Bone Secrets 03 - Buried

background.
    “I’m getting to it, Phil,” the senator said. “Detective, this guy was arrested for trespassing at the capitol building, so there is a record of who he is. But after his arrest, I never saw him again. I haven’t contacted Salem police to try to track down the arrest record. I thought I’d run it by you first.”
    Mason scribbled in his little flip book. “I’ll look into it. You said this happened within a few months of…of the disappearance date? How close to the date do you think the arrest was?”
    “I’m guessing within four weeks.”
    Mason wrapped up his power phone call. The senator didn’t have much other information. He scanned his notes from the call, an odd buzzing in his stomach. It wasn’t the buzz he got when he knew he had a hot lead. This was different. This was a dire, impending buzz.
    Or maybe his stomach felt that way because he was still outside the medical examiner’s building. And now he was late.
    He hustled across the parking lot and through the double doors. The girl at the front desk waved him in. “They were just asking if I’d seen you. They’re in op six!” she hollered after him as he strode down the hall.
    “Sorry!”
    Mason took off his hat and wiped at the sweat on his temples. The building was icy cool compared to the stiff heat outside. He wrinkled his nose as
the smell
entered his nostrils. There was no getting away from it. Tonight, he’d have to wash his pants and shirt and take a shower before going to bed. It didn’t matter ifhe was in the building for thirty minutes or three hours. The scent still clung. Dr. Campbell claimed the building had the best air filtration system available. And he didn’t doubt her. Clearly, nothing had been invented to eliminate the odor of decaying flesh.
    He added a medical examiner’s perfect air filter system to his mental list of
how to make a million bucks
.
    Mason paused outside of op six, took a deep breath through his mouth, and pushed the door open with his shoulder. Dr. Victoria Peres and Lacey Campbell were shoulder-to-shoulder, bent over a skull on one of the silver tables, as Dr. Peres pointed at the nasal opening. Dr. Campbell was nodding emphatically, her brows narrowed in concentration.
    Scanning the room, Mason took in four other tables with full skeletons. Each arranged as if the person had simply lain down and his flesh had melted away.
    How had they separated the skeletons?
    The pit had been one giant hole. The bodies tossed in like trash, their bones and flesh commingling over the years.
    “Mason. Over here.” Dr. Campbell gestured, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him.
    Actually, he figured her eyes were already bright from her fascination with the case. It took a special breed of person to get excited over old bones. Dr. Campbell was one. Dr. Peres was another. They were so deep in bone heaven, they probably hadn’t noticed he was very late.
    Dr. Peres nodded at him. “Detective.” She glanced at the clock on the wall.
    Scratch that. The forensic anthropologist missed nothing.
    He moved closer, his boots sounding too loud on the hard floor. “Morning, doctors.” He stopped next to Dr. Campbelland forced himself to take a good look at the remains. The bones were a muddy brown, not the ivory color he’d expected. He glanced at the other tables. The other skeletons were the same. “Why are they dirty?”
    Dr. Peres bristled and Dr. Campbell smiled, putting a calming hand on the other woman’s arm. “They aren’t dirty. They absorbed the color of the dirt they were buried in for twenty years. It’s pretty common. And they’ve been cleaned. There was some tissue still attached in a few places.”
    Mason grimaced. “Tissue? There was still flesh left?”
    “A bit. A simple soaking in a few different solutions takes care of it.”
    Mason knew she’d purposefully left out details. In the past, he’d stepped into the room when bones had been simmering to remove the flesh. It’d smelled like a restaurant. He swallowed hard.
    “How’d you get them separated? How do you know you have the right bones grouped together?” he asked.
    “Very carefully.” Dr. Peres spoke. “I’m glad I was there for the unearthing. That’s where the first mistakes are always made. Luckily, he’d buried them one at a time. There was a small layer of dirt between each skeleton, enough to help us keep each separate.”
    “Layers of dirt? How long apart between each burial?”
    Dr. Peres bit