Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (5 page)

“I don’t know much,” Lia
responded. “It was just one body. They don’t know who it
is.”

“And they found disarticulated
bones? Not an intact skeleton? Terry asked.

“You don’t need to be so happy
about it,” Bailey grumbled at Terry.

“I don't know anything about
that,” Lia evaded.

“There are many methods of
removing flesh from bones. Dermestid beetles are the preferred
method. They leave the skeleton in pristine condition. Unless
someone cut most of the muscle mass away, it would take a
significant amount of time to complete the process.”

Lia looked at Bailey, whose throat
was making tiny convulsive motions.

“Maceration also works. It
requires containing the body in an enclosed space, preferably with
water and enzymes of some sort. It’s unpleasantly aromatic.
Unlikely in this instance, since I’m assuming the bones were
unarticulated, and you’d have to wonder why someone went to the
trouble to move the bones to the woods.

“Boiling is the quickest method,
but it makes for a brittle final product . . .”

Bailey’s face was turning
green.

“
. . . and all
of these processes presume that most of the flesh has been stripped
from the skeleton by some mechanical means first. I wonder, did
they find any tool marks? That would indicate dismembering. If the
bones have teeth marks instead . . .”

Bailey backed away from the group
with her hand over her mouth. Lia looked at Jim, who was drawing a
werewolf that looked like a collie on his Kindle. She looked back
up at Terry.

“Scavengers must have gotten to
it. It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Terry
concluded.

“That’s very . . . informative,
Terry. It’s like watching CSI. I’ve got to walk Max.” Lia stood up,
and Max stood with her, stretching and yawning, then wagged her
tail. Viola jumped down from the table and ran ahead. She looked
back over her shoulder and barked. “Yes, Princess, I’m coming.” A
firm grip on the leash, she headed for the back of the park, where
Bailey was tossing a ball for Kita, Honey and Chewy.

“You abandoned me,” Lia
accused.

“Sorry, it’s my delicate
sensibilities. I’m going to be off my feed for the next three days
after that. How are you holding up?” Bailey asked.

“Once I got over the idea that I
had a fresh, human bone in the back seat of my car, I was okay.
Peter’s the one who has to deal with it. Thank God, it doesn’t have
anything to do with me.”

Peter closed out the web page when
he heard the distinctive clip of his partner’s Ferragamo knockoffs
entering the bullpen. He swung around in his swivel chair and
leaned back, playing innocent.

“You may be fast, Brother, but
your reflexes are no match for my eagle eyes. I must say, I cannot
believe what I just saw.” Brent Davis had blond good looks that
were diligently maintained through grooming, wardrobe and exercise.
The Atlanta transplant’s magnolia-laced voice affected most women
in an embarrassing way that had his fellow detectives shaking their
heads when they weren’t making bets. Peter found his courtly
manners useful during interrogations.

“If you know what’s good for you,
you saw nothing.”

Brent ignored the threat. “And on
the people’s dime, too. For shame. Does Lia know about
this?”

“No, and she’s not going
to.”

“She has to find out
eventually.”

“When I’m ready.”

“Man, you must be dreaming. I
don’t think you’ll ever be ready for the way she’s going to
react.”

“I’ve got a workaround in
mind.”

“I hope you’re not planning to
give it to her for her birthday.”

“Nope.” Peter leaned back in his
chair, folding his arms.

“You gonna slip it on her finger
while she’s asleep? Tell her it’s just an odd skin growth? How will
you explain the minister?”

“Ha. Ha.”

“The usual way of these things is
you let her pick out the ring after you’ve broached the topic of
matrimony. That way you’re not stuck with three K in dissed
diamonds when she says, ‘no.’”

“That is totally lacking in
romance. In case you haven’t noticed, Lia’s not into the usual way
of things.”

“I have noticed. So why are you
looking at the usual sort of ring?”

“Just getting a baseline. Anything
wrong with that?”

Peter’s phone rang. He grabbed the
receiver. “Dourson. . . Yeah. . . We’ll be right down.” He hung up.
“That was Jeffers. Time to go see a doctor about a corpse. You up
for a ride to the University?” He headed down the hall, Brent
behind him.

“This isn’t over. It’s my job to
watch your back and right now, I’d say you’re a train wreck waiting
to happen. Lia ever suggest to you that she even wants to get
married?”

“Marriage is what people do when
they grow up. I know you’re unfamiliar with adulthood, but maybe
you’ve heard something about it?”

“You do know you’re in the
twenty-first century, don’t you?”

They exited the building. As Peter
turned left, toward his Blazer, Brent put a hand on his shoulder
and redirected him to the right. “This way, my man. You’re in for a
ride.”

“Meet Celeste,” Brent said as he
clicked his fob. A midnight blue Audi A4 obligingly flashed her
lights and beeped. “She’s my sexy new girl.”

Peter let out a low whistle as he
walked around the sporty sedan. “Isn’t Celeste a French name?
Shouldn’t she have a German name, like Helga or
Gertrude?”

“It may be a German car, but Audi
is Latin. Celeste is Latin for heavenly. And that, my man, she
is.”

“If she didn’t set you back a
year’s pay, I’ll eat my badge.”

“Start chewing, Brother. Even with
the Bluetooth and the iPod interface, the walnut inlay and those
very snazzy wheels, I managed to skim under.”

“That include
insurance?”

Brent held open the passenger door
and waved his arm. “I refuse to dignify that. Slide your manly rear
onto that leather seat and Celeste will show you what she’s all
about.”

Peter got into the car. Brent shut
the door and headed for the other side.

“Did you get the sissy seat
warmers?”

“No, I did not get the sissy seat
warmers.”

“Too bad, that could come in handy
on a stake out.”

“Celeste does not do stake outs.
Celeste draws too much attention. Don’t you, Baby?” Brent patted
the steering wheel and started the car. “Hold on to your
metaphorical hat.” He pulled out onto Ludlow Avenue.

“So my Blazer is good for
something then.”

“You’ll be ashamed to climb into
that rolling pile of scrap metal after Celeste is done with you.”
He cut neatly through traffic and headed up the hill, toward
University Hospital.

“Insult me all you want. My truck
is paid for. While you’re bleeding the equivalent of a house
payment every month, I’m socking it away.”

“House payment? You buying a
house?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got my eyes
open and I’m going to be ready when the right place comes on the
market.”

“Lia know about this?”

“I’ve been saving that money for
years. No reason to talk to Lia about it until something
interesting comes along.”

“Rings and house payments. You do
have it bad. I bet she’s perfectly happy with things as they are.
You’d better have a chat with her about all this before you go any
further down the road to Fantasy Island.”

“There is no road to Fantasy
Island. You have to take a plane. Don’t you know
anything?”

“I know trouble when I see
it.”

“You want to make love to your
car. And you think
I’m
in trouble?”

Peter again smelled the scent of
urine and putrefaction when he entered the morgue. Deputy Coroner
Amanda Jefferson stood by a steel table holding an array of bones
arranged roughly as a skeleton. The bones had been cleaned of all
scraps of meat and sinew since Peter and Brent last saw them,
revealing an abundance of gouges in the surface. There were a
number of gaps where bones were missing.

“Gentlemen, meet John Doe. He was
a Caucasian male, age somewhere between forty and sixty. He had
white hair and he was five foot, six to five foot, eight inches
tall. Clothing fragments found at the scene suggest he was wearing
blue jeans, a red tee-shirt and a tan jacket. The only object found
at the scene was a crossbow bolt with a three-blade hunting
broadhead.”

She picked up an ulna and held it
so that Peter and Brent could see where it was riddled with
triangular punctures. “These are bite marks from coyotes. The marks
are of various sizes, indicating more than one animal. I haven't
yet counted up how many coyotes feasted on John, but it looks like
it could have been a whole pack.

“I found no specific marks on the
skeleton to indicate cause of death. We can postulate that with the
blood soaked area found at the scene along with the crossbow bolt,
the bolt was the cause of death and that he bled out at the scene.
The amount of blood in that spot suggests he bled out very
quickly.

“It’s likely the bolt struck a
major artery, the carotid in the neck or the femoral artery in his
thigh. It’s doubtful he was struck in the head or the heart, as
this would have been indicated by damage to the skull or the
ribs.

“Due to the difficulty confirming
cause of death, we’re holding the remains until we can get a
forensic anthropologist in to make an examination. This may take a
week or longer.

“Our coyote pack went after John
like a school of piranha. There was not much left for insects to
chew on, but from the existing activity, my preliminary estimate is
that death took place sometime on Monday. He’s been dead
approximately seventy-two hours.“

“Why do you think the coyotes went
after him like that?” Peter asked.

Amanda walked over to the next
table and picked up a scrap of fabric from an array laid out like a
quilt. As she brought it near, the reek grew stronger.

“What is that smell?” Brent
asked.

“I’ve sent a sample over to the
lab. It’ll be days before we have an answer, but I suspect someone
doused Mr. Doe here with scent lure. It would have drawn every
coyote in the park. I bet they were fighting over the body like
rabid zombies.”

“Let’s hope they did that after he
died,” Brent said.

Back at District Five, Brent
tackled their list hunters while Peter went to work identifying the
victim. He pulled up the missing persons database and plugged in
search options. There were three matches in the
Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana region over the last year. He scanned them
quickly for proximity.

One, a George Munce, lived less
than two miles from Mount Airy Forest. This report was also the
most recent, having been filed late Tuesday. He reviewed the other
entries just in case. Neither were especially promising. He went
back to George’s file.

George was last seen by his wife on
Monday morning before she went in to her job as a school counselor
for Hughes High School. George worked evenings as store manager at
the Dollar Hut on Colerain Avenue, and hadn’t been discovered
missing until he failed to show up for his shift that afternoon. He
was most likely wearing jeans and a tan jacket.
Huh
. The
family dog was also missing.

He glanced at the name of the
officer taking the report. Hinkle. Peter snorted. That was why the
report hadn’t hit the news. It also explained why the interview was
sketchy. Nothing like having to redo someone else’s work. At least
Hinkle remembered to put out a BOLO for the man’s car.

How do you tell a wife that what
might be her husband’s body is in no condition to be viewed, and
who is his dentist?
Not a situation he’d ever faced before. It
would be interesting to see how the likely widow reacted to news
that her husband’s body may have been found. He’d get Brent to tag
along. Any excuse to power up his new toy would do.

The woman who answered the door was
small and trim, neatly dressed with a cap of dark,
salon-highlighted hair and a sprinkling of freckles across a small
nose. Peter thought she looked like a pixie, except for the dark
circles under her eyes.

Peter and Brent introduced
themselves as they produced badges.

“Is this about George? Have you
found him?” she bit her lip as her eyes pleaded for
answers.

“We’re not sure. We have some
questions for you,” Peter said. “May we come in?”

“Yes, please do. Can I offer you
coffee?” Manners collided with nerves as she rattled on. “I have
scones. I baked scones this morning. Please say you’ll have one. I
didn’t have anything better to do, so I baked.” She stopped talking
suddenly and blinked, as if uncertain what to do next.

“Thank you, Mrs. Munce,” Peter
said. “It’s not necessary. You don’t need to go to any
trouble.”