Spider Bones (12 page)
T
HE SUNSHINE SISTERS WERE STILL SLEEPING WHEN I ENTERED
the kitchen at eight the following morning. Ryan was lacing on Nikes for a run on the beach. The plan was that he and our daughters would spend the day at Pearl Harbor, visiting the USS
Arizona
monument and touring the USS
Missouri
battleship and the USS
Bowfin
submarine. I wished him luck in dealing with the dim and murky realm of female resentment. Then I was off to the CIL. I thought of the dog tag the whole drive. It just made no sense.
Dimitriadus was on my bumper as I turned in at JPAC. We crossed the lot together. In silence. I wondered how an examiner of unidentified bones could miss a dog tag in a box. Ten feet from the building, he accelerated his pace and shot inside, letting the door slam in my face.
Last night, Lily’s cold shoulder. This morning, Dimitriadus. I was beginning to feel like the class pariah.
Danny was in his office.
“Dimitriadus is acting like I killed his puppy.”
“Come in.” Danny’s smile faded. “Close the door.”
Puzzled, I did.
“We’re cutting Dimitriadus loose.”
“Jesus. The guy’s been here, what, twelve years? Why?”
“A number of reasons. Most recently, he failed his ABFA exam again.” Danny referred to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology examination for certification, a credential essential for qualification in the field.
“The dog tag?”
“The decision was made before that came up, so no.”
“What will he do?”
Danny spread both hands. Who knows?
“That info is for your ears only. So far only Dimitriadus, Merkel, you, and I know.”
I nodded.
A beat passed.
“Today’s
good
news is that J-2 has Alvarez’s IDPF.”
J-2, the joint command records section, has access to information on deceased personnel going back to World War I.
“I was just about to walk over and pick it up. Jackson asked about you. Come along, make the man’s day.”
“Corporal Jackson? The guy who convinced everyone the phone lines were scheduled for cleaning by a steam blast, and that all handsets had to be sealed in plastic bags for an hour?”
“It’s Sergeant Jackson now.”
“He’s been here a long time.”
“He’s just been reassigned back, actually.”
“I no longer have clearance to J-2.”
“Follow me, little squaw.”
Little squaw?
Danny and I took the corridor past the general’s staff offices to a door at the back of the building and entered a large room furnished with cubicles containing desks, most occupied by civilians I knew to be analysts and historians. At the far end, a second door led to a secure area filled with movable shelving similar to that used for bone storage in the CIL lab. Instead of bones, these shelves held hundreds of small gray filing boxes, each identified by a sequence of numbers. The REFNOs.
At the counter, we chatted a moment with Sergeant Dix Jackson, a black man with mulberry splotches on his face and arms the size of sequoias. Needless to say, no one ever mentioned the splotches.
Jackson and I reminisced, each trying to top the other with recollections of practical jokes from the past. He won with a story involving Danny, a toilet stall, a burning bag, and buckets of water raining down from above.
Feigning annoyance, Danny filled out a request for the file on 1968-979, the unknown recovered near Long Binh in ’68.
Jackson read the form. “When you need this, Doc?”
“Yesterday.”
“You got it.”
Danny signed for and scooped up Alvarez’s IDPF.
We started to leave.
“And, Doc?”
We both turned.
“You feel the urge to do your business, relax. We got no fire drills scheduled this month.”
Back in Danny’s office, we cleared the love seat and coffee table. No banter. We were both very focused on learning everything we could about Spec 2 Alvarez.
Work space readied, we sat. Danny unwound the string, spread the file, and extracted the contents.
I swallowed.
Throughout my years consulting to CILHI, the photos always distressed me more than anything else. Alvarez’s lay smack on top.
The old black-and-white showed a Latino-looking man in his army uniform. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and lashes that were wasted on a Y-chromosomer.
A second photo captured nine soldiers, hair sweat-pasted to their temples and brows. All wore fatigues with the sleeves rolled up. One sported a Tilley hat, fishing lure pinned to a rakishly flipped brim.
The name
Alvarez
was scrawled in faded blue ink across the chest of the third man from the right. Third
kid
from the right.
Alvarez wasn’t big, wasn’t small. Of the group, he alone wasn’t looking at the camera. His face was turned, as though a momentary distraction had caught his attention.
What, I wondered? A bird in flight? A passing dog? Movement in the brush?
Had he been mildly curious? Startled? Afraid for his life?
“¡Ay, caramba!”
Danny was looking at Alvarez’s induction record. “The gentleman in question was Mexican-American.”
“That fits our profile for 2010-37. Any medical or dental records?”
Danny viewed the stack side-on. “Yep. Let’s save those for last.”
Danny skimmed a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper, the kind kids use for middle school essays.
“A letter from Fernando Alvarez, Luis’s father,” he said. “You read Spanish?”
I nodded.
Danny handed me the paper.
The letter was written in a neat, almost feminine hand. No header indicated the recipient’s name. The date was July 29, 1969. The English stopped after “Dear Sir.”
The message was poignant in its simplicity.
I’d read many. Every single solitary one had touched me deeply.
“What’s he say?” Danny asked. Knowing.
“My son was a hero. Find him.”
Next came clippings from a Spanish-language newspaper. One announced Luis Alvarez’s graduation from high school. The photo showed a younger version of the man in uniform. Mortarboard. Tassel. Somber grin.
One story announced Alvarez’s departure for Vietnam. Another reported his status as MIA.
Danny picked up a telegram. I felt no need to read it.
We regret to inform you.
Maria and Fernando Alvarez were being notified that their son was missing.
Next came statements from witnesses who saw the Huey go down. A guard on his way from the Long Binh jail to his barracks. A motorist traveling the road to Saigon. A maintenance worker at the helicopter landing pad. One soldier had provided a hand-drawn map.
The file also contained a standard DD form recording the loss incident, and unclassified documents compiled by analysts attempting to determine what had happened to Alvarez.
An hour after leaving the J-2 shop, Danny and I turned to Luis Alvarez’s medical and dental records.
Only to be disappointed.
Nothing in the antemorts positively linked the missing Spec 2 to the bones accessioned as 2010-37. Either Alvarez had enjoyed the best health on the planet or, like Lowery, his records were incomplete.
“Maria Alvarez died in nineteen eighty-seven,” I read aloud. “No other maternal relative provided a DNA sample.”
“We probably won’t get sequencing on 2010-37, anyway,” Danny said.
I agreed. “Probably not.”
“Nothing excludes Alvarez from being your Lumberton guy.”
I agreed again. “No. Or he could be 1968-979.”
I thought a moment.
“Think it would be worthwhile trying to track down the witnesses? Maybe one saw something that never made the files.”
Danny returned to the statements. Read.
“The maintenance worker was a guy named Harlan Kramer from Abilene, Texas. Kramer was regular army. If he stayed in, it would be fairly easy to find him.”
Danny made a note.
“Ready to hit it?” he asked.
I nodded.
Danny and I moved to the lab.
Though some bones were damaged by erosion, trauma, or animal scavenging, most of 1968-979’s skeleton was in pretty good shape. While Danny opened an anthropology update file, I laid out my usual stick figure man.
Skull. Jaw. Arms. Legs. Sternum. Clavicles. Ribs. Vertebrae. Only the kneecaps and some hand and foot parts were missing.
Didn’t matter. I knew straight off that 1968-979 was neither Spider Lowery nor Luis Alvarez. So did Danny.
“This dude was a tree-topper.”
I nodded agreement. “Lowery and Alvarez were both five-nine. This man was much taller.”
“What the hell is he doing with Spider Lowery’s tag?”
I had no explanation.
“We’ve got dentition.” Danny checked the jaw. “Two molars and a second bicuspid on the right. Two molars on the left.” He rotated the skull to sit palate up. “Two molars on the right, two on the left, and a second bicuspid. Ten teeth. I’ll get X-rays.”
Feeling a vibration at my hip, I checked my BlackBerry.
“It’s Katy.”
“Take it. I’ll do inventory.”
“Hi, sweetie.”
“I am so
outta
here. First flight I can get.”
Great.
“Lily is a complete wack job.”
“Where are you?” Anticipating a less than pleasant exchange, I put distance between myself and Danny.
“Pearl Harbor.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Where should I start? First, there’s the trip into town. Ms. Head Case has to ride in front so she won’t get sick. Guess who ends up stuffed in back? Then we get to the park and at least a million people are waiting in line. Guess who has to sit on a bench so her feet won’t hurt? Big surprise, island girl! You’re wearing heels that would kill the average pole dancer. Then—”
“Katy.”
“—we have to eat at this totally gross ptomaine haven because Lily can’t handle—”
“Katy.”
“What?” Snapped.
“She’s going through a rough patch.”
“I’m not?”
“Is Lily really so bad?”
“She’s a freak show. This was supposed to be our time together.”
“I thought you’d enjoy Lily’s company.”
“Oh, yeah. The bitch is so cool I may vomit from sheer envy.”
“I’m sorry. I should have asked your opinion before inviting them to join us.”
“You think?”
Danny passed me holding the skull and jaw. I assumed he was going for X-rays.
“Where is Ryan?” I asked.
“Paying the bill.”
“I’ll call him.”
I was answered by the silence of unspoken anger.
* * *
After a quick lunch, Danny and I constructed a biological profile for 1968-979.
Gender: male.
Race: white.
Age: twenty-seven to thirty-five years.
Height: six-one, plus or minus two inches.
Unique skeletal identifiers: possible healed fractures of the right mandibular ramus, right clavicle, and right scapula.
Unique dental identifiers: fragment of a restoration in the first upper left molar.
By three we’d taken X-rays and confirmed the dental work and the old jaw and shoulder trauma.
Danny was on the phone with J-2 when my BlackBerry buzzed again.
Hadley Perry.
The ME skipped all preliminaries.
“Divers found another hunk of leg.”
“Where?”
“Halona Cove, lying on a coral ledge about twenty feet down.”
I checked the time. Five thirty. I was living the movie
Groundhog Day.
New day, same scene.
“Have Tuesday’s remains been cleaned?”
“Down to nice shiny bone.”
“Have you contacted a shark expert?”
“The National Marine Fisheries Service has an office on Oahu. I called a guy I know over there. He’s off-island, but a Dr. Dorcas Gearhart is coming by tomorrow at nine.”
“I’ll be there. But—”
“I know. You can’t stay long.”
T
HAT NIGHT WE OPTED FOR AN EVENING AT HOME. AT LEAST
Ryan and I did. Lily and Katy added little but tension to the decision-making process.
Ryan purchased New York strips and tuna fillets, which he grilled to perfection. Amazingly, all dietary obstacles vanished. Both daughters downed bounty of land and sea, along with fingerling potatoes and spinach salad.
To describe the conversation as stiff would be like calling Ahmadinejad’s reelection in Iran a tad contentious. Lily’s favorite group was Cake. Katy found their music sophomoric. Katy loved classic blues, Etta James, Billie Holiday, T-Bone Walker. Lily said that crap put her to sleep. Lily wore Sung by Alfred Sung. Katy found the perfume overly sweet. Katy favored L’eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake. It made Lily sneeze. iPhone. BlackBerry. PC. Mac.
You get the picture.
Ryan and I insisted on courtesy. But one thing was apparent. Not only did our offspring have differing tastes and opinions, they were becoming masters at refining their expressions of contempt for each other.
After dinner I served fresh pineapple wedges. Ryan proposed another outing for the following afternoon. The Punchbowl or, perhaps inspired by my dessert, the Dole Plantation.
Katy said she preferred a day at Waikiki Beach. Lily wanted to go to Ala Moana. Katy said it was stupid to cross the whole frickin’ Pacific just to go shopping. Lily said it was dumb to lie around getting sand up your butt. At that point open battle erupted.
Fortunately, I’d paid the extra insurance and listed Katy as a driver on my rental Cobalt. After much discussion, a compromise was reached. Katy would drop Lily at the mall, spend the afternoon at Waikiki, then collect Lily at a mutually agreed time and location.
When the dishes were cleared, the combatants retreated to their rooms. Ryan and I went for a walk on the beach. I updated him on my two cases at the CIL, and on the one I was doing for the Honolulu ME.
“Hadley Perry?” he asked.
“You know her?”
“I do.”
That surprised me. I didn’t pursue it.
“Perry’s got a shark expert lined up for tomorrow morning,” I said.
“That should be different.”
“From what?”
“Bones. Bugs.”
“Quantum physics.”
“That, too.” Ryan paused. “Heard from Sheriff Beasley today.”
“And?”
“Sometimes you impress me.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Some times more than others.”
“What did Beasley say?”
“You slipped in under the wire.”
I waited for Ryan to elaborate. He didn’t.
“Do you get perverse pleasure from messing with my mind?” I asked.
“I definitely get pleasure from messing with your—”
“Beasley?”
“Southeastern Regional Medical Center. Normally patient slides are kept five years.”
“The hospital had something?” I couldn’t believe it.
“
Oui, madame.
From Harriet Lowery’s last admission. The material is winging its way to AFDIL as we speak.” The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. “Or maybe it’s already there. And I think a sample may have also gone to our DNA boys in Montreal.”
“Hot damn.”
“Hot damn.”
The sand was cool underfoot. Waves pounded the shore. It felt glorious to be outside. To taste salt on my lips and feel wind in my hair.
To be with Ryan?
Yeah. OK. To be with Ryan.
He didn’t reach for my hand. I didn’t take his. Still. We both felt it. An enormous elephant plodding beside us up the beach.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing what he has to say.”
Lost in pachyderm reflection, I missed Ryan’s meaning.
“What who has to say?”
“The shark guy.”
“Why?”
“Who knows what may one day prove professionally useful?”
“You work in Quebec.”
“Sharks are devilishly sly creatures.”
Was Ryan’s interest really in sharks? Or in the quirky but fetching Dr. Hadley Perry?
Whatever.
“Sure,” I said. “Come along.”
Dorcas Gearhart was in the lobby when we arrived at the ME’s office. Ryan had erred. The shark guy turned out to be of my gender.
Gearhart had frizzy gray hair swept from her face by pink plastic barrettes, and wire-rimmed specs resting low on her nose. I guessed her height at five feet, her age at somewhere just south of sixty.
We exchanged alohas, names, shook hands. I wondered what comments Katy and Lily would have made on the good doctor’s muumuu, sneakers, and cardigan sweater. I wondered what comments Katy and Lily had exchanged on their drive into the city.
While waiting for Perry, Ryan asked Gearhart how she’d gotten into the fish business.
Based on the woman’s looks, I’d expected grandmotherly speech and deportment. Not even close.
“Fucking bad luck.” Gearhart’s laugh came from deep within her substantial girth. “Or good. Who knows? I applied for med school, got bonged. A prof I was sleeping with recommended the marine bio grad program. Seemed a better option than marrying and popping out kids.”
“Why sharks?” Ryan didn’t miss a beat.
“Some yank-off beat me out for the dolphin fellowship.”
I was about to ask a question when Perry appeared. Today the hair spikes were emerald, the lids chartreuse.
More greetings, intros. I watched Ryan’s face. Discreetly. Perry’s. Neither gave a hint of past history.
Perry said she’d had the remains pulled from the cooler.
We trooped single file to the same autopsy room I’d visited on Tuesday.
A black plastic bag lay on a stainless steel cart. A small one.
Perry, Gearhart, and I gloved. Ryan watched.
Perry opened the bag, slid a glob of bone and tissue onto the cart.
The smell of salt and decaying flesh filled the room.
I lifted and inspected the soggy mass.
One glance told me I was holding a portion of human calf. I could see a fragment of fibula, the slender outer bone of the lower leg. The tibia, or shinbone, was in better shape. Its ankle end was recognizable within a mass of tangled tendons and rotting muscle.
Both bones were covered with shallow cuts, deep gouges, and long grooves. Both terminated in jagged spikes.
I looked up. To six expectant eyes.
“It’s part of a human lower leg. Decomp is consistent with the remains we examined on Tuesday.”
“So’s the shark damage, right?” Perry.
Stepping to the cart, Gearhart nudged me not so gently aside. I moved back.
“Oh, yeah. This was shark.”
“Can you tell what kind?” Perry asked.
“Got a magnifier?”
Perry produced a hand lens.
We all clustered around Gearhart. Her short stature worked in our favor.
“Look here, inside this groove.” Gearhart positioned the glass. “See how fine and regularly spaced the striations are? That means the teeth were ridged, like a serrated knife. I’d say we’re talking
Galeocerdo cuvier
or
Carcharodon carcharias.
”
The collective lack of response was question enough.
“Tiger or white,” Gearhart said.
I couldn’t help it. A few beats of the
Jaws
theme thrummed in my head.
“White sharks are pretty rare in Hawaiian waters, so I’d put my money on tiger. Based on distance between the striations, I’d say this baby’s probably twelve to fourteen feet long.”
“Jesus.” Ryan.
“Hell, that’s nothing. I once met a twenty-two footer, up close and personal. That mother had to weigh nine hundred kilos.”
Quick math. Nineteen hundred pounds. I hoped Gearhart was exaggerating.
“Do tiger sharks really deserve the nasty Hollywood image?” Ryan asked.
“Ooooh, yeah. Tigers are second only to whites in the number of recorded attacks on humans. And they’re not what you’d call discriminating diners. These buggers’ll eat anything, people, birds, sea turtles, plumbing parts. Generally tigers are sluggish, but tweak the old taste buds, they can really move. You see one, it’s best to haul ass.”
“Where might I see one?” I asked.
“They’re mostly active at night.”
Yep. The opening scene from
Jaws.
“—reason tigers encounter humans so often is that they like to enter shallow reefs, lagoons, harbors, places like that. To feed. Mostly after dusk.”
Perry interrupted the nature lesson.
“Can you tell if the vic was alive when the shark bellied up?”
Gearhart played her lens over the remains.
“The random nature of the tooth marks suggests the leg was fleshed at the time of feeding. The tiger’s pattern is to bite down then shake, allowing the serrated teeth to rip through the flesh. The jaw muscles are astounding. Strong enough to slice right through bone, or the shell of a tortoise.”
I was really wishing Katy had gone to the mall with Lily.
“So you can’t determine if the shark killed the kid or just scavenged on his body?” Perry pressed.
“Nope.”
As Perry and Gearhart spoke I studied the leg.
“Can you tell if the kid was killed at Halona Cove, or elsewhere, then regurgitated there?”
“Nope.”
I rotated the sad little hunk of flesh.
“Look, Doc.” Perry’s voice had an edge. “I have to consider whether this presents an issue of public safety. Do I need to close that beach?”
“In my opinion, no. Not based on a single isolated incident.”
Using one finger, I retracted the flesh overlying the distal tibia.
My heart kicked to a tempo that matched the refrain in my head.
“Meaning?” Perry asked.
“You get more than one death, then maybe you’ve got a rogue.”
“A rogue?”
“An opportunist. A shark who’s developed a taste for people.”
I looked up and met Ryan’s eyes. His brows dipped on seeing my expression.
“Bad news,” I said.