Flash and Bones (4 page)

“You doubt that theory?”

Gamble’s shoulders rose, fell. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe. Cindi didn’t confide in me. But I’m sure my folks would never have agreed to her marrying Cale.”

“Why?”

“She was seventeen. He was twenty-four. And rolled with a pretty rough crowd.”

“Rough?”

“White-supremacist types. Hated blacks, Jews, immigrants. Hated the government. Back then I suspected Cale’s racist buddies
might be involved. But what would they have against Cindi? I don’t know what to think.”

Gamble shoved the photo back in his pocket.

“Mr. Gamble, it’s unlikely that the person we recovered is your sister. I’m about to begin my analysis. If you’ll leave contact information, I’ll inform you when I’ve finished.”

I passed across pen and paper. Gamble scribbled something and handed them back.

“Should it prove necessary, could you obtain Cindi’s dental records?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you or another maternal relative be willing to provide a DNA sample?”

“It’s just me now.”

“What about Lovette?”

“I think Cale’s father still lives around here. If I can find a listing, I’ll give him a call.”

Gamble got to his feet.

I rose and opened the door.

“I’m truly sorry for your loss,” I said.

“I just keep pedaling to stay out front.”

With that odd comment, he strode down the hall.

I stood a moment, trying to recall news stories about Cindi Gamble and Cale Lovette. The disappearance of a seventeen-year-old kid should have generated a headline or two. Angel Leonitus certainly had.

I could not remember seeing anything on Gamble.

Vowing to research the case, I headed back to the stinky room.

The landfill drum was as I’d left it. I was circling the gurney, considering options, when Tim Larabee pushed through the door wearing street clothes.

Mecklenburg County’s chief medical examiner is a runner. Not the healthy knock-out-three-miles-in-the-neighborhood variety but the train-for-a-marathon-in-the-Gobi-Desert zealot. And it shows. Larabee’s body is sinewy and his cheeks are gaunt.

“Oh boy.” Larabee’s deep-set eyes were pointed at the gurney.

“Or girl,” I said. “Take a look.” I indicated the open end of the drum.

Larabee crossed to it and peered at the hand. “Any idea how much more is in there?”

I shook my head. “Can’t x-ray because of the metal and the density of the fill.”

“What’s your take?”

“Someone stowed a body or body parts, then filled the drum with asphalt. The hand was up top and became visible when the lid came off and the asphalt eroded.”

“Tight fit for an adult, but I’ve seen it done. Any dates on the sector where they found this thing?”

“A landfill worker said that area of the dump closed in 2005.”

“So it’s not Leonitus.”

“No. She’s too recent.”

“As of Monday, we got us another MP. Man came from Atlanta to Charlotte for Race Week. Wife reported him missing.” Larabee was studying the drum. “How will you get it out?”

How will
I
get it out?

Great.

Though I’d never freed remains from asphalt, I had liberated corpses from cement. In each case, because fats from the surface tissues had created a nonbinding surface, a small void had surrounded the body. I anticipated a similar situation here.

“The drum is no problem. We’ll cut through that. The asphalt is trickier. One option is to saw at horizontal and lateral planes to the block, then use an air hammer to create propagation cracks.”

“Or?”

“The other option is to chisel away as much asphalt as possible, then dip the block in solvent to dissolve what remains.”

“What kind of solvent?”

“Acetone or turpentine.”

Larabee thought a moment, then, “Asphalt and cement work damn well as sealants, so there might be fresh tissue preserved in there. Go with Plan A. Joe can help.”

“Joe’s out on a call.”

“He just got back.” Larabee changed the subject. “Have you examined the new sandpit bones?”

“Everything is consistent with the rest of the skeleton.”

“Music to my ears.” Larabee chin-cocked the drum. “Let me know how it goes.”

I was taking photos when Hawkins entered the autopsy room and strode to the gurney.

Cadaver-thin, with dark circles under puffy lower lids, bushy brows, and dyed black hair combed straight back from his face, Joe Hawkins looks like an older and hairier version of Larabee.

“How we going to crack this sucker?” Hawkins rapped gnarled knuckles on the drum.

I explained Plan A.

Without a word, Hawkins went in search of the necessary tools. I was finishing with overview shots when he returned, dressed in blue surgical scrubs identical to mine.

Hawkins and I donned goggles, then he inserted a blade, plugged in, and revved the handheld power saw.

The room filled with the whine of metal on metal and the acrid smell of hot steel. Rust particles arced and dropped to the gurney.

Five minutes of cutting, then Hawkins laid down the saw and tugged and twisted with his hands. The segment came free.

More cutting. More tugging.

Eventually a black lump lay on the gurney, and an exoskeleton of torn metal lay on the floor.

Joe killed the saw. Raising my goggles to my forehead, I stepped forward.

The asphalt cast was the exact shape and size of the drum’s interior. Objects grazed its surface, pale and ghostly as morgue flesh.

The curve of a jaw? The edge of a foot? I couldn’t be sure.

Hawkins switched to the air hammer and, with some direction from me, began working downward toward the body parts. As cracks formed, I freed chunks of asphalt and placed them on the counter. Later I would examine each and take samples so chemists could determine their elemental composition.

Maybe useful, maybe not. Better to be safe. One never knew what would later prove significant.

Slowly, the counter filled.

One hunk. Three. Nine. Fifteen.

As the cast shrank, its contour changed. A form took shape, like a figure emerging from a block of marble being sculpted.

The top of a head. An elbow. The curve of a hip.

At my signal, Joe set down the chisel. Using hand tools, I went at the remaining asphalt.

Forty minutes later a naked body lay curled on the stainless steel. The legs were flexed with the thighs tight to the chest. The head was down, the forehead pressed to the upraised knees. The feet pointed in opposite directions, toes spread at impossible angles. One arm L’ed backward. The other stretched high, fingers spread as though clawing for escape.

A sweet, fetid odor now rode the air. No surprise.

Though shriveled and discolored, overall, the cadaver was reasonably well preserved.

But that was changing fast.

H
AWKINS BENT SIDEWAYS AND SQUINTED THROUGH BLACK
-framed glasses that had gone in and out of vogue many times since their purchase.

“Dude’s hanging a full package.”

I joined him and checked the genitals.

“Definitely male,” I said. “And adult.”

I shot close-ups of the outstretched hand, then asked Hawkins to bag it. The fingers first spotted by Jackson were now in pretty bad shape, but those embedded deeper in the asphalt retained significant soft tissue. And nails, under which trace evidence might be found.

While Hawkins sealed the hands in brown paper sacks, I filled out a case marker and adjusted camera settings. As I moved around the body, shooting from all angles, Hawkins brushed away black crumbs and positioned the card.

“Looks like this will be one for Doc Larabee.”

Pathologists work with freshly dead or relatively intact corpses to determine identity, cause of death, and postmortem interval. They cut Y-incisions on torsos and remove skullcaps to extract innards and brains.

Anthropologists answer the same questions when the flesh is degraded or gone and the skeleton is the only game left. We eyeball,
measure, and x-ray bone, and take samples for microscopic, chemical, or DNA analysis.

Hawkins was guessing that a regular autopsy might be possible.

“Let’s see how he looks stretched out,” I said.

Hawkins snugged the gurney to the autopsy table, and together we transferred MCME 227-11 and rolled him to his back. While I pulled on his ankles, Hawkins pushed downward on his legs. It took some effort, but eventually the John Doe lay flat on the stainless steel.

The man’s face was grotesque, the features distorted by a combination of hot asphalt and subsequent expansion and contraction while in the landfill. His abdomen was green and collapsed due to the action of anaerobic bacteria, the little buggers that start working from their home base in the gut once the heart stops beating.

Based on the amount of surface decomp, I guessed gray cells and organs might remain.

“I think you’re right, Joe.”

I pried loose the hand that had been twisted behind the man’s back. The fingers had shriveled, and the tips had suffered some skin slippage.

“We might get prints. Try rehydrating for an ink and roll.”

I was asking Hawkins to plump the fingertips by soaking and then injecting them with embalming fluid. Hopefully, he could obtain ridge detail for submission to national and state databases.

Hawkins nodded.

“Let’s get height,” I said.

Hawkins positioned a measuring rod beside the body, and I read the marker. As I jotted my estimate, he pried open the jaws. After thirty-five years on the job, he needed no direction.

MCME 227-11 had not been big on oral hygiene. His dentition contained no fillings or restorations. A molar and a premolar were missing on the upper left. Three of the remaining molars had cavities that could have housed small birds. The tongue side of every tooth was stained a deep coffee brown.

“The wisdom teeth have all erupted, but the first and second molars show very little wear,” I observed aloud.

“Young fella.”

Nodding agreement, I added my age estimate to the case form, completing a preliminary biological profile.

Male. White. Thirty to forty years of age. Five feet seven. Smoker. Dental records unlikely.

Not much, but a start for the pathologist.

“Finish with the photos, shoot some full-body and dental X-rays, then put him back in the cooler for Dr. Larabee. And let’s send a sample of asphalt over to the crime lab,” I said.

I stripped off my mask, apron, and gloves, tossed them in the biohazard pail, then went to update my boss.

Larabee was in his office, talking to a man with salt-and-pepper hair and an NFL neck. Tan sport jacket, open-collar blue shirt, no tie.

Seeing that Larabee had a visitor, I started to move on. Blue Shirt’s words caused me to linger. He was asking about MCME 227-11, the John Doe whom Hawkins and I had just examined.

“—body from the landfill could be Ted Raines, the guy who went missing earlier this week.”

“The man visiting from Atlanta.”

“Yeah. He came to make business calls, but mainly for Race Week. Bought tickets for the All-Star Race tomorrow night, the Nationwide and Coca-Cola 600 next weekend. Visited clients, as planned, on Monday. After that he stopped calling home or answering his cell phone. Wife’s gone apeshit. Thinks something bad happened in Charlotte.”

“We haven’t begun the autopsy.” Larabee sounded anxious to be rid of the guy. “An anthropologist will first assess the condition of the remains.”

A rubber sole squeaked on the tile behind me. I turned. Hawkins was staring past me toward Larabee’s half-open door, scowling deeply.

“Next of kin are coming out of the woodwork,” I said, feeling guilty at having been caught eavesdropping.

Still scowling, Hawkins continued down the hall.

Allrighty, then.

I photocopied my case form and gave it to Mrs. Flowers to deliver to Larabee.

My watch said 1:48 p.m.

I considered my options. I’d finished with the sandpit bones. The landfill John Doe was now Larabee’s problem. Since I work only when anthropology cases come in, and there was nothing to keep me at the MCME, the afternoon was mine to spend as I chose.

I chose to placate my cat.

Birdie was miffed. First I’d dumped him with a neighbor while I was away in Hawaii. Then, his first day home, I’d abandoned him to dig up a sandpit.

Or maybe it was the thunder rumbling again. Birdie hates storms.

“Come on out.” I waggled a saucer at floor level. “I’ve got lo mein.”

Birdie held position, entrenched beneath the sideboard.

“Fine.” I placed the noodles on the floor. “It’s here when you want it.”

I pulled a Diet Coke from the fridge, served myself from the little white carton I’d picked up at Baoding, and settled at the kitchen table. Opening my laptop, I Googled the names Cindi Gamble and Cale Lovette.

The results were useless. Most led to fan sites for Lyle Lovett.

I tried Cindi Gamble alone. The name generated links to a Face-book page, and to stories about a woman mauled to death by a tiger.

I paused to consider. And to slurp lo mein.

Local disappearance. Local paper.