Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

F OUR MONTHS LATER

Call it a character flaw or whatever. I’m obsessed with mysteries that I’m unable to solve. Cannot let them go.

Ivy’s three hundred photocopies went with me to Charlotte. I won’t say I spent all my free time working through them that summer and fall, but I spent many hours with those smeary, smudgy pages.

In mid-October when the days were growing cool, the nights almost crisp, and the hardwoods were considering a split from their leaves, I made my first breakthrough. At the bottom of the second to last stack.

The article had appeared in the Washington Post on February 19, 1943. Nothing lengthy, only six column inches.

POLICE SEEK 7 MISSING PERSONS

Police in Washington are seeking information relating to seven persons who have disappeared. Relatives and friends are inquiring for them.

Anyone knowing of the whereabouts of the following should communicate with Sergeant Arthur Gunders at the Cathedral Heights station on Idaho Avenue.

A list followed that brief bit of text.

The fourth entry caught my attention.

Ruby Berle Dockeray, age twenty-five, had been reported missing by her sister. Ruby was last seen thirteen months earlier outside a home in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

The address was that of the first fire.

Hot damn!

I had a name.

Ruby Berle Dockeray.

Suspecting the effort was probably futile, I phoned the Cathedral Heights station. Sergeant Arthur Gunders had retired in 1972. Died in 1984.

I asked if Ruby Dockeray was ever found. Response: An MP case from 1943? Are you serious?

Undeterred, I pressed harder. Was told that if a file that old still existed—an extremely remote possibility—it might be in the district’s archives.

A very lengthy and somewhat confusing conversation with the archivist revealed that, prior to DC home rule, the National Archives would have set the records management requirements for police reports in the district. Unfortunately, the gentleman had no knowledge of retention regulations back in 1943 but felt they were probably like those of 1979, the earliest with which he was familiar. As of 1979, a missing person report had to be kept at the local department for two years, then transferred to the Federal Records Center for ten. After that, it would be destroyed. He felt chances were slim to none that a 1943 missing person file would still exist.

Discouraged, I phoned Ivy. She was delighted to help—in exchange for a promise of exclusivity should a newsworthy scoop emerge. I suspect she was envisioning a human-interest piece that would win her a Pulitzer or some other journalism prize.

While awaiting Ivy’s feedback, I started my own digging.

Googling the name “Ruby Berle Dockeray” and “1943” yielded nothing but the original Post story about the seven MPs. Substituting “1918,” the year of Ruby’s birth, was another dead end.

I turned back to Ivy’s photocopies and spent weeks rereading every one in my spare time. Found no mention of Ruby Berle Dockeray. Not surprising. Ivy had focused on coverage of the Warrings and the Foggy Bottom Gang.

I’d had luck with the Post, so, after ponying up the fee for a half-year plan, I wasted an additional month troweling through the newspaper’s online archives.

Births. Marriages. Obituaries. Arrests. Divorces.

Nada.

Like a rat working a maze, I buzzed through cyber-loop after cyber-loop, hoping for pay dirt.

More nada.

Frustrated, I decided to try another angle.

Ruby Berle Dockeray was last seen at the Foggy Bottom house. As of 1942, the house belonged to W-C Commerce. W-C was a holding company established by Emmitt Warring and Amon Clock.

I’d already read Ivy’s articles generated by a search using the keyword “Warring,” so I went with the name Amon Clock.

Though fewer in number, an abundance of links popped up.

A big chunk of that autumn’s reading was devoted to those sites. Katy thought I was obsessed. Maybe I was.

Eventually, I stumbled across the picture.

The Washington Times . May 4, 1937. Page four, below a continuation of front-page coverage of the Hindenburg disaster. A suspect had been cited for holding the largest cache of illegal liquor in DC since the repeal of Prohibition four years earlier.

A group photo accompanied the article. Two men, one the suspect, a woman, and a child. The foursome was standing in bright sunlight on the National Mall. A banner in the background announced the first National Boy Scout Jamboree.

Names ran below the image. The “child” in the middle was Ruby Berle Dockeray.

It took less than a minute to establish that the jamboree had taken place in June of 1937. I did the math. Ruby was nineteen at the time the pic was snapped. Fully adult, but small.

As I studied the faces with a handheld lens—each surprisingly sharp for an image that old—odd thoughts began fluttering in my head, frail and ill-formed, like ghost moths circling a porch bulb. Eventually, disparate bytes collided, leading to a pair of irrefutable conclusions.

The subcellar victim was, in fact, Ruby Berle Dockeray.

The constellation of features barely discernible on her mummified and decomposing corpse—the low nasal bridge, prominent forehead, thin, silky hair, and extremely short stature—suggested a disorder known as Laron syndrome.

Laron syndrome is a condition that occurs when the body is unable to utilize growth hormone. Reduced muscle strength and endurance are additional symptoms frequently seen.

I’m not the overly emotional type. But I’d felt a tremendous sadness as an imagined scene surged up in my brain. A tiny woman, perhaps weak and vulnerable, succumbing to blows hard enough to fracture her skull and jaw.

As the archivist had predicted, Ivy struck out in her search for an MP report on Ruby Berle Dockeray. The young woman had simply vanished.

I took solace in knowing that, more than eight decades after Ruby’s disappearance, I’d helped with the recovery and identification of her remains. Sadly, her sister was long dead. And Deery was unable to locate a single living relative with whom to share the news.

Ruby was laid to rest in Congressional Cemetery in Southeast DC, a graveyard older than Arlington. I was there. Deery. A preacher. A few of the kind church ladies who attend the burials of those lacking kin.

It was a crisp winter day, the wind grabbing our scarves and hems and sending them dancing. Carrying the scent of dead leaves, fresh-turned grass, and moist soil swirling among the headstones around us.

Watching the simple casket inch down into the grave, I wondered about Ruby’s view of her neighbors in death. Supreme court justices, cabinet members, senators, representatives, at least one vice president.

Somehow, I think she’d have approved of the company she’d be keeping.

Ruby’s time, place, and manner of death remain mysteries. There seems to be no way to determine her final path to the dismal non-grave below the Foggy Bottom house.

Technically, then, Ruby’s file is still open.

I hope someday her whole truth will be known.