The Bone Bed

about our past.
    His voice has a hard, unforgiving ring that reminds me of a shovel striking stone.
    “I’d go out early in the morning to old battlefields, woods, riverbanks, looking for coins, buttons, whatever I could find. Got a belt buckle that cleaned up real good. You probably remember it.”
    I don’t think I do, but I know better than to tell him.
    “Brought it to your office and showed it to you,” he says, and he’s always liked massive buckles, especially motorcycle ones. “Oval-shaped, with U.S. stamped on cast brass in real big letters.”
    I place nude panties and the pantyhose and the bra on a sheet, and move the surgical light closer. I check her for lividity as Marino again examines the antique buttons, leaning close, shining a light on them.
    “No sign of livor anteriorly,” I note.
    “What about when someone’s been dead and maybe in a cooler or freezer this long? Maybe they won’t have it anymore.”
    “Unlike rigor, livor doesn’t completely go away. It leaves a telltale sign.” I look at her from head to toe, taking time I don’t have, moving the overhead lamp as I search for the slightest hint of staining from when her circulation quit and blood settled due to gravity.
    “I eventually sold it for five hundred bucks. Wish I hadn’t now, because it sure as hell was worth more than that,” Marino resumes talking about treasure hunting. “Also a two-piece CS buckle I found in Dinwiddie. Could have brought me a couple of grand if I hadn’t needed quick bucks when Doris bailed, ran off leaving me with a shitload of debt. She’s probably still with that douchebag car salesman, except I think he’s selling Aflac now.”
    “Maybe you should find out.”
    “No way in hell. A real entrepreneur she’s become,” he says sarcastically. “Covers bricks with cloth and sells them as doorstops, no kidding, I mean, go figure. Like a symbol, huh? Something that gets in the way, an obstruction, a stumbling block, but not how she looks at it, of course.”
    “Maybe you should try to talk to her and find out from her how she looks at it.”
    “You can pull it up on the Internet,” he says angrily. “Open Says Me. The name of her website.
I hold open your world to possibilities.
I can’t believe it.”
    It figures he’d bring up his ex-wife when we don’t have time to talk about her. I pull the body on its left side, and it’s so light it feels hollow.
    “There can be a lot of money in historic stuff like buttons, medals, old coins, but there’s also such a thing as respect.” He’s back to that. “What you don’t do is sew antique military buttons on a jacket or a coat to make a friggin’ fashion statement.”
    “You can see it here. A livor pattern of hemolyzed blood.” I press my fingers into different areas of the back. “No blanching, because the blood has seeped out the vessel walls. So after she died she was flat on her back for at least as long as it took for livor to set, probably twelve hours, possibly more. It could be that she was on her back the entire time since she died, stored somewhere until she was moved and dropped into the bay.”
    “You sure as hell don’t send a jacket to the dry cleaner’s if it’s got a thousand dollars’ worth of antique buttons on it.” He won’t stop talking about it. “But it’s not the money.”
    “Moderate mummification, skin wet but hard and dried with faint remnants of patchy white mold on her face and neck,” I dictate, and Marino scribes. “Eyes sunken and collapsed.” I pry open her mouth. “Cheeks are sunken.” I swab the inside of them. “No lip, tongue, or dental injuries,” I say, as I check with a light. “Neck is free of any discrete discolorations.” I look up at the clock.
    It’s eleven minutes past two. I move down and find more signs of moderate mummification but no injuries, and I open her legs. I ask Marino to bring me a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit, a PERK, or what a lot of cops call a rape kit, and I glance curiously at him as he walks to a cabinet, his face disgruntled and offended, as if there’s something about this dead woman he takes personally.
    “We’ll definitely e-mail photos of the buttons and her jewelry to NamUs,” I say. “These details seem unique enough to be significant. Especially if it’s unusual to sew valuable antique buttons on clothing.”
    “It’s damn disrespectful as hell.”
    He hands me a plastic speculum and opens the PERK’s white cardboard