The Bone Bed

skeletons and fill a museum, attract tourists and dino devotees and outdoors lovers from all over the world. Unless the area is so polluted nobody comes.”
    One can’t read about Grande Prairie and not be aware of the economic importance of its natural gas and oil production.
    “Seventeen hundred miles of pipeline carrying synthetic crude from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries in the Midwest and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” Lucy says, disappearing inside my bathroom, where there are a Keurig and macchinetta on the counter by the sink. “Pollution, global warming, total ruination.”
    “Try the Illy MonoDose. The silver box,” I call out to her. “And make mine a double shot.”
    “I believe this is a café Cubano kind of morning.”
    “The demerara sugar is in the cabinet,” I let her know, as I finish my last sip of cold coffee and select play again.
    What is it I’ve missed? Something.
    I can’t shake the gut feeling, and I focus again on the overexposed figure whose features are blown out by the glaring sun. The person doesn’t appear to be very large, could be either a woman or a small man or possibly an older child wearing a sun cap with a veil around the sides and a wide brim that he or she appears to be holding with two fingers of the right hand, perhaps to keep the cap from blowing off. But again, I can’t be certain.
    I can’t make out a single feature of the darkly shadowed face or what the person is wearing except for a long-sleeved jacket or baggy shirt and the sun cap, and there is a barely noticeable glint near the right temporal area that suggests glasses, possibly sunglasses. But I can’t be sure of anything. I don’t know much more now than I did when the attachment was e-mailed to me some twelve hours ago.
    “I’ve heard nothing further from the FBI, but Benton’s arranged a meeting for later today, assuming I’m out of court in time,” I say, above the macchinetta’s steamy blasts. “More of an informal discussion, since nothing’s happened yet beyond the film clip being sent to me.”
    “Something’s happened.” Lucy’s voice sounds from inside the bathroom. “Someone’s ear has been cut off. Unless it’s fake.”

three
    THE EXTERNAL PART OF THE SEVERED EAR, THE PINNA, appears to have been cleanly excised from the fascia of the temporalis muscle.
    I’ve magnified the image as much as I can without its deconstructing into a blur, and the visible edges of the incised wound appear sharp and regular. I see no paleness or any hint that the incised tissue is everted or collapsed, which is what I might expect in a dismemberment that occurs long after death—if the ear was removed from an embalmed body, from a medical school cadaver, for example. What I’m seeing doesn’t strike me as something like that. The ear and the blood on the newspaper don’t look old.
    But I can’t know if the blood is human, and ears are difficult. They aren’t particularly vascular, and it’s not inconceivable one could cut off an ear ante- or postmortem and refrigerate it for weeks, and it might look fresh enough in a photograph to make it impossible for me to determine if the injury happened when the victim was alive or dead.
    In other words, the jpg is far from adequate for my purposes, I’m explaining to Lucy. I need to examine the actual ear, to check incised edges for a vital response, to run the DNA in the National DNA Index (NDIS), and also the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), in the event the profile is connected to someone with acriminal record.
    “I’ve already located fairly recent photos of her, plenty of them on various websites, including a few taken of her while she was working in Alberta this summer,” Lucy says from my office bathroom, as we continue to talk loudly enough to hear each other. “But obviously we can’t do a proper one-to-one. I have to adjust for size, angle it just right, but the good news is the overlay is at least helpful because she’s definitely not a rule-out.”
    Lucy explains that she’s been comparing the jpg with photographs of Emma Shubert, attempting to overlay images of her ears with the severed one. We can’t rule out a match, but unfortunately a visual comparison isn’t conclusive, either.
    “I’ll send you the file,” she adds. “You can show the comparisons to whoever comes to your meeting.”
    “Will you be back around five?”
    “I wasn’t aware I was invited.” Her voice sounds over the noise of