Page 56 of Fire and Bones
Out of habit, I reached for my phone.
Checked my voice mail.
Found nothing from Ryan.
Fine. Two could play that game.
What are you, Brennan? A high schooler scorned?
Still, I declined to dial his number again.
After dressing in jeans and a tee, I ran a quick brush through my hair and over my teeth. Different strokes, different brushes.
Given the hour, I figured I’d slip out unnoticed.
Not so.
Today, Lan offered oatmeal sprinkled with granola and raisins. No Quaker instant for this gal. The woman really knew her way around a stove.
I saw no sign of Doyle. Or Ben. Big Ben as I’d come to think of him overnight. I assumed both were still sleeping.
As I pushed from the table, my body-image neurons sent an un-welcome warning. Keep eating like this and you’ll need all new pants. Or serious alterations.
Grabbing purse and keys, I headed for my car.
The morning couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted to do. Carry on with the rain? Yield to the sun?
On one thing it was certain. The day would be hot.
It was a quick drive back to Southwest Washington. After finding a parking spot—trickier than I would have thought at 6:50 a.m.—I set out for the Consolidated Forensic Lab.
While walking, I passed the usual urban players. Early-bird office workers talking into their phones. Students in running gear sweating off hangovers. The homeless. The addicts. Most looked post-sunrise bleary, uncurious about what the next twenty-four hours would bring.
Outside the glass doors, two young dudes argued loudly in Polish. Maybe Czech. As I stepped around them, neither missed a beat in pressing his point.
Twenty minutes after my arrival, Jamar, Thacker, and I were attired in scrubs, ready for the analysis of #25-02102—presumably Skylar Reese Hill, the victim I’d recovered from the basement rubble in the Foggy Bottom house.
I was surprised to see a man in one corner of the autopsy room, mask covering his nose and mouth, paper gown carelessly thrown on over his suit. Long face, long neck, Adam’s apple the size of a kiwi, prickly gray hair in the act of retreating from his forehead. Not the homeliest guy I’d ever seen, but a contender.
Thacker looked grim. The man looked stoic. Jamar looked his usual chipper self.
Thacker introduced the visitor as Detective Merle Deery.
Deery dipped his chin but said nothing. The wide-footed stance and tense cant of the long neck screamed “cop.”
A male tenor crooned from a powerful purse-sized speaker on one of the stainless-steel counters. Verdi. Maybe La Traviata. Opera was a requirement for Thacker when cutting Ys.
Without further ado, we got down to business.
Except for postmortem trauma caused by impact and crushing, the remains on the table resembled those found on the upper floors. The features were gone and only a mask of blackened flesh covered the underlying facial bones. The limbs were truncated. The viscera had exploded through the abdominal wall.
Thacker had requested an antemortem photo of Hill. Deery had brought one. Thacker and I leaned our heads together to view it.
The picture showed a young woman with long blond braids sitting on a bench on a sunny day. Wind teased her bangs and lifted the collar of her mint green shirt. Her smile, wide as the Mississippi, spoke of confidence in a future rolling on forever.
A future denied her.
I felt my usual melancholy on seeing a frozen moment in a life cruelly ended.