Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

My eyes drifted to the top right corner of my screen.

12:15 p.m.

Monday, May 26.

Memorial Day.

I wasn’t within miles of Savannah.

Or Charlotte.

Or Ryan.

I’d made almost no progress identifying the tiny subcellar woman.

Restless, I swiveled, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV. I could always count on my pals at CNN to be there for me.

Wildfires were raging in California. Six died in a plane crash off Cape Cod. Two white cops were relieved of duty for mistreating a Black prisoner in Baltimore. Fifteen were injured in a boat explosion at Lake of the Ozarks.

I’ve no idea why I’m such a news addict. Newscasts are like factory-produced clocks, each broadcast composed of interchangeable parts. On any given day, swap in different names, different places, different details, the main storylines remain predictable. With seasonal variations.

Today’s twist was that the whole country was decked out in red, white, and blue. CNN showed clips of preparations underway for celebrations in New York, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Chicago.

Alas, I was not participating in the patriotic display. Instead, I was stuck killing time before being able to autopsy four charred corpses.

Christ on a cracker, Brennan. Quit the pity party.

Motivated by my well-deserved self-admonishment, I googled the times and locations of the district’s major festivities.

The National Memorial Day parade would begin on 7th Street, turn north onto Constitution Avenue, proceed west and end at 17th Street. The high-stepping and confetti tossing would start at two p.m., street closures at noon.

I phoned Uber .

Forty minutes later Diego arrived in a gray Honda Accord bearing Virginia license brX-4237.

Virginia Is For Lovers , declared the plate’s slogan.

But not for me.

I walked through the doors of the E Street lab at six-forty-five Tuesday morning. Was delighted to see Jamar on the far side of the lobby.

We traded quick waves, Jamar again doing something intricate with his hand, then headed to our respective locker rooms to change.

Thacker was already in the large autopsy suite. To my surprise, she announced she’d be cutting the Ys herself.

Body bags lay on three of the four tables. Two had contours of reasonable size. The third looked like it might hold a full adult hippo.

Thacker and I exchanged a few words about the weekend.

Yes, I’d gone to the parade. Yes, I’d seen the fireworks. Yes, the weather had been hot.

“And you?” I asked her, mostly out of courtesy.

“I avoid all public gatherings. Too many nasty microbes waiting to pounce.”

With that, Thacker turned to Jamar.

“Roll the credits.”

Jamar worked the keyboard and four names appeared on the Smartboard. He read the list aloud, adding a few pertinent details for each individual.

“Case number 25-02102, Skylar Reese Hill, female, age nineteen, white, foreign national, Canada.”

“Was Hill the young woman who made the nine-one-one call?” I asked.

“Assuming this DOA is Hill, yes.”

My cheeks reddened at Thacker’s not-so-subtle reprimand.

“Where was that body found?” the ME asked her tech.

Jamar clacked more keys. “Basement level, east end, buried in rubble from the collapse of the upper floors.”

The victim I’d recovered.

“Next.” Thacker was all business now.

“Case number 25-02103, Danny Green, male, age twenty-nine, white, no accompanying intel.

“Case number 25-02104, Johnnie Lamar Star, male, age thirty-four, Black, US citizen, last known address Philadelphia. Star and Green were in the west bedroom on the second floor.” Looking up, Jamar added: “I did that pair. The two beside the bed, all tangled up together.”

No one restated the obvious concerning unproven assumptions.

Jamar continued.

“Case number 25-02105, Jawaad el-Aman, male, age twenty-one, foreign national, Syria. Body recovered from the third floor, west bedroom.”

“We’ll have to be extra careful with him,” Thacker said. “The kid was an ambassador’s son.”

“What was an ambassador’s son doing in a rented room in a cheap Airbnb?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But I don’t want the State Department getting its nuts in a knot.”

“Assuming the DOA is el-Aman.” I matched Thacker’s admonishment word for word.

“Assuming that.” Raising her mask to her face, Thacker added, “Let’s start with el-Aman.” Turning to me. “The body presumed to be el-Aman.”

Her eyes suggested a grin behind the blue polypropylene covering her mouth.

Crossing to the closest autopsy table, Jamar clicked on and adjusted the pull-down surgical lamp. The bright LED lit the black body bag like a spot on a darkened film set.

Thacker nodded.

The zipper rent the silence with a loud whrrrp .

The remains were as I recalled.

The man had died wearing a baseball cap. A quick google revealed the emblem on it was a Syrian flag.

The facial features were gone, the skull cracked, its contents reduced to a shriveled dark mass. The torso was blackened, the forearms history, the limbs curled into the pugilistic pose.

Jamar shot pics. Thacker and I tweezed debris off the charred flesh, setting each item aside for future analysis. A zipper and studs from jeans. A belt buckle in the shape of a star. Fragmented teeth. Amorphous globs that had probably been dental restorations. A melted and warped metal comb.

Then, with much maneuvering, the three of us managed to roll the corpse to its back.

I stood aside while Thacker dictated what comments were possible. She noted the remnants of a penis and scrotum, the genitalia protected from the flames by the well-muscled lower torso and thighs. The eyes, stomach, and other organs were too damaged to yield any info. Inking prints was impossible.

Using a scalpel, Thacker verified the presence of smoke in the victim’s mouth, lungs, and trachea. The kid had been breathing at the time of the fire.

When Thacker finished, Jamar wheeled the body off for radiography.

After a quick coffee break, Thacker and I viewed the projected images together. As she recorded facts about soft tissue, I focused on the skeleton.

Based on the state of epiphyseal union in the clavicles and long bones, I estimated that the victim had died in his late teens to early twenties. Using measurements taken directly on the handy-dandy Smartboard, I calculated that he’d stood sixty-eight to seventy inches tall.

Neither of us spotted anything suggestive of factors other than death by fire.

The bio-profile was consistent with that of Jawaad el-Aman. As was the cap bearing the flag of his homeland.

Beyond that, all we could do was collect samples for DNA testing.

Another short pause for lunch, then we moved on to the hippo bag. To the commingled bodies found on the second floor, presumably Danny Green and Johnnie Lamar Star.

As with the vic presumed to be el-Awan, the body parts having little or no flesh exhibited the most damage—the fingers and hands, the toes and feet. The few surviving digits had been reduced to blackened twigs.

While at the scene, I’d counted six limbs, each a scorched and shriveled spindle. That tally held true. The lower torsos and thighs, composed of solid, heavy bones encased in thick muscle masses, had congealed into one shapeless glob.

Neither man’s head had survived intact. Cranial and dental fragments coated the macabre black mass like sprinkles on a cake. Others had been collected and sealed in a small Tupperware tub. From the accompanying debris we retrieved parts of four melted sneakers, two scorched zippers, and fourteen more teeth.

By eight-forty-five Thacker and I had completed our analyses of #25-02103 and #25-02104, using the same protocol we’d followed for #25-02105. Brennan bones. Thacker organs and soft tissue. Jamar, brawn.

The bio-profiles were consistent with Green and Star.

Neither corpse yielded prints.

Thacker was pleased and asked if I’d be there for Hill the following morning.

Presumed Hill.

I agreed and left.

Exhausted.

Never wanting to see charred or seared meat again.

Hoping to avoid social interaction of any kind, I grabbed a spicy turkey club at Rich Coffee on MacArthur Boulevard—Thacker’s recommendation—then headed to Doyle’s house, thumbed the code into the keypad, and slipped in as quietly as I could.

Luck was with me. I encountered no one. Presumably, Doyle was at work and Lan had punched out for the day.

After showering in the hundred-acre glass cubicle, I ate my sandwich while entering notes onto my laptop.

When finished, I again considered calling Ryan. Peeks at my voice mail, email, and text messages throughout the day had shown that he hadn’t tried to contact me.

My phone said 10:40.

Screw it. Someone had to be the adult.

I dialed. Got voice mail. Disconnected, leaving no message.

I killed the light and collapsed into my mound of goose down pillows.

Was asleep in seconds.

I awoke to cloud-shrouded moonlight filtering through glass. To shadows dancing a shape-changing ballet on the walls, the ceiling, the quilt.

No shutters. No Birdie.

I wasn’t in my own bed.

A moment of cerebral groping, then recollection.

Doyle. DC. The Foggy Bottom fire.

Rain was falling outside the window wall framing the headboard. Tree branches lifted and dropped, occasionally scraping the pane with a gentle tic tic tic.

Had the muted staccato awakened me?

I held my breath, listening.

Heard nothing inside but the murmur of air flowing through vents.

Though I welcomed the blissful cooling provided by Doyle’s central AC, the intermittent blowing dried the lining of my nose and mouth.

I reached for my drink.

Three hundred and eighty million tons of plastic are produced each year, as much as half that for single-use purposes. Refusing to contribute to that atrocity against the planet, I never buy or drink bottled water.

Damn.

Lan had taken my Yeti to the kitchen for washing. In my exhaustion, I’d forgotten to retrieve and fill it.

Throwing back the covers, I got out of bed and padded across the zebra carpet.

Halfway to the door, a sound stopped me in my tracks.

Scritch.

Fabric scraping a wall?

I froze, every sense straining for further input.

My ears took in nothing but the echo of empty space.

What are you, Brennan? Four years old?

I was reaching for the knob when something went clump on the far side of the door.

A footfall?

Whose?

At night, the hall outside my room was lit by motion-activated foot-level spots. I glanced at the crack where the door met the carpet. Noted soft illumination.

Two dark shapes silhouetted in the dim glow.

Feet?

Spread wide in an aggressive stance?

My heart tossed in a few extra beats.

What to do?

Scream?

Lock myself in the bathroom?

Throw open the door?

Swallowing through my dryness, I tiptoed to my suitcase and withdrew a small key-chain baton. Received as a gift from my baby sister following a YMCA course on self-protection, it had been tucked into a compartment and forgotten. Until now.

Thank you, Harry .

Death-gripping the tiny steel bar, I recrossed to the door.

Ready to come face-to-face with anyone from a hophead junkie to Charlie Manson.