Bones of the Lost

crumbs smoothed by a tumbler.
    As I worked, the morning’s headache crept back. A tight feeling built in my chest. I’d said bullet trajectory was easy to analyze. They’d brought me seven thousand miles to do that. So far I was failing.
    I was examining a sixty-centimeter segment of humerus when I noticed an almost invisible spray crosscutting the surface.
    “There may be something here.” I angled the bone so Blanton’s camera could pick up the marks.
    “Could be powder stippling. But it’s evenly distributed.”
    “So no way to tell direction,” Blanton guessed.
    “No.” After a few more moments of angling and squinting.
    Disappointed, I dictated a description of the defect. Blanton took several more close-ups with a Nikon and scale, then shot backups with a Polaroid.
    “These babies have come a long way from the clunkers we used in the old days.” Blanton pulled the image free and laid it on the counter. “Fourteen megapixels, inkless three-by-five prints. The detail is passable in a pinch. I’ve seen way too many disasters with supposedly error-proof top-of-the-line equipment. I always shoot backups.”
    Hats off to you, Mr. Blanton.
    I continued searching, fragment by fragment.
    And came up blank.
    Discouraged, I straightened and rolled my shoulders. The clock said 12:10.
    “Break?” Blanton asked.
    I shook my head. “Now that the bones are arranged, Rasekh goes back to radiology.”
    Blanton called for the tech who’d X-rayed the remains while still wrapped in their shroud. He arrived in moments. Harold. After instruction from me, Harold wheeled the gurney out through the doors.
    “Unless the films pick up something I’ve missed, which is unlikely, Rasekh is a bust. Let’s move on.”
    I dictated the second man’s name. Ahmad Ali Aqsaee. After adding the other relevant information, I viewed the X-rays of Aqsaee in his shroud.
    And relaxed a micron.
    Aqsaee was in better condition than Rasekh. Made sense. He was still underground when the mortar hit. Nevertheless, normal postmortem damage appeared extensive.
    Satisfied there was nothing amiss in the shroud, I crossed to the gurney, unzipped the body bag, and laid back the fabric.
    Beside me, Blanton inhaled sharply.
    Like Rasekh, Aqsaee had been reduced to bone. But his skeleton differed in one striking way.
    The uninitiated think bone is white. They picture Halloween posters, instructional models from biology class, or the bleached cattle rib cages popular in western movies. But bone often takes on the pigment of the substrate in which it is buried.
    That had happened with Aqsaee. His skeleton was the color of old saddle leather.
    “That’s not something you see every day.”
    “It’s not uncommon,” I told Blanton. “Most likely minerals leeched from the rocks or soil.”
    “Why only this guy?”
    “Could be the elemental makeup was different at the back of the cemetery. Maybe runoff from the hillside percolated through Rasekh’s grave, washing the critical component away.”
    “The staining won’t cause you problems?”
    “No.”
    I approached the younger man exactly as I had the older. With only slightly less trepidation.
    I confirmed that all skeletal and dental features were consistent with Aqsaee’s bio profile. Male. Seventeen years old.
    “Doc.”
    “I looked at Blanton.”
    “The rest of the team needs lunch.”
    Reluctantly, I agreed. Thirty minutes later we were back. I began my trauma analysis.
    The skull was pristine. No fractures. No bullet holes.
    Blanton shot close-ups from multiple angles.
    Though the mandible was broken at the midline, I suspected the damage was postmortem and due to pressure from the overlying soil.
    More photos.
    The arms and legs showed no evidence of trauma. I moved on to the rib cage.
    Aqsaee’s midsection was damaged almost as badly as Rasekh’s. Viewing the fragmented ribs, broken clavicles, and crushed and abraded vertebrae, scapulae, and sternum, I felt my chest tighten anew.
    Unbidden, my eyes rolled to the observation window. On the far side, I could see Welsted and the delegates in heated discussion. The tall man was gesturing wildly. As I watched, he turned and stabbed a finger at the glass.
    Blanton saw the argument, too.
    “I’ll check it out.”
    Pouring gasoline on a fire? Maybe, but I didn’t try to stop him. My whole focus was on Aqsaee’s thoracic region.
    One by one, I lifted and inspected each fragment. I’d been at it ten minutes when I spotted a defect on