At the Stroke of Madness (33 page)

West Haven, Connecticut

M
aggie wasn’t sure what she was doing here. There were other places she needed to check out, coincidences she needed to follow up on. Like Jacob Marley Jr. and whether or not anyone called him Sonny. Or if Wally Hobbs’s contract to dig graves for the funeral home had anything to do with Steve Earlman not staying buried. Not to mention the address she had found imprinted on Joan Begley’s hotel notepad, and whether or not it was the meeting place for a rendezvous that may have been her last. There were plenty of places where she needed to look for answers and she wasn’t sure this was one of them. Yet, here she was at the University of New Haven.

The aroma filled the classroom laboratory. Maggie thought it smelled like beef broth. And annoyingly good. Professor Adam Bonzado stood over the industrial-size stove, lifting the lids of several steaming pots, stirring one with a wooden spoon before replacing the lids and turning down the gas flame. Today he wore a purple-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt with blue jeans and high-top sneakers. His plastic goggles were down around his neck, sharing swing space with a paper surgical mask. He glanced at her over his shoulder. Then did a double take, surprised to see her.

“You’re early,” he said.

“I didn’t have as much trouble finding the campus as I thought I might. Would you rather I go wander and come back?”

“No, no, not at all. I’ve got lots to show you.” He checked the pots one more time and turned to give her his attention. “Welcome to our humble lab.” He waved a hand over the area. “Come take a look.”

Maggie let her eyes take in the shelves of specimen jars and vials, odd assortments and sizes, some makeshift baby-food jars alongside bell jars and pickle jars with scientific labels covering the name brands. From a corner came the soft whirr of a dehumidifier. The room felt cool, and beneath the aroma of soup broth there was a trace of cleaning supplies, perhaps a hint of ammonia. The countertops were filled with microscopes and a scattered, strange collection of tools, from an impressive jawlike clamp without teeth to small forceps and an array of every sized brush imaginable.

In another corner were two huge plastic bubbles. Maggie guessed they were odor hoods. She could hear the quiet wheezing of ventilation fans from inside the contraptions that reminded her of old-fashioned beauty parlor dryers. The contents below, however, quickly dispelled that image. In the double sink underneath the two hoods Maggie could see skeletal remains, soaking in what appeared to be a sudsy solution. A hand stuck up out of the foam as if waving to her, most of the flesh gone.

And then there were the tables, six-foot-long tables, three of them between the aisles, a fleshless village of skulls and bones. Several skulls stared back at her. Others, too wounded to sit up, lay with hollow sockets staring at the wall or gazing at the ceiling. The bones were a variety of sizes and shapes and pieces, as well as colors. Some were sooty black, others creamy white, some dirty gray and still others a buttery yellow—butterscotch came to Maggie’s mind. Some were laid out carefully as if reconstructing a puzzle. Others were tangled in cardboard boxes at the edge of the tables, waiting to be sorted, waiting to tell their story.

“Let me finish this, okay? Then I want to show you a few interesting things I’ve discovered.”

Bonzado put on a pair of latex gloves, then put another pair over the first. He pulled the plastic goggles and mask in place, then grabbed what looked like an oven mitt and lifted the lid off one of the pots. He waited for the steam to clear, then took an oversize wooden spoon and began fishing out what looked like chunks of boiled meat and fat and carefully placed them into an open, waiting plastic bag.

“We save as much of the tissue as we can,” he explained, raising his voice to get through the mask in what sounded like a practiced tone, perhaps his teaching voice. “These bags are great. They’re like 4.5 mil thick so we can heat-seal them, make them airtight and throw them in the freezer. Plus, they can go directly from the freezer to a boiling pot or the microwave.”

Maggie couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a chef on one of those cable cooking shows.

“The periosteum is what takes the longest to remove,” he said, holding up a long thin piece of what looked like gristle. “I’m sorry—” he looked at her over his goggles “—I hope I’m not being condescending. You probably know all this stuff.”

“No, no. Go on. I’m quite sure there’s a thing or two I don’t know.” The truth was, despite all the time she’d spent hanging around the FBI’s crime lab to pester Keith Ganza, she had never been to an anthropological lab, least of all, a teaching one. The surroundings fascinated her. And Bonzado’s enthusiasm and style were far from condescending. He simply seemed excited to share. His excitement could be contagious.

“We try to get all the way down to the bone,” he continued while he filled one plastic bag and then another. “Usually using some dishwashing detergent. My personal preference is Arm & Hammer’s Super Washing Soda,” he said, holding up the container and sounding like a commercial, “and a good long, slow boil. That usually does the trick. But this stuff takes forever.”

“The periosteum?”

“That’s right.” He smiled at her, another practiced response for his students, but practiced or not, Adam Bonzado’s smiles always seemed genuine, even to a trained FBI profiler. “All our bones are covered with it. It’s this tough fibrous material. I tell my students that a really gross comparison is when you eat barbecue ribs and there’s that tough part that sticks to the ribs. You know the stuff I’m talking about?”

She simply nodded.

“That’s the pig’s periosteum.”

This time she rewarded him with a smile and he seemed pleased, all the while she was thinking she probably wouldn’t be eating barbecue ribs any time soon. It surprised her that little things like that would make a difference, considering what didn’t bother her. But to this day she still couldn’t eat anything Keith Ganza offered her from the small refrigerator he kept in his lab. Maggie looked at it as a good sign. A sign that she hadn’t grown so jaded she could eat a tuna salad sandwich after it had shared a shelf with human body tissue.

“I’ll let these others boil,” he told her while he heat-sealed the two newly filled plastic bags and crossed the room to place them in the freezer. He stopped at the sink to pull off the gloves and wash his hands. He reached for a small bottle of what Maggie could see was vanilla extract, dabbing some onto his hands and rubbing it in. Then he started removing his goggles and mask, but hurried back to the stove when one of the pots started boiling over.

He lifted the lid and grabbed a clean wooden spoon to stir. He turned down the flame and then absently scooped out a spoonful and brought it to his lips, blowing on it before he did the unthinkable—he took a sip from the spoon.

“What the hell are you doing!”

He glanced at her, then quickly back at the stove and pot before his face flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, jeez! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s my lunch.” But her look mustn’t have convinced him, so he scooped up more as evidence, showing her what she could now identify as carrots, green beans, maybe some potatoes. “It’s just vegetable beef soup. Really.” He fumbled around the countertop and finally held up the can. “See. It’s just soup. Campbell’s. Mmm-mm…good.”

West Haven, Connecticut

M
aggie wasn’t sure what she was doing here. There were other places she needed to check out, coincidences she needed to follow up on. Like Jacob Marley Jr. and whether or not anyone called him Sonny. Or if Wally Hobbs’s contract to dig graves for the funeral home had anything to do with Steve Earlman not staying buried. Not to mention the address she had found imprinted on Joan Begley’s hotel notepad, and whether or not it was the meeting place for a rendezvous that may have been her last. There were plenty of places where she needed to look for answers and she wasn’t sure this was one of them. Yet, here she was at the University of New Haven.

The aroma filled the classroom laboratory. Maggie thought it smelled like beef broth. And annoyingly good. Professor Adam Bonzado stood over the industrial-size stove, lifting the lids of several steaming pots, stirring one with a wooden spoon before replacing the lids and turning down the gas flame. Today he wore a purple-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt with blue jeans and high-top sneakers. His plastic goggles were down around his neck, sharing swing space with a paper surgical mask. He glanced at her over his shoulder. Then did a double take, surprised to see her.

“You’re early,” he said.

“I didn’t have as much trouble finding the campus as I thought I might. Would you rather I go wander and come back?”

“No, no, not at all. I’ve got lots to show you.” He checked the pots one more time and turned to give her his attention. “Welcome to our humble lab.” He waved a hand over the area. “Come take a look.”

Maggie let her eyes take in the shelves of specimen jars and vials, odd assortments and sizes, some makeshift baby-food jars alongside bell jars and pickle jars with scientific labels covering the name brands. From a corner came the soft whirr of a dehumidifier. The room felt cool, and beneath the aroma of soup broth there was a trace of cleaning supplies, perhaps a hint of ammonia. The countertops were filled with microscopes and a scattered, strange collection of tools, from an impressive jawlike clamp without teeth to small forceps and an array of every sized brush imaginable.

In another corner were two huge plastic bubbles. Maggie guessed they were odor hoods. She could hear the quiet wheezing of ventilation fans from inside the contraptions that reminded her of old-fashioned beauty parlor dryers. The contents below, however, quickly dispelled that image. In the double sink underneath the two hoods Maggie could see skeletal remains, soaking in what appeared to be a sudsy solution. A hand stuck up out of the foam as if waving to her, most of the flesh gone.

And then there were the tables, six-foot-long tables, three of them between the aisles, a fleshless village of skulls and bones. Several skulls stared back at her. Others, too wounded to sit up, lay with hollow sockets staring at the wall or gazing at the ceiling. The bones were a variety of sizes and shapes and pieces, as well as colors. Some were sooty black, others creamy white, some dirty gray and still others a buttery yellow—butterscotch came to Maggie’s mind. Some were laid out carefully as if reconstructing a puzzle. Others were tangled in cardboard boxes at the edge of the tables, waiting to be sorted, waiting to tell their story.

“Let me finish this, okay? Then I want to show you a few interesting things I’ve discovered.”

Bonzado put on a pair of latex gloves, then put another pair over the first. He pulled the plastic goggles and mask in place, then grabbed what looked like an oven mitt and lifted the lid off one of the pots. He waited for the steam to clear, then took an oversize wooden spoon and began fishing out what looked like chunks of boiled meat and fat and carefully placed them into an open, waiting plastic bag.

“We save as much of the tissue as we can,” he explained, raising his voice to get through the mask in what sounded like a practiced tone, perhaps his teaching voice. “These bags are great. They’re like 4.5 mil thick so we can heat-seal them, make them airtight and throw them in the freezer. Plus, they can go directly from the freezer to a boiling pot or the microwave.”

Maggie couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a chef on one of those cable cooking shows.

“The periosteum is what takes the longest to remove,” he said, holding up a long thin piece of what looked like gristle. “I’m sorry—” he looked at her over his goggles “—I hope I’m not being condescending. You probably know all this stuff.”

“No, no. Go on. I’m quite sure there’s a thing or two I don’t know.” The truth was, despite all the time she’d spent hanging around the FBI’s crime lab to pester Keith Ganza, she had never been to an anthropological lab, least of all, a teaching one. The surroundings fascinated her. And Bonzado’s enthusiasm and style were far from condescending. He simply seemed excited to share. His excitement could be contagious.

“We try to get all the way down to the bone,” he continued while he filled one plastic bag and then another. “Usually using some dishwashing detergent. My personal preference is Arm & Hammer’s Super Washing Soda,” he said, holding up the container and sounding like a commercial, “and a good long, slow boil. That usually does the trick. But this stuff takes forever.”

“The periosteum?”

“That’s right.” He smiled at her, another practiced response for his students, but practiced or not, Adam Bonzado’s smiles always seemed genuine, even to a trained FBI profiler. “All our bones are covered with it. It’s this tough fibrous material. I tell my students that a really gross comparison is when you eat barbecue ribs and there’s that tough part that sticks to the ribs. You know the stuff I’m talking about?”

She simply nodded.

“That’s the pig’s periosteum.”

This time she rewarded him with a smile and he seemed pleased, all the while she was thinking she probably wouldn’t be eating barbecue ribs any time soon. It surprised her that little things like that would make a difference, considering what didn’t bother her. But to this day she still couldn’t eat anything Keith Ganza offered her from the small refrigerator he kept in his lab. Maggie looked at it as a good sign. A sign that she hadn’t grown so jaded she could eat a tuna salad sandwich after it had shared a shelf with human body tissue.

“I’ll let these others boil,” he told her while he heat-sealed the two newly filled plastic bags and crossed the room to place them in the freezer. He stopped at the sink to pull off the gloves and wash his hands. He reached for a small bottle of what Maggie could see was vanilla extract, dabbing some onto his hands and rubbing it in. Then he started removing his goggles and mask, but hurried back to the stove when one of the pots started boiling over.

He lifted the lid and grabbed a clean wooden spoon to stir. He turned down the flame and then absently scooped out a spoonful and brought it to his lips, blowing on it before he did the unthinkable—he took a sip from the spoon.

“What the hell are you doing!”

He glanced at her, then quickly back at the stove and pot before his face flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, jeez! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s my lunch.” But her look mustn’t have convinced him, so he scooped up more as evidence, showing her what she could now identify as carrots, green beans, maybe some potatoes. “It’s just vegetable beef soup. Really.” He fumbled around the countertop and finally held up the can. “See. It’s just soup. Campbell’s. Mmm-mm…good.”