L.A. Boneyard by P.A. Brown Page A

symphysial separation of nearly nine millimeters could indicate prenatal distress.”
    Jairo leaned forward. “What does that mean? She was pregnant?”
    “Possibly.”
    David and Jairo exchanged looks. “Twice might be a coincidence,” David muttered. “This is turning into an epidemic.”
    “Who kills pregnant women? Hard to believe there could be three mistakes some asshole’s trying to cover up.”
    “Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women,” Galt said.
    David felt like snapping, “Don’t quote me statistics I already know,” but he knew the anthropologist was trying to be helpful.
    Still, it hardly mattered if the three dead women fit some statistic; he needed to know why these three were dead.
    “Can you give me a cause of death, Doctor?”
    Galt nodded and got on with his autopsy. He made tiny measurements using calipers and a ruler, and spoke his findings into the hanging microphone, putting the scanning electron microscope into action more than once. Finally he spoke again.
    “Subcomponents of the auricular surface correspond with early adulthood. Include the pregnancy as a factor of age, and I think L.A. BONEYARD 83
    we’re looking at a young Caucasian woman, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, give or take five years—although I’d hesitate to say she’s less than sixteen.”
    “So, young, white and the hair found with her was blond.
    Bottled?”
    “The test results will tell us that.”
    “Cause of death?” David repeated.
    Galt pointed at the skeletonized form. “Hyoid has been fractured. Strong indications she was slashed with something very sharp, possibly serrated. See here and here,” he indicated areas of the neck where the vocal chords would have been.
    “Sorry, I can’t tell what kind of knife was used.”
    “Was the baby buried with her?”
    “Let me get back to you.”
    They’d have to be content with that. David and Jairo left the morgue and stepped out into the surprisingly hot pre-spring day. The sun had turned the parking lot into a simmering cauldron, and Jairo’s unmarked stewed in the unseasonable glare that bounced off the mullioned windows of the red brick building in front of them. As he waited for Jairo to unlock the vehicle, a meat wagon rolled into the lot, rolling around to the unloading zone. Jairo cranked the air on the minute he started the car.
    “What now?” he asked.
    “We track down the building’s owner and pay a visit.”
    They still hadn’t found him by the end of the day. Before it got too late, David called the vet about the dog and was given the number of Sergeant’s breeder, in Anaheim. He called the number and got a young girl on the phone.
    When he asked to speak to someone about one of their dogs an older woman came on the line. “Yes?” she said.
    David introduced himself. “My partner found a dog we think belongs to you, but the owner isn’t showing up. We’d like to know what you want us to do with him.”

    84 P.A. Brown
    David rattled off the number the vet had read off the implant Sergeant carried.
    “Oh that’s Avanti’s Special Edition,” she said. “You say you found him?”
    “Like I said, my partner found him on the street. He’d obviously been, ah, left to his own devices—”
    “You mean abandoned?” the woman’s voice was cool. “Did he call animal control?”
    “He didn’t feel comfortable doing that.”
    “And what exactly does he want to do?” she said shrewdly, and David suspected she knew exactly what Chris wanted to do.
    “Does he want me to take the dog back? I will, I tell all my dog owners if they ever find they can’t keep an animal, to bring it back. I don’t countenance dumping any dog into the street, but especially not one of mine.”
    “No, ma’am. Actually he was kind of hoping you might see your way to letting us keep him.”
    “You want him?”
    David took a deep breath, wondering what he was getting himself in for. “Yes, ma’am. We do.”
    “Tell