Speaking in Bones

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Then I shall have Deputy Ramsey request a warrant.”

  There was a moment of flat silence. Then, “Foolish old woman. Somehow I’ve misplaced the damn thing.”

  I have a flash-point temper. Which I know I must keep in check. Instead of blasting Strike, I remained diplomatic.

  “I thought the goal of websleuthing was to solve cold cases.”

  “Don’t mean I want to share what I got with the world.”

  “Law enforcement is hardly the world.”

  “That what you call that yahoo?”

  “Deputy Ramsey is hardly a yahoo.”

  “I’m sure a Harvard degree hangs on his wall.”

  The first tiny flicker sparked in my gut.

  “Mrs. Strike. Are you familiar with the term ‘obstruction of justice’?” Cool.

  “I’ll look it up.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Wanted you to know I’m going back at the family.”

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  “Maybe. But it’s my idea.”

  “Don’t—”

  Three sharp beeps. She’d disconnected.

  I kicked out at my desk. Hard enough that I had to remove my shoe to see what damage I’d done to my toe. Hurt like hell, but nothing was broken.

  I was again reaching to punch digits on the landline when my mobile rang. After checking caller ID, I took a long, deep breath, clicked over to speaker, and laid the device on the blotter.

  “Good morning, Mama.”

  “Good morning, sweet pea. I hope you got a good night’s sleep. You sounded so tired when we talked.”

  “I did.” I hadn’t, but what was the point?

  “Did you speak with your deputy? What’s his name?”

  “Ramsey. Not yet. I plan to call him shortly.”

  “Have you examined your hand bones?”

  “I have. They told me very little.”

  Mama waited a theatrical beat. Then, “There’s more.”

  Hearing the familiar breathless note, I scanned the desktop for something to skim. “More?”

  “I found another.”

  “Another what?”

  “Lookout. For Brown Mountain.”

  “I would guess there are many.”

  “Well, you would be mistaken. No matter how deeply I dug, the same three came up again and again. And only those three.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s called Wiseman’s View.”

  “Where is it?” Absently.

  “Just south of Linville. In Avery County.”

  “Mm.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “I am.” I wasn’t. I was perusing the table of contents in the latest Journal of Forensic Sciences.

  Mama stopped talking. A test. The dead air grabbed my attention.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “You must search.”

  “At Wiseman’s View.”

  “Of course at Wiseman’s View.”

  “For more bones.”

  “Really, Tempe. You’re reputed to be excellent in your field. Must I spell everything out?”

  “You’re suggesting body parts might have been thrown from all three Brown Mountain overlooks.”

  “Hallelujah, let the light shine!”

  “Mama, I—”

  “What have you retrieved so far? Parts of a hand and parts of a torso?”

  “Yes.” I hadn’t told her about the fingertips. Not sure why.

  “Do they go together?”

  “They could.”

  “But so far you have no limbs and no head.”

  “No.” The tiny flicker was growing warmer and starting to spread.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but a head might perhaps, just perhaps, prove useful in determining whose body parts are turning up?”

  “Yes.”

  A sliver of a pause, then, “Will you at least discuss my theory with your deputy?”

  The eagerness in her voice tore a hole in my heart. Mama had shown so little engagement lately. Her only joy seemed to come through vicarious involvement in my work. Through secondhand thrills.

  Like Hazel Strike and her websleuthing pals?

  “Sure, Mama,” I said. “Good job.”

  “You’ll keep me fully informed?”

  “I will.”

  “Ciao.”

  “Ciao.”

  I blew out a breath. Debated. Was my mother’s idea a harebrained notion? Or a solid investigative strategy? Run it past Larabee? Ramsey? Would either agree to another romp in the woods?

  It was like Groundhog Day. Same reach to dial the landline. Same pause as my mobile rang. Sang. I’d yet to change the ringtone. Same quick check of caller ID.

  Allan Fink.

  Crap.

  This time I didn’t pick up. Or listen to the message. I knew what Allan wanted. Couldn’t endure another lecture on fiscal responsibility at that moment.

  My eyes dropped to the calendar blotter on the desktop. Thursday, the second of April. No sweat. Tomorrow I’d find everything Allan needed for the IRS.

  The flicker was now a bonfire in my chest.

  I pulled my purse from the drawer and dug out two Tums. Slapped them from my palm to my mouth. Chewed and swallowed.

  Then Ramsey phoned.

  “I tracked down the story,” he said, no greeting. “But not the journalist. He’s long gone. You were right. A group of kids from WCU stumbled across bones and called the department.” He used the acronym for Western Carolina University. “Dozens of hiking trails crisscross the Lost Cove Cliffs area. Anyway, a deputy went out to collect what they had.”

  “What made the kids think the bones were human?”

  “That was my question. You’ll love this. They were anthro majors.”

  “What happened to the stuff?” Sorry, Mama.

  “The coroner was on holiday. The sheriff back then hadn’t a clue what to do with ‘old bones,’ as he viewed them; wasn’t all that interested. The kids suggested sending them to their professor, who, it turned out, was a forensic anthropologist.”

  “Marlene Penny.” I knew her through AAFS. Though far from brilliant, and well past seventy, she was ABFA board certified and reasonably competent.

  I heard paper rustle. “Yeah, that’s the one. I’ve got a copy of her report. Want me to read it?”

  “Just the basics.”

  “She didn’t exactly knock herself out. One page. A skeletal inventory lists a partial tibia, fibula, calcaneus, and talus.” There was a beat as he dug for relevant facts. “The two tarsals were connected by dried-out tissue. The leg bones were separate.”

  “Any estimates as to age, sex, that sort of thing?”

  “The bones were too fragmentary.” Pause. “Most of each had been carried off by animals. But she thought everything came from one individual.”

  “And that individual was human?”

  “She’s definite on that.”

  “Where are the remains now?”

  “Doesn’t say.”

  I inhaled deeply. Exhaled. Then, “Got a few minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  I told Ramsey about the audio recording. About websleuthing. About Hazel Strike’s strange hostility toward him. Throughout, I could hear the rhythm of his breath hitting the receiver. Knew he was listening carefully.

  When I’d finished, he asked, “Gunner’s hand bones tell you anything?”

  “They’re consistent with the torso bones from Burke County.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And the fingertips?”

  I told him about the missing prints. About chemotherapy-induced acral erythema. About the possibility that the victim had been a cancer patient undergoing treatment at a local hospital. About Cora Teague having left her nanny job, reportedly for health reasons.

  Then I told him about Wiseman’s View.

  The line was quiet for s
o long I thought he’d hung up. I was about to speak when Ramsey made a suggestion. I agreed to his plan and we disconnected.

  Using one hand to cradle my head, I placed the other on my fiery chest.

  I managed to get out without a summons to Larabee’s carpet. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Our offices have tile floors.

  He phoned at four while I was shopping for groceries. A task I avoid until my pantry resembles a bunker in postwar Iraq. Or I’m out of cat food.

  I considered ignoring his call. Decided I might as well face the inevitable.

  “Where are you?” Larabee’s tone was razor sharp.

  “Sorry I missed you today.” Cheery as Snap, Crackle, and Pop smiling up from my cart.

  “Are you at the office?”

  “The Harris Teeter on Providence Road. Need anything?”

  Larabee ignored my offer. I could hear a lot of noise in the background. A thick hollowness suggested he was outside. “I’ve been at the airport all day and don’t see myself breaking free anytime soon.”

  I froze, a can of peas halfway off the shelf. “What’s up?”

  “Some ass-bucket movie director backed into the tail rotor of a chopper while shooting a film.”

  “Decapitated?”

  “That’s being kind.”

  “He had permission to work on an active helo pad?”

  “At Wilson Air Center, the part for the hoity-toity.”

  I’d been to Wilson, a facility for private and corporate flights. Sadly, not often enough. “Do you want me on scene?” Please say no.

  “No. But I may need you tomorrow. The damage is extensive.”

  “I’m free all day.”

  “I’ll do the autopsy first thing in the morning. Assuming we’ve finished tweezing the tarmac.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Keep your chin up,” I said.

  “Down,” he corrected. And was gone.

  As I threw random items into my cart, the conversation replayed in my head. The upside: My trip to Burke County wasn’t mentioned. The downside: Allan and the IRS were once again bumped.

  —

  Dinner that night was green chicken chili. Risky, given the state of my innards. But the recipe calls for five ingredients. My kind of cooking. Plus, I freeze the leftovers for future meals.

  I ate while half watching the local news. A perfectly coiffed anchor reported, with appropriate solemnity, the discovery of three bodies in a home in Shelby. Went sunny while announcing the approval of Presbyterian hospital as a Level II trauma center. Darkened again as she described the previous day’s fatality at Wilson Air.

  The screen cut to footage of the private terminal, undoubtedly shot from the far side of yellow police tape. I recognized Larabee and one of the MCME death investigators. The morgue van. The segment finished with the usual line about nondisclosure of the decedent’s name pending notification of his family.

  After clearing the dishes, I considered, for a heartbeat, returning to the mounds of paper spread across the dining room table. Decided instead to look more thoroughly into websleuthing. Strike’s surliness on the mountain both annoyed and confused me. Wasn’t the goal to clear unsolved cases?

  First, I visited sites that explained websleuthing. I learned that, in one way, the pursuit is like geocaching. Participants are everywhere. The guy who fixes your muffler. The kid who bags your groceries. The old woman who sold you a latte in Rome. Or Riga. Or Rio. Anyone with a computer and curiosity can jump right in.

  Then I went to the actual sites. Checked out blogs, newsgroup posts, chat room threads. The more I looped and read, the more uneasy I grew.

  Many websleuths seemed straightforward, eager in their desire to bring long-ago killers to justice, to match nameless remains with missing persons. Some were intelligent, their posts objective and on point. Wind. Vegasmom. Befound. Others, though equally earnest, were less cogent in their thinking. Or their prose. Crispie. Answerman. Despite the brainpower, or lack thereof, the majority came across as honest and resolute, committed to the free exchange of information.

  I’m not a psychologist, but I also sensed a very different type of player. A type lugging a whole lot of baggage. A type bringing a mindset born of personal history, personal kinks.

  Among this second group, some seemed bent on igniting discord while watching from the safety of online anonymity. Their comments and responses, often vicious, hinted at megalomania. At paranoia.

  I understand the nature of Internet dialogue. There’s no nuance, no tone. Just words on a screen. As with texting, messages can often be misinterpreted, leading to confusion, sometimes hurt. A portion of the heat in some debates, which was substantial, could be attributed to lack of clarity. But not all. Many posts seemed meant to goad, to incite acrimony.

  It was also obvious that some were in the game not for justice but for glory. These players were cagey and guarded. Having accumulated vast files, they were loath to share their hard-won information, particularly with legitimate sites such as NamUs or the Doe Network. A few exhibited a level of territoriality that was silverback in its ferocity.

  And there was one element of the subculture that I found particularly disturbing. Websleuths could turn on each other like wolves at a carcass. Case in point: Todd Matthews.

  Matthews was a veteran cybersleuth and a supporter of the Doe Network from its inception. When NamUs was born and Matthews hired on as its administrator, a cadre of former supporters viewed him as a defector and a sellout. The point is justice, they said, not a steady income.

  After much mudslinging in both directions, the Doe Network accused Matthews of breach of confidentiality and failure to uphold administrative standards. In April 2011, the board voted to kick him out. He went, but not with a smile on his face.

  The Doe Network wasn’t alone in bickering over power and control. Cold Case Investigations, Porchlight International, CLUES—many sites had experienced their own melodramas. All the squabbling and name-calling left me feeling like I’d snooped into the texts of a gaggle of junior high divas.

  At nine-thirty, I took a break. Waiting for the kettle to boil, I decided to change tack. During my earlier visit to CLUES to learn about Cora Teague, I’d discovered that Hazel Strike used the ID luckyloo. I decided to follow threads in which luckyloo had engaged.

  And found a feud that made all others pale in comparison. The barbs and accusations flying between luckyloo and someone posting as WendellC, though far from poetic, were clear in their meaning. The two couldn’t stand each other.

  Without knowing his actual name, I learned that WendellC was a legend among websleuthers. He’d scored many solves, but one in particular had boosted his status to superstar. I followed a link to a story chronicling the case.

  In 1984, the partial skeleton of a teenage girl was found wrapped in a quilt in a farm field in Cuyahoga County, outside Cleveland, Ohio. A complete skull was recovered, allowing a facial reconstruction. In time the image, barely more than a sketch, appeared on websites across the cyberuniverse.

  Over the decades, scores poked and prodded and dug, but no match to a missing person was ever found. The victim came to be known as Quilt Girl.

  Now and then stories ran in the local Ohio papers. In 2004, on the twentieth anniversary of the skeleton’s discovery, the case was featured on America’s Most Wanted, along with the original facial reconstruction. Tips flooded in. None panned out.

  In 2007, more than two decades after Quilt Girl turned up among the soybeans, WendellC read an article in True Sleuth magazine. The piece revisited the case of Annette Wyant, an eighteen-year-old freshman who’d disappeared from Oberlin College in 1979. A photo accompanied the story, along with an age-progressed image suggesting Wyant’s appearance at age forty-eight.

  WendellC was familiar with the facial reconstruction done on Quilt Girl. Annette Wyant’s picture looked nothing like it, thus the reason no link had ever been suggested. But WendellC noted one striking fact. Oberlin College was less than forty miles
from the farm where Quilt Girl had been found. He phoned the Cuyahoga County medical examiner and requested an autopsy photo showing close-ups of the skull. Reluctantly, the current ME complied.

  Upon viewing the image, WendellC noted another striking fact. Annette Wyant and Quilt Girl both had a marked overbite, a feature not reflected in the facial reconstruction. He again phoned the ME, stating his belief that the skeleton was that of the missing student.

  Dental records were dug from a file archived by long-departed personnel. Twenty-three years after her discovery, Quilt Girl went home to her family.

  I googled, found articles on the disappearance, more recent ones on the identification. Annette Wyant was buried with little fanfare in her hometown of Plainfield, Illinois. The Chicago Tribune ran a small story. The Cleveland Plain Dealer. In both, a middle-aged woman was pictured standing graveside. Beside her was a tall, craggy man in an ill-fitting suit. A caption identified the woman as Wyant’s sister, the man as Wendell Clyde of Huntersville, North Carolina.

  No arrest was ever made. From experience, I guessed Wyant’s cause of death remained “undetermined.”

  Intrigued, I returned to the websleuthing sites.

  In discussion after discussion, fellow amateurs praised WendellC’s brilliance and perseverance. Congratulations poured in from around the globe.

  Hazel Strike was furious and did not mince words. In post after post, luckyloo called WendellC a backstabbing snake. A pissant charlatan. A scumbucket fraud. Strike claimed she and Clyde had worked as a team. Accused him of taking credit for joint discoveries. WendellC was equally vitriolic in his responses.

  I’d have found the dispute amusing were it not for the virulent tone. I lasted another half hour. Then, repulsed by the juvenile nature of the spat, I went to bed.

  —

  I spent Friday up to my elbows in brain tissue and bloody bone fragments.

  The helicopter victim was a thirty-two-year-old man named Connolly Sanford. His first stint as a director would be his last. And his funeral would definitely be closed casket.

  While Larabee autopsied Sanford’s body, I examined what remained of his head. Which wasn’t much. Other than some portions of right parietal and occipital, the largest chunk recovered was the size of an ear. Both of which I had.