Bloodstream (15 page)

Lucy Overlock arrived late to her own class. Fifteen minutes after her two graduate and ten undergraduate students stood assembled in the university museum’s basement lab, Lucy herself strode in, her slicker dripping. “With this weather, I probably should have canceled,” she said I m glad you all made it anyway She hung up her ram gear,

under which she wore her usual jeans and flannel shirt, practical attire considering their surroundings. The museum basement was both dank and dusty, a cluttered cavern that smelled like the artifacts it contained. Along both walls were shelves lined with hundreds of wooden boxes, contents labeled in faded typescript: “Stonington #11: shell implements, arrowheads, miscellaneous.” “Pittsfield #32: partial skeletal remains, adult male.”

At the center of the room, on a broad work table draped with a plastic tarpaulin, lay the new additions to this neatly catalogued charnel house.

Lucy flicked on a wall switch. Fluorescent lamps hummed on, their unnatural glare illuminating the table. Claire and Lincoln joined the circle of students. The lights were unforgiving, casting the faces around the table in harsh relief.

Lucy removed the tarp.

The skeletal remains of the two children had been laid out side by side, the bones placed in their approximate anatomical positions. One skeleton was missing its rib cage, one lower leg, and the right upper extremity. The other skeleton appeared to be largely intact except for the missing small bones of the hands.

Lucy took her position at the head of the table, near the skulls. “What we have here is a sampled assemblage of human remains from dig number seventy-two at the southern end of Locust Lake. The dig was completed yesterday. For reference purposes, I’ve tacked the site map over there, on the wall. As you can see, the site is located right on the edge of the Meegawki Stream. That area had heavy rains and flooding this past spring, which is probably the reason this gravesite became exposed.” She looked down at the table. “So, let’s begin. First, I Want all of you to examine the remains. Feel free to pick them up, look them over carefully. Ask any questions you have about the site. Then let’s hear your conclusions as to age, race, and length of burial. Those of YOU who took part in the dig—please hold your tongues. Let’s see What the others can deduce on their own.”

One of the students reached for a skull.

Lucy stepped back and quietly circled the table, sometimes glancing over her students’ shoulders to watch them work. This assembly

made Claire think of some grotesque dining ritual: the remains laid out like a feast on the table, all those eager hands reaching for the bones, turning them under the light, passing them to other hands. At first there was no conversation, the silence broken only by the occasional whisk of a tape measure being extended, retracted.

One of the skulls, missing its mandible, was handed to Claire.

The last time she’d held a human skull was in medical school. She rotated it beneath the light. Once she could name every foramen, every protuberance, but like so many other facts crammed into her memory during four years of training, those anatomical names had been forgotten, displaced by more practical data like billing codes and hospital phone numbers. She turned the skull upside down and saw that the upper teeth were still in place. The third molars had not yet erupted.
A child’s mouth.

Gently she set down the skull, shaken by the reality of what she’d just cradled in her hands. She thought of Noah at age nine, his hair a whorl of dark curls, his face silky smooth against hers, and she stared at that skull of a child whose flesh had long since rotted away

She was suddenly aware of Lincoln’s hand, resting on her shoulder. “You all right?” he asked, and she nodded. His gaze was sad, almost mournful under the harsh lights. Are we the only ones haunted by this child’s life? she wondered. The only ones who see more than an empty shell of calcium and phosphate?

One of the female students, a younger, slimmer version of Lucy, asked the first question. “Was this a coffin burial? And was the terrain field or woods?”

“The terrain was moderately wooded, all new growth,” answered Lucy. “We did find iron nails and fragments of the coffin, but the wood was mostly rotted away”

“And the soil?” a male student asked.

“Clay, moderately saturated. Why do you ask?”

“A high clay content helps preserve remains.”

“Correct. What other factors affect the preservation of remains?" Lucy glanced around the table. Her students responded with an eager ness that struck Claire as almost unseemly. They were so focused on

mineralized remains, they had forgotten what these bones represented. Living, laughing children.

“Soil compaction—moisture—” “Ambient temperature.”

“Carnivores.”

“Depth of burial. Whether it’s exposed to sunlight.”

“The age at time of death.”

Lucy’s gaze shot to the student who’d spoken. It was the young Lucy clone, also dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. “How does the deceased’s age affect the bony remains?”

“The skulls of young adults remain intact longer than skulls of elderly people, perhaps because of heavier mineralization.”

“That doesn’t tell me how long these particular skeletons have been lying in the ground. When did these individuals die?”

There was silence.

Lucy did not seem disappointed by their lack of response. “The correct answer,” she said, “is: We can’t tell. After a hundred years, some skeletons may crumble to dust, while others will show almost no weathering. But we can still draw a number of conclusions.” She reached across the table and picked up a tibia. “Note the flaking and peeling in some of the long bones, where circumferential lamellar bone has natural cleavage lines. What does this indicate to you?”

“Changing wet and dry periods,” said the Lucy clone.

“Right. These remains were temporarily protected by the coffin. But then the coffin rotted, and the bones were exposed to water, especially near that streambed.” She glanced at a young man Claire recognized as one of the grad students who’d helped excavate the site. With his long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and three gold earrings in one ear, he could easily have passed for a rogue sailor in an earlier century. The one incongruous note to his appearance was his scholarly wire-rim spectacles. “Vince,” said Lucy, “tell us about the flood data for that area.”

“I’ve searched back as far as the records go, to the 1920s,” said Vince. “There were two episodes of catastrophic flooding: in the spring of 1946, and then again, this past spring, when the Locust River

overflowed its banks. I assume that’s how this burial site became exposed. Erosion of the Meegawki streambed due to heavy rain.”

“So we have two recorded periods of site saturation, followed by drier years, which have caused this flaking and peeling of cortical bone.” Lucy set down the tibia and picked up the femur. “And now for the most interesting finding of all. I’m referring to this gash here, on the back of the femoral shaft. It looks like a cut mark, but the bone is so badly weathered, the gash has lost its definition. So we can’t tell if there’s been a green bone response.” She noticed Lincoln’s questioning look. “A green bone response is what happens when living bone bends or twists while being stabbed. It tells you whether the bone was cut postmortem or antemortem.”

“And you can’t tell from this bone?”

“No. It’s been exposed too long to the elements.”

“So how can you determine if this was a homicide?”

“We have to turn our attention to the other bones. And here we’ll find your answer.” She reached for a small paper bag. Tipping it sideways, she emptied the contents on the table.

Small bones clattered out like gray dice.

“The carpals,” she said. “These are from the right hand. Carpals are quite dense—they don’t disintegrate as quickly as other bones. These were found buried deep and packed in a dense clump of clay, which further preserved them.” She began to shuffle through the carpals like a seamstress searching for just the right button. “Here,” she said, choosing one pebble and holding it up to the light.

The gash was immediately apparent, and so deep it had nearly cleaved the bone in two.

“This is a defense injury,” said Lucy. “This child—let’s call her a girl—raised her arms to defend herself against her attacker. The blade stabbed her in the hand—deeply enough to almost split the carpal bone. The girl is only eight or nine and rather small in stature, so she can hardly fight back. And whoever plunged that knife in is quite strong—strong enough to stab right through her hand.

“The girl turns. Maybe the blade is still lodged in her flesh, or maybe the attacker has pulled it out and is preparing to stab again. The girl would try to run away, but she is pursued. Then she stumbles, or

brings her down, and she falls to the ground, prone. I assume it’s prone, because there are cut marks on the thoracic vertebrae, a broad blade, possibly a hatchet, sinking in from behind. There is also the cut mark in the femur—a blow to the back of the thigh, which means she’s lying on the ground now. None of these injuries are necessarily fatal. If she is still alive, she’s bleeding heavily. What happens next, we don’t know, because the bones don’t tell us. What we do know is that she is lying face down on the ground and she can’t run, she can’t defend herself. And someone has just sunk a hatchet or an ax into her thigh.” Gently she placed the carpal bone on the table. It was only the size of a pebble, the broken remnant of a terrible death. “That’s what these bones tell me.”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Claire said, softly: “What happened to the other child?”

Lucy seemed to rouse herself from a trance, and she looked at the second skull. “This was a child of similar age. Many of its bones are missing, and those we do have are severely weathered, but I can tell you this much: he—or she—suffered a crushing and probably fatal blow to the skull. These two children were buried together, in the same coffin. I suspect they died during the same attack.”

“There must be records of it,” said Lincoln. “Some old news account of who these children were.”

“As a matter of fact, we do know their names.” It was Vince talking, the ponytailed grad student. “Because of the date on a coin found in the same soil stratum, we knew their deaths occurred sometime after 1885. I searched the county deed records and learned that a family by the name of Gow owned that entire tract of land extending along the southern curve of Locust Lake. These bones are the mortal remains of Joseph and Jennie Gow, siblings, ages eight and ten.” Vince gave a sheepish grin. “It seems that what we’ve dug up here, folks, is the Gow family cemetery.”

This revelation did not strike Claire as a particularly humorous revelation, and she was disturbed by the fact several of the students laughed.

“Because it was a coffin burial,” explained Lucy, “we suspected this might be a family cemetery. I’m afraid we’ve disturbed their final resting place.”

“Then you know how these children died?” asked Claire. “News accounts are hard to come by, because that particular area

was sparsely populated at the time,” said Vince. “What we do have available are the county death records. The Gow children’s deaths were both recorded on the same day: November fifteenth, 1887. Along with the deaths of three other members of their family”

There was a moment of horrified silence.

“Are you saying all five people died on the
same
day?” asked Claire. Vince nodded. “It appears this family was massacred.”

9

Carrot sticks and boiled potatoes and a microscopic sliver of chicken breast.

Louise Knowlton gazed down at the barren plate she’d just set before her son and she ached with maternal guilt. She was starving her own child. She saw it in his face, in those hungry eyes, the weak slump of his shoulders. Sixteen hundred calories a day! How could anyone survive on that! Barry had indeed lost weight, but at what price? He was but a shadow of his formerly robust 265-pound self, and even though she knew he needed to lose weight, it was clear to her, the one person in the world who knew him best, that her darling child was suffering.

She sat down at her own plate, on which she’d piled fried chicken and buttered biscuits. A solid, healthy meal for a cold night. Looking across the table, she met her husband’s gaze. Mel was silently shaking his head. He couldn’t stand it either, watching their son go hungry.

“Barry, sweetie, why don’t you have just one biscuit?” offered Louise.

“No, Mom.”

“It’s not so many calories. You can scrape off the gravy.”

“I don’t want any”

“Look how flaky they are! It’s that recipe from Barbara Perry’s mom. It’s the bacon fat that makes them so good. One little bite, Barry. Just try one bite!” She held out a steaming biscuit to his lips. She could not stop herself, could not suppress the impulse, reinforced by fourteen years of motherhood, to feed that pink and needy mouth. This was more than food; this was love, in the shape of a crusty biscuit dripping butter onto her fingers. She waited for him to accept the offering.

“I told you, I don’t want any!” he yelled.

It was as shocking as a slap in the face. Louise sat back, stunned. The biscuit tumbled from her fingers and plopped into the lake of gravy glistening on her plate.

“Barry,” said his father.

“She’s always shoving food at me! No wonder I look like this! Look at both of you!”

“Your mother loves you. Look how you’ve hurt her feelings.”

Louise sat with trembling lips, trying not to cry. She gazed down at the bountiful dinner she had set on the table. It represented two hours of work in the kitchen, a labor of love, and oh how she loved her son! Now she saw the meal for what it was: the wasted efforts of a fat and stupid mother. She began to cry, her tears dribbling into the cream cheese mashed potatoes.

“Mom.” Barry groaned. “Ah geez. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind.” She held up a hand to ward off his pity. “I understand, Barry. I understand, and I won’t do it again. I swear I won’t.” She blotted away the tears with the napkin and for a few seconds managed to regain her dignity. “But I try so hard and—and—” She buried her face in the napkin, her whole body quaking with the effort not to cry. It took a moment for her to realize Barry was talking to her.