Don’t Look Behind You

tall this man had been; there weren’t enough complete long bones to estimate that. The same was true of the nameless man’s ethnic ancestry. Forensic anthropologists use cranial, facial, and dental uniqueness to indicate racial and other ancestral signs. But these remains had no face or teeth, and only a partial skull.
    Although there was no skull per se, she was able to examine the occipital rim on the back of the head, forehead, and upper jaw. She could not tell, however, if there was
any
solid evidence of foul play.
    “There are some cracks in the pieces of skull,” she pointed out. “It’s possible they were caused by a gunshot to the head—but they could have been caused by other things, too.”
    Dr. Taylor laid out all of the bones on an examining table, forming a partial skeleton. She then drew a chartshowing the bones that were missing in white and shading in deep black those that had been found. (You can see this chart in the photo section.)
    There was no evidence remaining of possible trauma and no soft tissue that might have once held a bullet, but Katherine Taylor looked at the spots where some bones had been truncated. She could discern that someone had used a very sharp instrument—most likely a power saw—to dismember this body. The breaks were too clean—too smooth to be the result of after-death drying and weathering. Someone had used the saw to slice through the bones at the thighs, upper arms, tip of the chin, and the shoulder blades.
    Benson felt that it was unlikely that the body was that of a transient who’d taken shelter in the empty house. Why would anyone have gone to so much trouble to dismember a stranger? No. Someone had surely killed this nameless man and made sure that all identifying characteristics were separated from the rest of the bones.
    Benson had no identification yet; he knew only that whatever had happened had taken place more than ten years earlier—quite possibly
decades
before. He believed the victim had been a middle-aged male and deduced that someone had wanted to hide his death and any connection he might have had to the old house on Canyon Road East.
    But why? Motive has so much impact on whether a homicide can be solved. The detectives had no idea what human emotions and interactions had fanned flames hot enough to motivate someone to commit murder. And theyundoubtedly wouldn’t have until they could identify the disassembled body.
    The information gleaned from Katherine Taylor’s report narrowed down the parameters of positive identification, although there were still more questions than answers. Many tenants had come and gone from this house and acreage. Which of them—if any—might have had reason to commit murder and hide all signs that it had occurred?
    Certainly the killer or killers must believe by now that they had, indeed, gotten away with murder. The Pierce County detective wondered if those responsible lived nearby and if they might not be feeling more and more anxious as the news of the body find accelerated on television and in the local papers. Unearthed and unidentified bodies are almost always good fodder for the top of the nightly news.
    Lieutenant Bomkamp sent Benson out to find everyone who had once occupied the tall yellow house.
    Or had reason to visit there.
    Fortunately, some of the extended family members who owned the property in the Summit district west of Puyallup had remarkable recall. Over the years, Owen Carlson’s sister Marilyn Miller had been mostly responsible for renting the house. She and her husband were reported to be on their way back from a trip to Kansas City. Her brother was confident that she would be able to trace rental records back many years.
    While Ben Benson waited to interview Mrs. Miller, he reread the statement from the woman who had lived in the rental house from 1985 to 1995.
    “We moved into the house on Canyon Road in 1985,” she’d written. “I was seven months pregnant. When we moved out in 1995, our niece and nephew moved in and lived there for a few years before they built their first home. Then my brother-in-law and his family moved in. After that the Carlson family decided to sell the property, and the house has now been empty for some time.”
    Ben Benson realized that no one had officially lived there for six or seven years. He shook his head as he read the last comment on the former tenant’s statement: “There is something we were told and we’re not sure if it is a fact! A