Authors: Kathy Reichs
I shined a smal flashlight through the foramen magnum, the large hole through which the spinal cord enters the brain. Except for adherent dirt, the vault interior was empty.
Using a dental pick, I scraped at the endocranial soil. A smal cone formed on the gurney. Though slightly shinier, the soil looked similar to that in the cauldron. It yielded one pil bug, one puparial case, and no plant inclusions.
Stil using the pick, I tipped the skul and probed the nasal and auditory openings. More dirt trickled onto the cone.
Scooping the cranial soil, the bug, and the casing into a ziplock, I wrote the MCME ID number, date, and my name on the outside of the plastic. The sample might never be processed, but better to err on the side of caution.
Using a scalpel, I chipped flakes from the candle wax coating the outer surface of the crown and sealed them into a second ziplock. Scrapings of the “blood” stain went into a third.
Then I turned back to the X-rays. Slowly, I worked through the frontal, lateral, posterior, superior, and basal views Hawkins had provided.
The skul showed no signs of trauma or disease. No metalic trace that would indicate gunshot wounding. No fractures, bulet entrance or exit holes, or sharp instrument gashes. No lesions, defects, or congenital anomalies. No restorations, implants, or indicators of cosmetic or corrective surgery. Not a clue as to the girl’s dental or medical history. Not a hint concerning the reason for her death.
Frustrated, I reexamined both the skul and the X-rays under magnification.
Nope. The cranium was remarkably unremarkable.
Discouraged, I ran through a mental checklist of methods for PMI estimation with dry bone. Ultraviolet fluorescence, staining for indophenol and Nile blue, supersonic conductivity, histological or radiographic structure analysis, nitrogen or amino acid content evaluation, Bomb C14 testing, calculation of fat transgression, carbonate, or serological protein levels, benzidine or anti–human serum reaction.
Though I’d forward the pil bug and casing to the entomologist, I doubted either would be of much use. They could have come from the fil, drifting into the skul years after the girl had died.
The Bomb C14 was a possibility. Testing might show whether death occurred, roughly, before or after 1963, the end date for atmospheric testing of thermonuclear devices.
But based on bone quality, I doubted PMI could be greater than fifty years. Besides, given budgetary restraints, Larabee would never cough up the funds for C14.
Revving up a Stryker saw, I removed a smal square of bone from the right parietal and sealed it into a ziplock. Then I extracted and added a right second molar. Even if we couldn’t afford C14 testing, we might need the specimens for DNA sequencing.
Samples bagged, I finished entering my observations onto my case form.
PMI: Five to fifty years.
MOD: Unknown.
I could picture Slidel’s expression when I reported that. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.
Discouraged, I turned to the nonhumans.
Yep. Goat and chicken.
Both skuls retained remnants of desiccated flesh. I found a few larvae and puparial cases inside the vault and auditory canals of the goat.
I’d already sampled from the chicken on Tuesday, and knew it had held the motherlode. Adult flies. Larvae. The body had even yielded a few beetles and a number of very large roaches. I’d await word from the entomologist, but I had no doubt Chicken Little had gone to her reward in the past few months.
I turned my attention to the large cauldron.
First I took photos. Then I placed a stainless steel tub in the sink, settled a screen over it, masked, and began troweling. The dirt
shished
softly as it fel through the mesh. An earthy smel rose around me.
One scoop. Three. Five. A few pebbles, snail shels, and bug parts colected in the screen.
Twelve scoops in, I sensed resistance. Abandoning the trowel, I dug by hand. In seconds, I’d freed a shriveled mass measuring approximately two inches in diameter.
Laying my find on the gurney, I gingerly explored with my fingers.
The mass was shrunken, yet spongy.
Apprehension began to tap at my brain. What I was handling was organic.
As I teased away dirt, detail emerged. Gyri. Sulci.
Recognition.
I was poking at a hunk of mummified gray matter.
My own neurons fired up a name.
Mark Kilroy.
I pushed it back down.
The human brain measures in at approximately 1,400 cubic centimeters. This thing could claim but a fraction of that.
Goat? Chicken?
A sudden grisly thought. One lobe of a human cerebrum?
That was a question for Larabee.
After bagging and tagging my find I continued with the fil.
And made my next chiling discovery.
6
AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A HOLY CARD, A MASS-PRODUCED devotional used by the Catholic faithful. My sister, Harry, and I used to colect them as kids. A bit smaler than a driver’s license, each card depicts a saint or biblical scene and provides a suitable prayer. The good ones promise indulgence, time off the purgatory sentence you’ve got to serve for screwing up on Earth.
It wasn’t. When removed from its plastic wrapping, the image that emerged was actualy a portrait, the kind that shows up in school yearbooks.
The subject was shown from the waist up, tree-leaning, face turned toward the lens. She wore a brown long-sleeved sweater that alowed a peek of stomach. One hand pressed the tree, the other thumb-hooked a belt loop on a faded pair of jeans.
The girl’s hair was center parted, swept back and flipped up behind her ears. It was black. Her eyes were dark chocolate, her skin nutmeg. She looked about seventeen.
I felt a constriction in my chest.
A black teenaged girl.
My eyes jumped to the gurney. Dear God, could this be her skul? If so, how had it ended up in that basement? Had this girl been murdered?
I looked back at the portrait.
The girl’s head was subtly tipped, her shoulders lightly raised. Her lip corners rose in an impish grin. She looked happy, bursting with self-assurance and the promise of life.
Why was her photo buried in a cauldron?
Could Arlo Welton be right? Had he uncovered an altar used for satanic ritual? For human sacrifice? I’d read news stories, knew that, though rare, such atrocities did take place.
The phone shriled, sparing further contemplation of the dreadful possibilities.
“Weren’t we the early bird today.” As usual, Mrs. Flowers sounded a yard north of chirpy.
“I have a lot to go through.”
“The media is in a dither over this basement thing.”
“Yes.”
“The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Wel, I guess they don’t realy have hooks anymore. Metaphoricaly speaking, of course.”
I looked at the wal clock. Twelve forty.
“They’l move on once something new die-verts their attention. Thought I’d let you know. There’s a detective steaming your way.”
“Slidel?”
“Yes, ma’am. Partner’s with him.”
“Warning heeded.”
I was hanging up when the autopsy room door swung in. Slidel entered, folowed by a gangling skeleton toting an Italian leather briefcase.
Skinny Slidel and Eddie Rinaldi have been partners since the eighties, to the puzzlement of al, since the two appear to be polar opposites.
Rinaldi is six feet four and carries a little over 160. Slidel is five-ten and carries a whole lot more, most of it south of where his waist should be. Rinaldi’s features are sharp.
Slidel’s are fleshy and loose, the bags under his eyes the size of empanadas.
Why the Skinny handle? It’s a cop thing.
But the differences aren’t limited to physique. Slidel is messy. Rinaldi is neat. Slidel inhales junk food. Rinaldi eats tofu. Slidel is Elvis, Sam Cooke, and the Coasters. Rinaldi is Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Slidel’s clothes are blue-light special. Rinaldi’s are designer or custom-made.
Somehow the two stick. Go figure.
Slidel removed knockoff Ray-Bans and hung them by one bow in his jacket pocket. Today it was polyester, a plaid probably named for some golf course in Scotland.
“How’s it hangin’, doc?” Slidel sees himself as Charlotte’s very own Dirty Harry. Holywood cop lingo is part of the schtick.
“Interesting morning.” I nodded at Rinaldi. “Detective.”
Rinaldi flicked a wave, attention fixed on the cauldrons and skuls.
That was Rinaldi. Al focus. No jokes or banter. No complaining or bragging. No sharing of personal problems or victories. On duty, he was perennialy polite, reserved, and unflappable.
Off duty? No one realy knew much. Born in West Virginia, Rinaldi had attended colege briefly, then come to Charlotte sometime in the seventies. He’d married, his wife had died shortly thereafter of cancer. I’d heard talk of a child, but had never witnessed the man mention a son or daughter. Rinaldi lived alone in a smal brick house in a sedate, wel-groomed neighborhood caled Beverly Woods.
Other than his height, lofty taste in music, and penchant for expensive clothing, Rinaldi had no physical traits or personality quirks that other cops poked fun at. To my knowledge, he’d never been the butt of jokes concerning screwups or embarrassing incidents. Perhaps that’s why he’d never been tagged with a nickname.
Bottom line: Rinaldi was not the guy I’d invite to my margarita party, but, if threatened, he was the one I’d want covering my back.
Slidel raised and waggled splayed fingers. “Some cretin’s idea of a Haloween freak show, eh?”
“Maybe not.”
The waggling stopped.
I summarized the biological profile that I’d constructed from the skul.
“But the stuff’s older than dirt, right?”
“I estimate the girl’s been dead no less than five, no more than fifty years. My gut goes with the front end of that range.”
Slidel blew air through his lips. His breath smeled of tobacco.
“Cause of death?”
“The skul shows no signs of ilness or injury.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s the jaw?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Calm, Brennan.
“I found this in the large cauldron. About four inches down in the fil.”
I placed the school picture on the gurney. The men stepped forward to view it.
“Anything else?” Slidel’s eyes remained on the photo.
“Hunk of brain.”
Rinaldi’s brows floated up. “Human?”
“I hope not.”
Rinaldi and Slidel looked from the photo to the skul to the photo and back.
Rinaldi spoke first. “Think it’s the same young lady?”
“There’s nothing in the cranial or facial architecture to exclude the possibility. Age, sex, and race fit.”
“Can you do a photo superimposition?”
“Not much point without the lower jaw.”
“I suppose that also holds true for a facial approximation.”
I nodded. “The image would be too speculative, might distract rather than help with an ID.”
“Sonovabitch.” Slidel’s head wagged from side to side.
“We’l start checking MP’s.” Rinaldi was referring to missing persons files.
“Go back ten years. If nothing pops, we can expand the time frame.”
“Not much sense sending her through NCIC.”
NCIC is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, a computerized index of criminal records, fugitives, stolen properties, and missing and unidentified persons. By comparing details entered by law enforcement, the system is able to match corpses found in one location with individuals reported missing in others.
But the database is huge. With only age, sex, and race as identifiers, and a time frame of up to fifty years, the list generated would look like a phone book.
“No,” I agreed. “Not without more.”
I told the detectives about the insects and the chicken.
Rinaldi grasped the implication. “The celar is stil being used.”
“Based on the condition of the chicken, I’d say within the last few months. Perhaps more recently than that.”
“You saying some witch doctor took a kid underground and cut off her head?”
“I am not.” Cool. “Though I’d guess that’s exactly what happened to the chicken.”
“So this wing-nut plumber is right?”
“I’m suggesting there is a possibility—”
“Witch doctors? Human sacrifice?” Roling his eyes, Slidel
do-do-do-do
’ed the
Twilight Zone
theme.
Though relatively few, there are people on this planet with a talent for irking me, for provoking me to blurt things I wouldn’t otherwise say. Slidel is one of those special souls. I hate losing control, vow each time it won’t happen again. Repeatedly, with Slidel, that vow is shattered.
It happened now.
“Tel that to Mark Kilroy.” The comment flew out before I had time to consider.
There was a moment of silence. Then Rinaldi pointed one long, bony finger.
“Kid from Brownsvile, Texas. Disappeared in Matamoros, Mexico, back in eighty-nine.”
“Kilroy was sodomized, tortured, then kiled by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his folowers. Investigators found his brain floating in a cauldron.”
Slidel’s eyes snapped down. “What the hel?”
“Kilroy’s organs were harvested for ritual use.”
“You saying that’s what we got here?”
Already, I regretted seeding Slidel’s imagination with mention of the Kilroy case.
“I have to finish with the cauldrons. And hear what the crime lab comes up with.”
Slidel scooped up and passed the class photo to his partner.
“Based on clothing and hair, the image doesn’t look that old,” Rinaldi said. “We could broadcast it, see if someone recognizes her.”
“Let’s wait on that,” Slidel said. “We start flashing the mug of every kid we can’t find, eventualy Mr. and Mrs. Public tune out.”
“I agree. We don’t even know that she’s missing.”
“Can’t be too many studios shooting bubble gummers in this burg.” Slidel pocketed the photo. “We’l start by working those.”