The Skeleton's Knee, page 10
part #4 of Joe Gunther Series
I bent forward and put my eyes a few inches away from where the skeleton was held by the dirt like a bug on flypaper. All I could see was skeleton. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
My body language gave me away. With a sigh of impatience, he began pointing out the telltale signs. “Blue jeans, see? The zipper and the copper stress-point tabs they use to secure the pocket corners have all left telltale green stains on the bone. The nylon shirt”—he pointed at a small shred of rotted material—”is the only material that might survive this long; cotton and wool vanish very quickly. And here, see the plastic buttons? Also, look at the feet: no lace grommets, no leather or rubber sole, no boot nails, no nothing. Therefore, no shoes.”
I was beginning to see what he saw. I pointed to a mass of tiny confetti-sized fragments that seemed to surround the entire outline of the body. “And that?”
“Plastic. He was wrapped in it—or she was; I’m just saying he for convenience. Don’t forget that.” He pulled a small trowel from his back pocket and scratched away at his exhibit. “Look, see those round plastic circles, like Life Savers? Those are the reinforced holes running along the top of a shower curtain. You’ll notice they’re all bunched together, as if they were gathered in a knot. And just below them, see that? Rope strands, indicating that the curtain had been tied off above the head, to make it a container for the body.”
He shifted to the feet. “Same thing here, see? No little circles, of course, since this is the bottom of the curtain, but you can see where there are more plastic fragments from where the curtain has been bunched together, and again, here are the rope strands.”
“So he was wrapped in the curtain, which was tied off at both ends with rope, and dragged to the hole.”
“From inside the house,” Leach finished.
“Because of the lack of shoes?”
“Possibly, although it was apparently warm weather—no jacket, remember—so he might have been running around barefoot. But the shower curtain also implies an interior death. If he died outside, why tear down the curtain from inside? Why not just dig the hole and dump him in? If he died inside, possibly pouring out a lot of blood, then you’d be more inclined to wrap him in something both handy and waterproof, like a shower curtain.”
A slow smile spread across my face, which he seemed to take as an affront, adding, “Of course, all that’s utterly meaningless with a body this old—just a little magic show to entertain the unwashed masses.”
He turned to Henry and Tyler. “You finished yet? I’d like to get this over with before next summer. Set up the rocker screens over there and filter the dirt I’ve already removed.”
The next stage of Leach’s “magic show” took on the more traditional appearance of a documentary on digging up dinosaurs. The backhoe was retired, the shovels stacked, and even the hand trowels put away. Now Hillstrom’s cranky little expert was down to dental tools and toothbrushes. The fact that he was toiling over an upside-down corpse with a metal knee instead of bits and pieces of a brontosaurus gradually lost its impact. As the hours went by, most of us lost sight of the overall horror of what had led us here. Like Leach, we became locked onto one minute patch of bone and dirt after another, cataloguing with him the retrieval of each button, belt buckle, scrap of cloth, and wristwatch that gradually was pried from the hard-packed damp earth.
Also, the skeleton itself lost its ghoulish powers as it was slowly dismantled and laid in an open body bag spread out on a stretcher, the soil supporting it having been removed and sifted through the fine-mesh rocker screens that Henry and J.P. steadily shook back and forth. James Dunn, despite his own peculiar enthusiasm, began looking distracted, glancing at his watch more and more frequently, no doubt ruing his decision not to have sent an assistant in his place.
The care and time finally paid off, however, when Leach quietly gestured to Hillstrom to take a photograph of the area just below the skeleton’s inverted rib cage. Looking over her shoulder as she focused for the shot, I saw the recognizable remains of a small-caliber bullet resting in the dirt, where presumably it had settled after the flesh holding it in place had rotted away.
That was all James Dunn needed. With a satisfied grunt, he rose from the rock he’d claimed as his chair for the past several hours and headed back to his office, the proud owner of another felony.
My own emotions were more complicated, since we were the ones who’d have to name the skeleton, as well as the person who’d placed him in his pit. Though not disproved by this latest discovery, any chances that Abraham Fuller had acquired his lethal wound through an accidental shooting had become microscopic.
Beverly Hillstrom stood beside me, watching as Leach carefully removed the rib cage and placed it on the stretcher, leaving only the skull in place. Her voice was very soft. “I feel like apologizing.”
“For what?”
“Ever since I called you about Mr. Fuller, your job seems to be getting increasingly difficult.”
I let out a little sigh. “Looks that way now. Maybe once you get this guy on your examining table in Burlington, things’ll improve.”
She shook her head. “I don’t see how. I might be able to trace the bullet’s trajectory, get a little more precise about his sex, age, and race, but there’s a limit, and that’s about it.”
“What about the knee?”
“Yes—I was thinking about that. A complete data search might yield something, especially if we can locate a serial number. If this fellow’s been in here too long, though, chances are the prosthesis originated in Europe, and that’ll open up a whole new set of problems… and expenses.”
I remained glum and silent.
“There is one thing, though…” she added tentatively, revealing that terrier-like inability to let go that I so valued in her.
“What?”
“I have a friend—a forensic anthropologist—who might be interested in taking a look. She’s very good, and bones are her specialty.”
“So what’s the catch?”
“Money. If I bring her in, my office has to pay.”
“And you’re as broke as everybody else.”
She didn’t answer at first, but a slow smile crossed her face as she abstractly watched Leach remove the last of the skeleton from its grave, destined for the nearby hearse that would carry it to Burlington. Finally, she turned to me. “Look, let me get back to my office and make a couple of phone calls. There might be a way around this. Will you be available tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” I answered without hesitation.
She gave my forearm a squeeze and began walking toward the slope leading out of the trench. “We’ll get this fellow to talk one way or the other.”
11
FIVE HOURS HAD BEEN SPENT disinterring our nameless skeleton, and in that time, an inordinate number of haphazardly parked cars, trucks, and other vehicles had washed up on Fred Coyner’s front lawn, like debris left over from a flash flood.
It took twenty minutes or more in the rapidly fading light to sort this mess out, a period in which Hillstrom, Leach, the hearse driver, and several other early birds—now all buried in the back of the pack—had to sit in their cars or stand around and wait. I, too, wanted to leave so I could attend the postponed squad meeting at the office, but I spent the enforced delay coordinating the conclusion of our search for the gun, which we still hadn’t found. At this point, I was none too optimistic about our chances, so I put a couple of experienced patrolmen to the task, rather than members of my own team.
When I finally emerged from the woods, the driveway was almost clear. Coyner’s house, in contrast to the bustle of moving vehicles, was as dark and still as it had been all day, seemingly abandoned by its owner in the face of overwhelming odds.
“You talk to him about the body yet?” a quiet voice asked me as I stood alone near the edge of the lawn that overlooked the darkening valleys below.
I turned from the house, surprised both by the gentle tone and by the fact that its owner had never been known to use one. Stanley Katz, abrasive, cynical, ambitious, and unrelenting, covered the “cops-’n’-courts” beat for the local daily Brattleboro Reformer. He was also, I had to reluctantly admit, one of the best reporters they had; for all his obnoxious ways and superior manner, he went after a story with grim determination, not caring who might be injured, so long as the facts were considered accurate up to deadline time. On the sliding scale of Truth, he sometimes hit lower than midpoint, but not because of any lack of integrity. The nature of his job was to report a story often before it was finished, a handicap that almost guaranteed an occasional shot in the foot.
Not that any of this meant I liked him. Like everyone else I knew who’d suffered at his hands in print, I thought the man was a pain in the ass.
I therefore took my time responding to his question, weighing the pros and cons of a simple “no comment” versus a running dialogue about Fred Coyner, whom I wasn’t even sure Katz knew about. I finally hedged my bets and reacted solely and specifically to the question: “No.”
Katz, small, narrow, and perpetually pale, merely nodded. “That was a bullet Leach found, wasn’t it?”
“It looked like one, but that may not mean much.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“There’re quite a few people running around with old bullets in them.”
I expected an incredulous outburst at that, which is partly why I brought it up, but again he merely nodded, his hands still nonchalantly buried in his pockets, as if he was merely passing the time of day, instead of pursuing a story.
I finally turned to face him fully. “You all right, Stan? You seem a little under the weather.”
He gave me an echo of the shifty-eyed leer that had often made my blood boil in the past. “Why? Because I haven’t given you the third degree? You shouldn’t hold yourself so high, Joe. While you’ve been sitting in a hole for the past five hours, I’ve been grilling almost everyone here, including members of your illustrious profession. Besides, you don’t talk to me much, anyway.”
“That never stopped you in the past,” I persisted, sensing something else.
He shrugged and glanced toward the hundred-mile panorama facing Coyner’s house. It was almost dark by now, the distant, broken horizon a thin crimson line fading to dim starlight high above. As if mirroring the sky, pinpoints of light had appeared in the shadowy valleys beneath us, leading me to wonder, as I often did at night, what all those people were up to and whether their activities would eventually cause our paths to cross.
“I resigned today,” Katz murmured, half as explanation and half, I thought, as confession. “Effective next week.”
I was stunned. Katz and the Reformer had been one and the same for years, as inseparable, some would have said, as death and the plague. His announcement, therefore, left me groping among several emotional responses. I was sad for the paper, which would only suffer from his departure; happy for us, from whose back he would finally be plucked; and curious about the community’s response, which, like most small towns, viewed any and all change with an initial burst of befuddlement.
I decided to let him be my guide. “Jesus, Stan, I hope that’s good news for you.”
Now his grin returned with most of the familiar malevolence in place. “Well, Joe, if it is, it ain’t going to change much for you. I’ve already sold my talents to the Rutland Herald, which, as you know, is just over the mountains. Which means,” he added, with a condescending pat on my shoulder, “that I’ll still be as tight on you as a tick on a dog.”
So much for the lessening of our burden, not that I actually believed him. Rutland was a large town, quite capable of keeping his exclusive interest. “That’s nice, Stanley. I hope you starve to death.”
I was halfway to my car, seeing that the traffic jam had finally untangled itself and that both Hillstrom and the hearse driver had started their cars, when I heard Katz swear loudly behind me. I turned, to see him staring openmouthed at a small hatchback vanishing down the driveway.
“Miss your ride back?” I asked.
“Yeah—that son of a bitch—I told him to wait.”
“That’ll teach you to jump ship.” I continued toward my car.
I could hear him running after me. “Hey, Joe, wait a minute. Can you give me a lift?”
I opened my door. “I don’t know, Stanley. You were a little hostile a few minutes ago. Didn’t leave me in a great mood to do you any favors.”
He stopped and looked around, checking his options. But aside from the hearse and the medical examiner, I was it. He was now looking downright peeved. “Come on, goddamn it, don’t jerk me around.”
I shook my head. “Get in.”
We were the last of the caravan, and as I reached the first curve of the driveway, I glanced into my dark rearview mirror, half-expecting to see Coyner climb out of the woods to return home. There was nothing.
“Thanks, by the way,” Katz muttered.
“No problem. So why the big change?”
“It was just time,” he answered carelessly and immediately switched subjects. “What’s your angle on our bony friend with the flashy kneecap?”
I ignored him. “Was it the new Midwestern bosses and their bite-sized news?” The Reformer had been purchased several months ago by a minor USA Today clone, which had promptly changed the page-one banner to bright red and had reduced its articles to ten column inches maximum, with no overruns to other pages. It was now peppy, perky, and pointless to read. Katz’s articles had been among the few to make the blood circulate, and the only ones allowed occasionally to extend the length limitation.
“Something like that,” he answered. “So are you treating this as a homicide?”
“You should’ve been happier than a hog in heaven—chief investigative reporter, or whatever they named you.” Stanley looked out the window at the tenebrous, flashing shadows of passing trees, his neck rigid with irritation. After a few venomously silent moments, during which I smiled happily in the dark at Hillstrom’s taillights before me, Katz finally let out a long sigh.
“All right, although I don’t know why you give a damn. I left because of the politics, the paperwork, and the pissing contests—not unlike this one.”
“Worse than before?”
His voice rose an octave. “Before was a picnic. Compared to this bullshit, it was like turning out a newsletter for the Brownies. Now you use one hand to type and the other to check your back for knife handles.”
I settled back to listen, only half-interested in his complaints, delighted instead that I wouldn’t have to play informational footsie with him anymore.
I’d agreed to drive Stan back to his office, just off Exit 3, before returning downtown. I therefore followed both Hillstrom and the hearse onto the interstate at Exit 2, amused that Hillstrom was probably thinking my eagerness to have the skeleton analyzed had gotten the better of me and that I was going to follow her all the way to Burlington.
What happened instead bordered on the surreal. We had barely picked up speed off the entry ramp when a horizontal spray of red tracers spat out of the darkness from the low ridge to our right. It engulfed the hearse just ahead of Hillstrom’s car and caused both vehicles to swerve violently.
“What the hell is that?” Katz shouted in alarm.
The deadly flashes of light kept lashing out at the hearse in short spurts, forcing it to brake sharply.
“Gunfire,” I answered, swinging my own car over to the left breakdown lane. I threw open the door and dragged Katz out after me, sliding into the median-strip ditch that separated the northbound lane from the southbound. I quickly raised Dispatch on my portable radio. “M-80 from O-3. We’re under machine-gun fire on I-91 northbound, just above Exit 2. Repeat: We’re under machine-gun fire. The shots are coming from the east side, about due west of the Frog Pond behind Harris Hill. Send everyone available to seal off the area and close off the interstate, north and south.”
I began running in a low crouch toward the two cars ahead of me, both of which were also haphazardly parked in the breakdown lane. The machine-gun bursts continued in deadly earnest, brief, controlled, and aimed exclusively at the hearse. In the lights from Hillstrom’s car, I could see steam rising from the hearse’s engine, and I could smell gas from the ruptured tank.
I reached the driver’s side of the medical examiner’s car, pulled open the door, and found her staring at me from a prone position on the front seat, her eyes wide with terror.
“You hit?”
“No.”
I reached in, grabbed her hands, and pulled her out into the ditch’s shallow shelter next to Katz, who had followed me, muttering obscenities.
Only then, knowing I couldn’t reach the hearse’s driver, did I direct my attention to the source of the machine-gun fire. I drew my pistol, steadied it on the hood of Hillstrom’s car, and fired three shots at the stuttering red-hot bull’s-eye that hovered in the distant blackness.
My mind was no longer in Brattleboro, Vermont, but somewhere in the mountains of Korea, where night after night I’d lain still and silent behind my rifle, straining to pierce the darkness of the night, a box of grenades by my side. In Korea, too, they’d used incendiaries at times, hoping to hit an ammo dump or a pile of gas tanks, and we’d taken advantage of the one major drawback of using such ammunition: You can follow it right back to the muzzle that fired it.
The machine-gun fire suddenly stopped, just in time. Despite the now-overpowering reek of gas from the hearse, it hadn’t yet burst into flame.
I circled the front of Hillstrom’s car, paused for an incongruous bit of traffic, and sprinted across the road, yelling, “Stay put—don’t check out the driver ’til I give the all clear.” The absurdity that I might be hit by a car on the interstate while trying to take out a machine-gun nest rattled in the back of my mind.
