The Bone Bed

barefoot.”
    “Psychological hobbling,” Benton says, and I wonder how long he’s known. “Rendering the victim submissive and dominated.”
    “And also making it harder to run,” Douglas Burke says to him and no one else.
    Her wide-eyed stare brings to mind a wild animal, a rabid one.
    “It was a cool and rainy summer in northwest Alberta.” The most powerful forensic pathologist in the United States resumes briefing me. “And of course it’s been quite cold during the month of October. So two months out and most of the body is reasonably intact because of temperatures that almost mimic refrigerated conditions, and also clothing and rocks protected it somewhat. If she’s a stabbing, a shooting, blunt force, possibly even strangulation, there may be enough soft tissue for us to tell. ID by dental charts has been confirmed, and we’re awaiting DNA, but there doesn’t seem to be a doubt it’s her.”
    “Any apparent injuries?” I ask.
    “Not that I’m aware of,” he says. “We know she wasn’t shot in the head. No skull fractures.” He’s looking at a computer on his desk, obviously scrolling through an electronic file. “No projectiles, no fractures on x-ray. They haven’t autopsied her yet, are waiting for Dr. Lopez.”
    “The Canadian authorities understand we believe she’s not an isolated case,” Benton says to me, and when we were on the elevator earlier and I mentioned that Emma Shubert is dead, he knew it was true.
    He knew it for a fact. It was he who instigated this meeting.
    “They understand she’s linked to at least one homicide here, possibly two, possibly more,” Benton fills me in, and I have no doubt the Grande Prairie detectives and Royal Canadian Mounted Police working Emma Shubert’s disappearance would have contacted the FBI the instant they realized the remains were hers.
    She was an American citizen. A disturbing jpg image and video file possibly relating to her were anonymously e-mailed to me two days ago, and the local police and RCMP are aware of that. I suspect Benton was notified and got in touch with General Briggs, who contacted the OCME in Edmonton and also Dr. Lopez. The AFME would want to know about the Emma Shubert case because ultimately the Department of Defense would want to know. If my office is in the middle of a serial murder investigation that is federal jurisdiction and linked to a homicide in Canada, General John Briggs has to be informed. He will demand every detail and constant updates.
    “The timing. Am I the only one who finds the timing as in-our-face as a billboard?” Burke says, and her eyes are glassy.
    Pseudoephedrine, or she’s excited by something far more dangerous, dressed in a suit with a very short skirt and a red scoop-neck sweater that’s so tight it seems airbrushed on. Directly across from Benton, she arranges herself in such a way as to give him an eyeful and give me one, too, and possibly Briggs, depending on the angle of her camera and what is displayed on his desktop screen.
    “Both bodies are found on the same day?” She is emphatic with Briggs, almost argumentative. “Peggy Stanton’s body turns up here in the Massachusetts Bay the same day Emma Shubert turns up in Canada? Isn’t that a little too coincidental, John?”
    “Exactly that, a coincidence,” Briggs states, in his calm, unflappable way, and her feminine attributes wouldn’t be lost on him as much as they would be completely dismissed. “It stands to reason whoever piled rocks on top of her out in the middle of the woods had no control over the timing of when kids searching for fossils, for dino bones, would happen upon it.”
    “It’s different,” Benton says, but he’s not saying it to Burke. “The killer wanted Peggy Stanton’s body found when it was and intended to shock whoever attempted to recover it from the bay, possibly intended exactly what he got, which was the thrill of a highly publicized spectacle. His handiwork was all over the news. In contrast, when he murdered Emma Shubert he did not intend to shock whoever found her remains, because he didn’t intend for them to be found at all. He carried or dragged her body probably from the highway and into the woods and covered it with rocks.”
    It’s at this point I mention Mildred Lott. I describe the parallel of missing pets that later turn up, and her fear of being kidnapped and her husband’s assertion that it would be extremely difficult for someone to pull that off. She