had required winching, a lot of muscle, and a lexicon of colorful words.
I puled out and drove up Greenleaf. Ahead, Frazier Park was a black cutout in the urban landscape. A jungle gym rose from the shadows, a silvery cubist sculpture poised over the dark, serpentine smile of the Irwin Creek guley.
Doubling back down Westbrook to Cedar, I skirted the edge of uptown and drove southeast toward my home turf, Myers Park. Built in the 1930s as Charlotte’s first streetcar burb, today the sector is overpriced, oversmug, and over-Republican. Though not particularly old, the hood is elegant and wel-landscaped, Charlotte’s answer to Cleveland’s Shaker Heights and Miami’s Coral Gables. What the hel, we’re not Charleston.
Ten minutes after leaving Third Ward I was parked beside my patio. Locking the car, I headed into my townhouse.
Which requires some explanation.
I live on the grounds of Sharon Hal, a nineteenth-century manor-turned-condo-complex lying just off the Queens University campus. My little outbuilding is caled the
“Annex.” Annex to what? No one knows. The tiny two-story structure appears on none of the estate’s original plans. The hal is there. The coach house. The herb and formal gardens. No annex. Clearly an afterthought.
Speculation by friends, family, and guests ranges from smokehouse to hothouse to kiln. I am not fixated on identifying the original builder’s purpose. Barely twelve hundred square feet, the structure suits my needs. Bedroom and bath up. Kitchen, dining room, parlor, and study down. I took occupancy when my marriage to Pete imploded. A decade later, it stil serves.
“Yo, Bird,” I caled out to the empty kitchen.
No cat.
“Birdie, I’m home.”
The hum of the refrigerator. A series of soft bongs from Gran’s mantel clock.
I counted. Eleven.
My eyes snuck to the message indicator on my phone. Not a flicker.
Depositing my purse, I went straight to the shower.
As I exorcised celar grime and odor with green tea body gel, rosemary mint shampoo, and water as hot as my skin could stand, my thoughts drifted to the perversely dark voice mail light, to the voice I was hoping to hear.
Bonjour, Tempe. I miss you. We should talk.
Pop-up image. Lanky build, sandy hair, Carolina blue eyes. Andrew Ryan,
lieutenant-détective,
Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec.
So there’s the Quebec thing. I work two jobs, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, one in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where I am forensic anthropologist for the Bureau du coroner. Ryan is a homicide detective with the provincial police. In other words, for murders in
La Belle Province,
I work the vics and Ryan detects.
Years back, when I began at the Montreal lab, Ryan had a reputation as the station-house stud. And I had a rule against office romance. Turned out the
lieutenant-détective
was lousy with rules. When hopes of salvaging my marriage finaly hit the scrap heap, we began seeing each other socialy. For a while, things went wel. Very wel.
My mind ran an X-rated slide show of memorable plays. Beaufort, South Carolina, the first deflected pass, me in cutoffs sans panties, aboard a forty-two-foot Chris-Craft at the Lady’s Island Marina. Charlotte, North Carolina, the first touchdown, me in a man-eater black dress and one of Victoria’s most secret thongs.
Recaling other sports moments, I felt a wee tummy flip. Yep, the guy was that good. And that good-looking.
Then Ryan blew a hole in my heart. The daughter he’d newly discovered but had never known, Lily, was rebelious, angry, addicted to heroin. Racked with guilt, Daddy had decided to reconnect with Mommy and launch a joint effort to save daughter.
And I was out like last year’s shade of lipstick. That was four months ago.
“Screw it.”
Face upturned to the spigot, I belted out a jumbled version of Gloria Gaynor.
“I will survive. I’ve got all my life to live—”
Suddenly, the water went cold. And I was starving. Totaly engaged in processing the celar, and nerve-fried by the underground context in which I was forced to work, I’d been oblivious to hunger. Until now.
Bird stroled in as I was toweling off.
“Sorry,” I said. “Night op. No choice.”
The cat looked skeptical. Or quizzical. Or bored.
“How about a hit of zoom-around-the-room?”
Bird sat and licked one forepaw, indicating forgiveness would not be hurried with a catnip bribe.
Puling on a nightshirt and fuzzy pink socks, I returned to the kitchen.
Another character weakness. I hate errands. Dry cleaning. Car maintenance. Supermarket. I may construct lists, but folow-through is usualy delayed until I’m back-against-the-wal. Consequently, my larder offered the folowing delicacies:
One frozen meat loaf entrée. One frozen chow mein entrée. Cans of tuna, peaches, tomato paste, and green beans. Mushroom, vegetable, and chicken noodle soup.
Packages of dried macaroni and cheese and mushroom risotto.
Bird reappeared as the chow mein was leaving the microwave. Setting the tray on the counter, I got catnip from the pantry and placed it in his mouse.
The cat flopped to his side, clawed the toy with al fours, and sniffed. His character weakness? He likes to get high.
I ate standing at the sink while Bird jazzed his pheromonic receptors on the floor at my feet. Then Ozzy Osbourne and I hit the sack.
Though I was anxious to begin my analysis of the skul and cauldrons, Tuesdays I belonged to UNCC.
Much to Slidel’s annoyance.
As appeasement, I agreed to drop by the MCME at the butt crack of dawn. Skinny’s wording, not mine.
I spent an hour sampling from the chicken and the goat head, and double-checking the bugs I’d colected from the celar. Fortunately, I’d taken time on-site to separate and label them.
Insects packaged and shipped to an entomologist in Hawai, I rushed to campus to teach my morning seminar. In the afternoon I advised students. Legions of them, al concerned about upcoming midterms. Dusk was nothing but a memory when I finaly slipped away.
Wednesday, I was again up with the sun. Rising at daybreak is not my style. I wasn’t enjoying it.
The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner is located at Tenth and Colege, on the cusp of uptown, in a building that started life as a Sears Garden Center. Which is exactly what it resembles, sans the pansies and philodendra. Squat and featureless, the one-story brick bunker is also home to several Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD satelite offices.
In tune with the original mal theme, landscaping consists of an acre of concrete. Bad news if you’re hoping for a shot at
Southern Homes and Gardens.
Good news if you’re trying to park your car.
Which I was, at 7:35 A.M.
Card-swiping myself through double glass doors, I entered an empty reception area. A purring silence told me I was first to arrive.
Weekdays, Eunice Flowers screens visitors through a plate-glass window above her desk, granting entrance to some, turning others away. She does scheduling, types and enters reports, and maintains hard-copy documents in gray metal cabinets lining the wals of her domain.
Regardless of the weather, Mrs. Flowers’s clothes remain pressed, her hair fixed with balanced precision. Though kind and generous, the woman inevitably makes me feel messy.
And her work space totaly confounds me. No matter the chaos throughout the rest of the lab, her desktop is perpetualy clean and clutter-free. Al papers stay militarily squared, al buletin board Post-its aligned and equi-spaced. I am incapable of such tidiness, and suspicious of those who are.
I knew the gatekeeper would arrive in fifteen minutes. Precisely. Mrs. Flowers had clocked in at 7:50 for more than two decades, would continue to do so until she retired. Or her toes pointed north.
Turning right, I walked past a row of death investigator cubicles to a large whiteboard on the back wal. While penning that day’s date in the square beside my name, I checked those beside the names of the three pathologists.
Dr. Germaine Hartigan was away for a week of vacation. Dr. Ken Siu had blocked off three days for court testimony.
Bummer for Larabee. He was on his own this week.
I looked at the intake log. Overnight, two cases had been entered in black Magic Marker.
A burned body had been found in a Dumpster behind a Winn-Dixie supermarket. MCME 522-08.
A jawless human skul had been found in a celar. MCME 523-08.
My office is in back, near those of the pathologists. The square footage is such that the room probably qualifies by code as a closet.
Unlocking the door, I slid behind my desk and placed my purse in a drawer. Then I puled a form from plastic mini-shelving topping a filing cabinet at my back, filed in the case number, and wrote a brief description of the remains and the circumstances surrounding their discovery. Worksheet ready, I hurried to the locker room.
The MCME facility has a pair of autopsy suites, each with a single table. The smaler of the two has special ventilation for combating odor.