The Bone Bed

close-ups of the faint lines around her ankles.
    “There’s no question about it,” I agree. “Toenails painted pale pink and chipped. And she’s got some sort of reddish staining on the bottom of her feet, which is strange.”
    “Like maybe she had on red socks or red shoes at some point, something that faded on her?” Marino bends down to photograph the bottoms of her feet, the camera’s shutter clicking repeatedly.
    “More likely she was barefoot and stepped in something.” I look with a light and a lens, the dark reddish staining on the shrunken bottoms of her toes, the balls of her feet, and her heels. “Something that obviously doesn’t wash off in water, something she might have stepped in. That’s what it looks like to me. Whatever it is, it dyed her skin or is embedded in it, or both.”
    Using the scalpel, I lightly scrape some of the staining off the bottom of her left foot, wiping reddish flecks of skin off the blade and into an envelope as I resume relaying to Marino what Ron told me.
    “It’s on local TV stations but is also national news, fairly close-up video footage, some of which was taken from the air, but he’s not sure all of it was,” I explain. “We know there was a news chopper when we were on the fireboat, but what about when it was just the two of us with the Coast Guard? How about covering a table with sheets.”
    I peel the back off the smart label and stick it on the yellow silicone bracelet, which I fasten around her right wrist, and her skin is shriveled and tough like leather that is wet. Her fingernails are painted the same color as her toenails, a subtle peachy-pink, and they’re broken, the polish peeling off, chipped and scratched, as if she were clawing at something or digging with her bare hands.
    “Obviously the other helicopter did the filming if it shows you in the water.” Marino shakes open a plasticized sheet.
    “Unless someone was filming from a boat.” On her right index finger is a ring, an 1862 three-cent silver coin set in a heavy yellow gold mounting. “There were a lot of boats around,” I remind him.
    “That big white chopper hovering over us the whole damn time you were getting her out of the water,” Marino decides. “I should have noticed the tail number, dammit.”
    I try to wiggle the ring from side to side, puzzling over its size and that it fits snugly on her index finger when it shouldn’t, and I wonder if she originally wore it on a smaller finger or if the ring is hers at all. If it fits her index finger now, it wouldn’t have at death, because when a body begins to mummify, it becomes extremely dried out and literally shrinks the same way fruits, vegetables, and meats do inside a dehydrator. Jewelry, shoes, and clothing won’t fit the way they did in life, and I imagine someone moving the body from wherever it was concealed and rearranging her jewelry or perhaps dressing her a certain way before she was tethered and dumped into the bay.
    Why?
    To make sure the ring was found? To make sure her personal effects were?
    “I made a note of the tail number, wrote it down,” I’m saying to Marino, as I’m pondering these other things. “We can have it checked out with the FAA database.”
    “It probably will come back to the bank financing it or some meaningless limited liability company; same thing Lucy does. So when the cops are behind one of her batmobiles or batcycles, they can’t run her plate and figure out who she is, and air traffic controllers can’t connect that sweet radio voice of hers with a name.”
    His Tyvek-covered feet make a slippery sound as he moves around.
    “Almost none of these choppers, even news ones, come back to anything that’s helpful,” he says. “Especially if they’re privately owned. When I started out as a cop, the world wasn’t so friggin’ anonymous. And you’re going to be late as hell. No way you can make it by two unless you’ve got a jetpack.”
    “The white helicopter with red and blue stripes on the tailboom struck me as private or corporate.” I pick up her left hand, holding it in my two gloved ones, and I look at the watch fastened snugly around her wrist with a black silk strap. “Except for the camera mounted on it. Assuming it was a video camera and not a FLIR. But either is unusual for private or corporate aircraft.”
    “Pretty sure I’ve never seen that bird around here.” Marino shakes open a second sheet. “Which is a little weird, because most of them