Bones of the Lost

side.
    “A white mark,” Larabee simplified. “After about ten hours the red blood cells and capillaries would have decomposed sufficiently so blanching wouldn’t have occurred.”
    “And rigor’s when the stiff gets stiff.” Slidell pronounced it
rigger
.
    Larabee nodded. “When the body arrived, rigor was complete in the small muscles, but not in the largest ones. Her jaws were locked, but I could still bend her knees and elbows.”
    “So she died more than seven hours before she got here, but less than ten.” Slidell did the math in his head. It took a while. “Sometime between eleven and two.”
    “It’s not a precise science,” Larabee said.
    “What about stomach contents? Once you get her open?”
    “Ninety-eight percent of her last meal would have left her stomach within six to eight hours of ingestion. With luck I might findsome fragments, corn, maybe tomato skin, in a rugal fold in the gastric mucosa. I’ll let you know.”
    “What about vitreous?” I was asking about fluid drawn from the eye. “Can you test for potassium?”
    “I took a sample, but it won’t really narrow the range.”
    “How close was she to the light rail?” I asked Slidell.
    “She was on the shoulder, on the side opposite the railway.”
    “How often do trains pass during those hours?”
    “Last one runs by there just after one A.M. The next isn’t until five A.M. ”
    “What about metallic spray?” I asked Larabee. “Or oil. Did you find any deposits on her skin or hair? On the clothing?”
    He shook his head. “Unlikely airborne residue would travel that far, but I’ll double-check. What are you thinking?”
    “The presence or absence of train residue might narrow the time frame.”
    Larabee spread two sinewy hands, palms up. “Worth a try.”
    I turned back to Slidell. “How was she found?”
    “A call came in a little after seven A.M. Teacher on her way to work noticed what she thought was a mannequin, pulled over, thinking she could use a dummy for the school play. Tossed her cornflakes, then dialed 911.”
    I picked up the scene photos and worked through a progression of shots moving from far to near.
    The first several showed a stretch of empty road not different from what I’d pictured in my mind. On the right, the raised light-rail tracks threw long, postdawn shadows over the embankment, the shoulder, and the pavement below.
    On the left, maybe eighty yards distant from the yellow crime-scene tape triangling the body, stood a small stucco building fronted by a gravel lot.
    “What’s that?”
    “A party supply store. Been empty for months.”
    “And that?” I pointed to a one-story, windowless structure.
    “Some sort of self-storage outfit.”
    The next series zoomed in on the body and its immediate surroundings. Rountree Road coming in from the west. Old Pinevillerunning north and south. On the latter lay one of the tan vinyl boots. My eyes traversed the pavement.
    Paralleling the right shoulder was a swath of grass and foxtails that yielded to tangled underbrush as the ground sloped to a trench beside the supporting wall of the light-rail platform.
    Back on the Rountree side, I noted an irregular smear of dirt and a spray of pebbles on the gravel shoulder, what looked to be a crumpled paper cup, and a beer can. Specks of white peeked from the tangled weeds. Litter?
    “Think there could be anything useful there? Prints on the cup or can? Something in the trash?”
    Slidell licked a thumb, flipped pages, and scribbled in his spiral.
    In the next series, the girl was covered by a red wool blanket, a corner of her skirt and one leg visible along the left side. The limb twisted outward from the hip at an impossible angle. Beside it, not on the foot, was the other boot.
    The mound below the blanket looked pitifully small. Tracing its contours I could see that the other leg lay straight, with the foot crooked unnaturally toward the head. One arm appeared to be outstretched. The position of the other was unclear.
    Bands of anger and sadness squeezed my chest. I drew a deep breath.
    “Who covered her?” I knew it hadn’t been CSU. No way trained technicians would risk transferring fibers or disturbing trace evidence.
    Slidell spit-thumbed pages in his notepad.
    “Lydia Dreos.”
    “The teacher?”
    “Yeah. I forgot that part. She had the blanket in her trunk.”
    In the next several photos the girl lay exposed, with the blanket folded inside a plastic evidence bag beside her. Her skin