Carved in Bone

brake lights added a rosy overtone to the floodlights illuminating the concrete, the corpse, and Miranda. I paused to admire the effect. On most people, I’d noticed, a scrub suit hung like a tent. Miranda’s scrubs, on the other hand, somehow accentuated her curves. How she managed to look so shapely in such a shapeless garment was a mystery I found endlessly fascinating.
    She interrupted my reverie. “Whatcha got here, Dr. B.?”
    I reminded myself why we were here. “You’re gonna like this case, Miranda. A body from a cave in Cooke County. Most extensive adipocere formation I’ve ever seen.”
    She nodded appreciatively. “Cool. You ready to bring it in, or you wanna take some pictures first?”
    “Let’s take some pictures.”
    She ducked back inside, then reemerged a moment later wheeling a portable X-ray machine, which inhabited a small office just down the hall. I had learned, from years of experience, that X-rays could reveal remarkable things hidden in burned or decaying flesh: a bullet lodged in a skull or chest cavity; a cut in a rib or vertebra; a pacemaker or orthopedic device that could be traced back to a manufacturer, a surgeon, or even a patient. But I had also learned, from a memorable chewing-out, never to show up in the hospital’s radiology unit with a reeking corpse in tow. I suspected that even if the Forensic Center’s budget hadn’t covered the cost of a portable unit, the radiologists themselves might have gladly dug into their own pockets to keep me and my rotting friends at arm’s length.
    “This is case number twenty-three for the year,” I reminded Miranda, though clearly she already knew, because she handed me a radiographically opaque tag she’d prepared for the X-rays. The tag included the last two digits of the year, followed by the case number. In my first few years as state forensic anthropologist, I’d never gotten out of single digits—it was probably 1990 before I needed a number as high as 90–10. During the past decade, though, I’d gradually edged up through the twenties and into the thirties.
    We started at the head and worked our way down. We would try to match the cranial X-rays with antemortem dental X-rays from missing persons—if we could find any missing folks who fit the description of our body. In addition, we’d search the films for any signs of skeletal trauma, such as fractures or cut marks, or radiographically opaque material such as lead. Even if a bullet has passed completely through a body, it often leaves a telltale smear or splatter inside the skull or on a rib.
    I worked the film cassette under the body bag in the region of the head, and Miranda snapped the exposure. As I slid the cassette out and held it up for her, she took it in her left hand, swapping it for an unexposed cassette that she handed me with her right. We worked wordlessly; having done this dozens of times before, we could have performed this macabre dance in our sleep.
    After X-raying the head, we took films of the chest, the abdomen, and finally the pelvis. Besides showing us the bones, the pelvic X-rays would also reveal any metallic objects that had been in the pockets of the clothing. Although the clothes themselves had rotted—a hint that they were all cotton, and therefore pretty old—the adipocere in the region of the hips and thighs might well contain small objects that had been in the pockets.
    While Miranda stashed away the X-ray machine, I wheeled the gurney into the cooler. Miranda called out, “Aren’t we processing this one tonight?”
    “It’s pretty late. How about tomorrow? Like the sheriff said, one more night ain’t gonna hurt this one none. Besides, I’ve got to be in court early tomorrow for a hearing in the Ledbetter murder.”
    “Oh, you mean the case where you’re going to destroy the medical examiner’s career and put a cold-blooded killer back on the streets?” I winced, but she grinned and wagged a finger at me. “You’re doing the right thing, you know you are—he should have retired years ago, and he totally blew that case. Go home. Sleep the sleep of the just and the competent.”
    Only after I emerged onto the barren loading dock did I remember that my truck was parked a quarter-mile of asphalt away, over at the Body Farm, where I’d left it fourteen hours ago. I sagged in dismay and sudden fatigue.
    The one thing I needed most was a good night’s sleep. But that was also the one thing I was least likely to get.

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