Bones in Her Pocket: A Tempe Brennan E-Short by Kathy Reichs Page B
Authors: Kathy Reichs
Tags: Mystery
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instantly.
The flies. The odor. Something didn’t track.
I stared at the bag, debating. Call for help? Drag it ashore then phone the lab?
Clouds pulsed with electricity on the far side of the lake. The rumbling sounded louder.
Screw protocol. No way I wanted lightning frying my ass.
After shooting pics with my iPhone, I leaned toward the bag and tugged. My balance wasn’t good enough to free the thing.
I stepped closer. Calliphoridae bouncing off my face and hair, I yanked the handles from the branches on which they were snagged. The bag dropped with a smack.
Moving as quickly as my water-filled footwear allowed, I lugged my prize toward shore. Irritated flies trailed in my wake.
Skip helped drag the bag across the mud and up onto the rise. Water oozed from the canvas and poured from a six-inch tear on one side.
Back on terra firma, I took several more shots. Then I pulled the zipper and peeled back the top flap. Disenchanted, the flies set off for the fish. Sushi al fresco.
A skull stared out, orbits round and empty, as though startled by the sudden intrusion of sunlight. Hair covered the cranium and trailed the face like long, dark seaweed.
The body was clothed. Beneath the sodden fabric I could see remnants of ligament, a tag of gray-green tissue here and there.
That wasn’t what froze my breath in my throat.
The legs were tightly flexed, the bones slender tubes running below the muck-covered denim.
Legs.
Plural.
No way this was Mr. Tibia Fibula.
S KIP HELPED LOAD THE bag onto the Mule. The jarring ride might cause damage, but I didn’t want to wait. Lightning was streaking in earnest now.
Our return was subdued, even Kahn silent. At the compound, I picked up sufficient signal to make a call.
Tim Larabee, head pathologist at the MCME, was as surprised as I was. He’d sent me out fully expecting old bones.
Larabee asked if I could toss the bag into my trunk. Hell, no. I’d done that before. Once. The smell lingered in my car as long as I owned it. Maybe in my mind. Either way, I wasn’t going there again.
Larabee promised a transport van.
We waited amid cabins more suited to the Alps than the Carolina foothills. Kahn explained that they contained studios for the use of visiting artists, but I saw no signs of another’s presence. Skip said nothing.
After twenty minutes, Kahn excused himself to handle some business. I wondered if he planned to heads-up his lawyer. Skip stayed with me. Silent as ever.
“Mountain Island Lake sounds like they couldn’t make up their minds.” My stab at small talk.
“Mountain’s that island in the middle.” Chin-cocking the water.
“Must be deep.”
“Six hundred and fifty feet. Lake’s 3,300 acres, 61 miles of shore.” Two sentences. Skip was on a roll.
“That’s a lot of lake,” I said.
“People in Charlotte drink a lotta water.”
“Word of today leaks out they may to switch to bottled.”
Skip didn’t appreciate my humor. “We haul in five or six bodies a year. Mostly drunk boaters. Some we never find.”
Maybe I’d switch to Evian.
Kahn rejoined us, so I directed my questions to him.
“How many people have access to this area?”
“Only my family, my guests, and Skip. At the moment we have two artists in residence. We change the gate code when we think of it, but the place is large and, frankly, porous.”
“Fenced?”
Kahn waggled a hand. Yes and no. “We share a boundary fence with the Duke Energy folks. But it’s old and pretty much ignored, except by me.”
“The Riverbend Steam Station?” I’d seen it driving in, a hulking set of smokestacks, brick boxes, conveyers, and tangled wiring that looked like something out of a post-apocalypse film.
“Yeah. It’s a coal-fired power plant built in ’29 when the lake was created. Riverbend was brought online to supplement the supply when demands for electricity were highest. The place is so decrepit and poorly maintained the locals are rabid. And the situation has gotten
The flies. The odor. Something didn’t track.
I stared at the bag, debating. Call for help? Drag it ashore then phone the lab?
Clouds pulsed with electricity on the far side of the lake. The rumbling sounded louder.
Screw protocol. No way I wanted lightning frying my ass.
After shooting pics with my iPhone, I leaned toward the bag and tugged. My balance wasn’t good enough to free the thing.
I stepped closer. Calliphoridae bouncing off my face and hair, I yanked the handles from the branches on which they were snagged. The bag dropped with a smack.
Moving as quickly as my water-filled footwear allowed, I lugged my prize toward shore. Irritated flies trailed in my wake.
Skip helped drag the bag across the mud and up onto the rise. Water oozed from the canvas and poured from a six-inch tear on one side.
Back on terra firma, I took several more shots. Then I pulled the zipper and peeled back the top flap. Disenchanted, the flies set off for the fish. Sushi al fresco.
A skull stared out, orbits round and empty, as though startled by the sudden intrusion of sunlight. Hair covered the cranium and trailed the face like long, dark seaweed.
The body was clothed. Beneath the sodden fabric I could see remnants of ligament, a tag of gray-green tissue here and there.
That wasn’t what froze my breath in my throat.
The legs were tightly flexed, the bones slender tubes running below the muck-covered denim.
Legs.
Plural.
No way this was Mr. Tibia Fibula.
S KIP HELPED LOAD THE bag onto the Mule. The jarring ride might cause damage, but I didn’t want to wait. Lightning was streaking in earnest now.
Our return was subdued, even Kahn silent. At the compound, I picked up sufficient signal to make a call.
Tim Larabee, head pathologist at the MCME, was as surprised as I was. He’d sent me out fully expecting old bones.
Larabee asked if I could toss the bag into my trunk. Hell, no. I’d done that before. Once. The smell lingered in my car as long as I owned it. Maybe in my mind. Either way, I wasn’t going there again.
Larabee promised a transport van.
We waited amid cabins more suited to the Alps than the Carolina foothills. Kahn explained that they contained studios for the use of visiting artists, but I saw no signs of another’s presence. Skip said nothing.
After twenty minutes, Kahn excused himself to handle some business. I wondered if he planned to heads-up his lawyer. Skip stayed with me. Silent as ever.
“Mountain Island Lake sounds like they couldn’t make up their minds.” My stab at small talk.
“Mountain’s that island in the middle.” Chin-cocking the water.
“Must be deep.”
“Six hundred and fifty feet. Lake’s 3,300 acres, 61 miles of shore.” Two sentences. Skip was on a roll.
“That’s a lot of lake,” I said.
“People in Charlotte drink a lotta water.”
“Word of today leaks out they may to switch to bottled.”
Skip didn’t appreciate my humor. “We haul in five or six bodies a year. Mostly drunk boaters. Some we never find.”
Maybe I’d switch to Evian.
Kahn rejoined us, so I directed my questions to him.
“How many people have access to this area?”
“Only my family, my guests, and Skip. At the moment we have two artists in residence. We change the gate code when we think of it, but the place is large and, frankly, porous.”
“Fenced?”
Kahn waggled a hand. Yes and no. “We share a boundary fence with the Duke Energy folks. But it’s old and pretty much ignored, except by me.”
“The Riverbend Steam Station?” I’d seen it driving in, a hulking set of smokestacks, brick boxes, conveyers, and tangled wiring that looked like something out of a post-apocalypse film.
“Yeah. It’s a coal-fired power plant built in ’29 when the lake was created. Riverbend was brought online to supplement the supply when demands for electricity were highest. The place is so decrepit and poorly maintained the locals are rabid. And the situation has gotten
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