Birdy Waterman 01 - The Bone Box

and measures, and the deadpan commentary about a young woman and her horrendous demise. The medical examiner, Stephanie Noritake, had been an idol of Birdy’s. She was one of the first women Birdy had heard of doing the work of speaking for the dead. Birdy had stood in line for two hours to get a signed copy of the doctor’s Among the Stones and Bones: My Life in the Autopsy Suite . She felt like she’d gushed too much when it came her turn to get an autograph, but she couldn’t help it. Dr. Noritake was a forensic science rock star, a woman who mixed care and concern with authority and science. There was no denying that the two shared a bond. Dr. Noritake was one of the first Asian women to hold the position of medical examiner in a major American city when she served in San Jose in the late 1960s. After retirement she moved to the Pacific Northwest, where her family had lived before internment in World War II. Dr. Noritake consulted on cases in Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap Counties.
    One of those was the Anna Jo Bonner’s case.
    She’d testified at trial that the blood found on the victim matched what had been recovered from Tommy’s T-shirt—putting him in the cabin—but her most interesting testimony had been about the stab wounds that killed the girl.

    From the autopsy report:

    . . . there are twenty-seven wounds, indicating overkill. Twenty of the wounds were made after the victim was supine on the floor; nine of those hit the floorboards after piercing the victim’s upper torso ...

    It was, as Dr. Noritake said in her report, and later at trial, “a classic rage killing.”
    And while there could be no doubt that whoever had wielded that knife had overdone it—severing the carotid artery had done the job just fine—as far as Birdy could recall there was no mention as to why Tommy would have wanted to kill his girlfriend. If it had been rage killing, then what was he so angry about?
    The next morning, she faced the mirror in the tiny mint-green and black-tiled bathroom. Birdy wasn’t big on makeup, but a hurried glance indicated her sleepless night and the need for a little help. Her brown eyes were puffy, and her skin uneven. She applied a light swipe of powder. Tying back her shoulder-length black hair with a rubber band, she pronounced herself presentable.
    It must have been intentional because it happened every time, but Birdy Waterman found herself dressing down for her trips back home to Neah Bay. She commanded a good salary as Kitsap County’s forensic pathologist. She dressed beautifully every day for work. Weekends around Port Orchard, she always put on dressy slacks and a nice top. Jeans—and not even new ones at that—were reserved for visits home.
    She put on a pair of Lee’s from Walmart and a sweater. In Port Orchard, she was Dr. Waterman , and she wore her accomplishments proudly. At home, where they would certainly be noticed, she was merely Birdy. And she did everything she could to keep herself from giving the appearance that she’d made it.
    And, yet, everyone on the reservation knew she had. There were very few secrets kept among the Makah.
    Maybe just one.

C HAPTER T WO
    The front steps of the old mobile home were spongy. Each tread had soaked in rainwater on such a steady basis that the fact they were intact was some kind of minor miracle in a place that was decidedly short on them.
    Birdy knocked on the door and waited, feeling the past come at her like it always did. Her mother’s house . The home she and her siblings had grown up in. It was only fiberglass, aluminum, and carpet that hadn’t been changed since the home was delivered to the reservation in 1969 as a part of a government-sponsored effort to help impoverished Native Americans get a step or two closer to something that had eluded them—hope.
    The Makah people weren’t so foolish to think that a mobile home was the equivalent of the American Dream.
    Birdy’s father, Mackie Waterman, had put it very succinctly the day the doublewide was rolled into position.
    “If this is their idea of making things even, they’re working with the wrong set of scales.”
    As she stood there on the wobbly stoop, the memory of her father brought a smile. He’d been gone for a couple of years, but in a very real way, he was always with her. While her mother could be cold, her father had doted on her. He’d called her every variation of her name—Baby Bird, Purty Birdy, and when she was didn’t do as she was