The Bone Bed

elevator or has passed through a room. I can close my eyes and recognize her distinctive fragrance anywhere.
    “It would be foolish not to consider someone might be paying attention to all of us and what we’re doing,” she is saying. “Someone into games who thinks he’s smarter than God. Someone who gets off on traumatizing people and jerking them around.”
    I have no doubt about why she’s been snooping around my office this morning. She stopped by
to check on something
because she’s overly protective of me, vigilant to a fault. Since Lucy was old enough to walk she’s demanded my attention and watched me like a hawk.
    “Are you worried Marino’s involved? That he’s spying on me or trying to hurt me somehow?” I log in to my e-mail.
    “He sure as hell does stupid things,” she says, as if she has specific ones in mind. “But he’s not that savvy, and what motive could he have? The answer’s none.”

four
    I SCROLL THROUGH MY INBOX, LOOKING FOR AN E-MAIL from Bryce or Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Steward, as I continue to hope my appearance in court won’t be needed.
    “What about image clarification? Maybe we can figure out who’s on the jetboat?” I’m talking about the video clip while I’m fretting about Mildred Lott.
    “Forget it,” Lucy says.
    “It’s so ridiculous,” I mutter, when I find no message that might grant me a reprieve.
    It used to be that my autopsy report was enough for the defense, my appearing in court not necessary or even desirable, but since the Melendez-Diaz decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, life has changed for every forensic expert in America. Channing Lott wants to confront his accuser. The billionaire industrialist faces a murder charge for allegedly placing a contract on his now presumed dead wife, and he’s demanded the pleasure of my company this afternoon at two.
    “What you see in that video file is all you’ll ever see.” Lucy empties her shot glass. “What you’re looking at is as good as it’s going to get.”
    “We’re sure there’s no software out there that might be more sophisticated than what we’re using here at the CFC?” I don’t want to accept it.
    “More sophisticated than what I’ve engineered?” She gets up and moves closer to my computer screen. “Nothing holds a candle to what we’ve got. The problem is the footage is hot.”
    She clicks the mouse to show me, a heavy gold ring she’s recently started wearing on her index finger, a steel chronograph watch around her wrist. Pausing the recording on the faceless image in the back of the boat, she explains that she made multiple layers of the same video clip, dropping the brightness, using sharpness filters, and it’s hopeless.
    “Whoever did the filming was directly facing the sun,” she says, “and nothing is going to
restore
the blown-out parts. The best we can do is suspect who the person on the boat might be based on context and circumstances.”
    Suspecting
isn’t good enough, and I replay the clip, returning to a stretch of river an hour by jetboat from a sheer barren hillside where American paleontologist Dr. Emma Shubert was digging with colleagues from the University of Alberta when she vanished almost nine weeks ago. According to statements made to the police, she was last seen on August 23 at around ten p.m., walking alone through a wooded area of a Pipestone Creek campsite, headed to her trailer after dinner in the chow hall. The next morning her door was ajar and she was gone.
    When I talked with an investigator from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last night I was told there was no sign of a struggle, nothing to indicate Emma Shubert might have been attacked inside her trailer.
    “We must find out who sent this to me,” I say to Lucy. “And why. If it’s possible the figure in the jetboat is she, what was going on? What’s the expression on her face? Happy? Sad? Frightened? Was she on the boat willingly?”
    “I can’t tell you that.”
    “I want to see her.”
    “You’re not going to on this video clip. There’s nothing more to see.”
    “Was she on her way to the bone bed to dig or returning from it?” I ask.
    “Based on the position of the sun and satellite images of that part of the river,” Lucy says, “the jetboat likely was traveling east, suggesting it was morning. Obviously the day was a sunny one, and there weren’t many of those in that part of the world this past August. Not so coincidentally, two days before she