Disembodied Bones (23 page)

“What about the duct tape, Larry?” Scott
asked after the other man finished his report. “And the fingerprint
you found.”

“I compared it to the ones you provided,”
Larry replied promptly. “No dice. They don’t belong to your girl.
Not even close.”

Scott had found Leonie’s fingerprints on an
obscure record. Roosevelt Hemstreet had taken her prints at the
time of Douglas Trent’s kidnapping and rescue as an elimination
tool. There had been dozens, if not, hundreds of prints inside
Whitechapel’s large house, and they were hoping to identify some of
the children. Some of the missing children’s fingerprints were
found in their old houses and bedrooms and they might be able to
compare them with the ones located in the room that Douglas had
been held in. Hemstreet had explained to Scott that they eventually
suspected Whitechapel of kidnapping and murdering over fifteen
children. But most of the remains were found on distant logging
properties. There had been other things as well. Some jewelry and
some clothing that parents were forced to identify later, horrified
by the reality of where these meager belongings had been
located.

“Dammit,” Scott said.

“But,” the technician said happily.

“But what?”

“But the tape is old. I mean, it’s not like
it’s an antique, but it’s been lying around somewhere for a long
time. In a garage. In a drawer. Something like that. Kind of sticks
out compared to the other evidence. It’s like the perpetrator
messed up with this one thing. There are fibers on it. Carpet
stuff. And you can be assured of some very good collaborating proof
here once you find a suspect.” Larry seemed unreasonably pleased
with himself.

Scott was not pleased with anything. “What
about the fingerprint?”

“I’m running it through the indexes. Some of
the federal stuff takes longer than others. It’s possible that we
could still match it to someone.” Larry sighed, upon realizing that
he had a law enforcement officer on the other end of the phone who
couldn’t appreciate the beauty and majesty of his forensics work.
“Maybe a week? I’ll call you as soon as I find out.”

“Great.” Scott’s tone was sarcastic. “Get a
fingerprint and it turns out to be the person who hasn’t been
fingerprinted.”

“There’s a few of them out there,” Larry
replied. “Personally, I think everyone should be fingerprinted at
birth. Also when they’re eighteen. Then we’ll never have another
body we can’t identify. But hey, the people at ACLU think that’s an
invasion of privacy. Tell it to the young woman we have in drawer
6B who’s gone unidentified for six months. Poor little lady.
Someone probably misses her somewhere.”

Scott was lost in his own thoughts. “Yeah.
Well, those special interest groups can be something,” he said
idly. “Damn bunny huggers.”

“Uh, yeah, right,” said Larry uneasily and
hung up.

•

Leonie woke up on Wednesday morning and had a
troubled premonition. Something was going to happen. She didn’t
know what. Just something. Padding into her little living room, she
checked for a cross burning on her front lawn. All she found was
some errant dandelions and a grass growth that exceeded Mr.
Martinez’s expectations of acceptable lawn length. He was the
president of the Historical Preservation Committee and he would
have his six-inch ruler in his hand to help back him up.

Vinegar Tom hadn’t left her any presents. The
last time was a cardinal and half of it had been eaten already.
Apparently, Tom thought Leonie needed some protein in her diet. She
had milk in her refrigerator that hadn’t curdled. The phone hadn’t
rung once, so Leonie had actually slept and there hadn’t been any
nightmares about anyone, not even missing children.

So Leonie strolled out onto her little porch
and sat down in the Adirondack chair. She gave a sigh at the amount
of humidity in the air because it felt suspiciously close to one
hundred percent, and a little dribble of sweat started to weave its
way down the side of her neck. It was eight-thirty in the morning
and it was already 85 degrees. There was a little meow of
discontent and Leonie looked down to see Vinegar Tom parking his
black and white butt on her foot. He looked up to see how she was
taking it and she leaned down to scoop him up into her lap. The cat
complained three times before settling down onto her lap.

Buffalo Creek in the morning was the best
time of all for Leonie. Everyone usually had a good night of sleep.
There weren’t any strangers to be found lurking on the street in
black raincoats because frankly they didn’t blend in with the other
people wearing shorts and T-shirts fetching their newspapers or
changing the sprinklers on their lawns.

Leonie was sitting comfortably on her tiny
front porch with a view of her elegant but untrimmed, small front
yard. She had her cat in her lap who was purring because of the
direct attention. She had slept fairly well. If she looked to the
southeast she could see the courthouse’s clock tower a few blocks
away and there wasn’t an obvious, billowing mass of black smoke
that would indicate that someone had firebombed the Gingerbread
House. The only downside is that it was at times like this that she
missed looking out and seeing the black lapping waters of Twilight
Lake and knowing she was truly at home.

But that was a small price to pay for the
peace Leonie felt most of the time.

“See,” she said to Vinegar Tom. “It was a
faulty premonition, wasn’t it?”

Vinegar Tom purred and sank his claws
repeatedly into her thighs, begging for more attention.

Then Scott Haskell pulled up to the front of
her house and Leonie felt that inevitable sinking feeling
again.

-

What is not enough for one,

Just right for two,

And too much for three?

A secret.

Wednesday, July 24th

I was born blind,

And could not see,

Until it was a quarter of three.

I could not smile

‘
Til half past six,

And all of my arms and legs

Were made of sticks.

What am I?

“Nice jammies,” Scott said admiringly. He
narrowly avoided curling his lip at the sight of Leonie Simoneaud,
dressed in pale pink pajamas several sizes too large for her,
reclining on an Adirondack chair on her teensy porch with what
appeared to be a black and white bobtailed monster sitting on her
lap. Despite the incongruence of the picture, the pink color looked
good on her, contrasting with and emphasizing her black hair and
gold eyes and those amazingly red lips. She almost looked like a
twelve year old girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Even
the faded white scar on the side of her face didn’t detract from
the overall image.

The black and white cat rose up, arched its
back, and hissed vehemently at Scott. Leonie laughed. “A born
felon. Vinegar Tom, the law. Scott, my cat, Vinegar Tom.”

“I’d shake if I didn’t like having two hands
so damned much,” Scott said ruefully.

Vinegar Tom leapt from Leonie’s lap and
stalked away, hissing at Scott the whole time.

“Don’t feel bad,” Leonie advised. “He doesn’t
like anyone without a can opener.”

“I think he can dislike anyone he wants to,”
Scott added as Tom disappeared into a stand of false bamboo. There
was a last lingering hiss that slithered back to them. Tom did not
like Scott at all, but then Leonie knew that Tom didn’t like any
man. She suspected previous abuse on him, but there wasn’t much she
could do about it now, except to love him and feed him. As well,
she didn’t have to fear someone else taking advantage of a
too-friendly animal.

Leonie cast her gold eyes back on Scott,
wishing for a cup of espresso, even on this hot morning. Caffeine
would be a welcome boost and would certainly delay having to talk
to man who patently disliked and distrusted her. “You want to
search my house? You want to check to see if my panty drawer is
dress right dress? Or maybe you want to see if I tore the label off
my mattresses. You know, the one that says, ‘Do not remove under
penalty of law.’?”

Scott sighed theatrically. “No, I don’t want
to search your house. I certainly don’t want to look in your panty
drawer. And I don’t give a flying shit about your mattresses.”

Leonie smiled brightly. “Then, I’ve got to
take a shower, get dressed, and go to work.”

“No, you don’t.”

Leonie frowned. “What’s wrong?” She stood up
anxiously. “It’s not Olga again, is it? Dacey? Please, God, don’t
let anything-”

Scott put up a reassuring hand. “Nothing’s
wrong with anyone, as far as I know. I called Dacey a little while
ago and said you’d be a little late for work today.”

Leonie fell silent, wondering what Scott’s
plans were for her.

“Get dressed,” he told her firmly. “I need a
favor from you.”

•

Leonie wasn’t quite sure how she’d allowed
herself to be talked into this. A fifty minute drive with a
taciturn Scott Haskell had brought them into downtown Dallas. Just
after rush hour, the streets were still crowded with traffic.
Everyone was in a mad tear to get somewhere else. He found parking
under a public building and expertly guided her inside. Once there,
he got them past a metal detector and a row of security guards
without giving up his sidearm or causing random pandemonium because
of it. He knowledgeably directed her to an elevator and up three
floors. Then it was through a maze of corridors and law enforcement
types mingling with lawyers and politicians before they reached set
of glass doors that revealed their destination: the Dallas County
Medical Examiner’s Office.

Larry Palacios was waiting for him. Dressed
in green scrubs, he was aggravated. “Doc Cross isn’t happy about
this. He thinks psychics are a couple dilithium crystals short of a
warp core.” He brightened for a moment. “However, I did read a
really interesting book that suggested that most psychics were
simply people with acute skills of observation and consequently
could offer fresh perspectives to investigations. Some of them
actually believe they are really psychic.” He rapidly looked Leonie
up and down. She was dressed in blue jeans and a Cowboys T-shirt.
She didn’t really look like a psychic to him. In fact, she looked
like the same woman he’d seen at Headrick Park on Saturday, the one
who had found the little girl. “Hey,” Larry said suspiciously.

“Trust me,” said Scott agreeably, practically
reading the other man’s mind.

Both Larry and Leonie made a snorting noise
of disbelief at the same time.

“This way,” directed Larry. “I cleared the
place out.”

“No reporters,” insisted Leonie. “I don’t
want to read about this in the paper. I don’t want to see it on the
news. I don’t want any more publicity about it, Scott. You promised
before we left. Now I want his promise, too.”

“Okay,” Larry agreed. “Reporters generally
give me gas, anyway. They want to take pictures of dead people.
They want to hear about how Hannibal the Cannibal has sprung to
life from the literary pages whence he was born. Thank you very
much Thomas Harris. I loved it when he had Clarice Starling run off
with Dr. Lector.” He trailed off as he saw Scott’s dark look. “But
we’ve got a gal for you to look at, don’t we?”

There was an interior office full of computer
equipment and a few desks and chairs. No one else was around. They
passed through to a room used for changing. There were lockers on
one side and sinks on the other. A little door in the middle led
the way to a set of showers for the pathologists. Through another
stainless steel door was a laboratory.

Leonie shivered because it was so cold. It
felt as if the air conditioner was set twenty degrees lower in this
room than any of the others. All around her were elaborate
stainless steel tables with drainage systems and tools set in
immaculate display on tables to the sides. There were things she
didn’t even want to try to identify. It was a long room with over a
dozen tables and somehow Leonie was surprised it wasn’t larger. And
even more surprisingly all the tables were vacant of bodies.

“So, where’s the girl?” Scott asked as he
looked around expectantly.

“She’s in her drawer,” said Larry. “Drawer,
sweet drawer. We don’t bring them out every time someone might come
to identify them. They’d defrost if we did that. When we do cart
‘em out, it’s usually in the viewing room. So the families can see
them on video. After all, we don’t want those poor people to see
what’s been done to their loved ones. Usually letting them see
their faces is enough. But sometimes we have to let them see a
birthmark or a tattoo or just the personal effects. I don’t really
do that. I usually just collect and identify possible evidence. In
fact, I’m not even in this department. The doc is just doing us a
favor.”

“I’m so pleased for you,” said Leonie. Her
tone was as dry as toast.

Larry grimaced at her. “I like my job. I
don’t read minds for a living.”

“Neither do I,” she said haughtily. “You
know, Scott, this might not work the way you want it to work.”

“Larry said that someone is probably missing
this girl. You said that’s what gets your little doohickey going.
Missing things. This kid is missing. Someone is missing her. It’s
better than a credit card in my pocket.” Scott looked faintly
triumphant as if he were positive she wouldn’t pass his impromptu
test. “No one knew I was coming here until we drove up Elm.
Consequently, even if you read about this girl from the time her
body was found, you couldn’t possibly know anything about her,
unless of course, you’re the real thing.”

“Just like Coca-Cola,” laughed Larry. He
pointed to another door. “The freezer is through there. Miss 6B is
on ice. You want I should tell Miss Cleo here anything at all?”