Chapter 12
TWELVE
T
hey chatted back and forth on the walk up to the town center. “I left my car at the station. It’s just a couple blocks up. You okay pulling your suitcase up the hill?”
“Are you kidding? I lived in Durham for a year. Everywhere is uphill there.”
“I loved seeing all the pictures you posted. It looks magical.”
Bronwyn smiled. “It is. I love it so much and kinda miss it already.”
“Did you apply for a PhD there?”
“Not yet. I wanted to get some actual field experience before that. I’ll apply next year, and at York and Edinburgh as well, maybe a few others. Fingers crossed that one of them will take me on.”
“I love that I have such a brilliant friend.”
“Ha. Brilliant is stretching it. More like determined.”
At the top of the hill, they turned onto Harborview. “There’s the sheriff’s office just up ahead. Did I tell you my friend Rafe is the new sheriff?”
“No, but that’s very cool. You know him from here?”
“Yeah. Get this, he was sent over initially one summer for a kind of boot camp to try and scare him straight. He came back with his family for summer vacations almost every year after that.”
“Did it straighten him out?”
“Seems like it.”
“And now he’s sheriff.” Bronwyn laughed. “That’s awesome.”
“Isn’t it? He spent a lot of time on the island over the years, but I think he still feels a little bit like a fish out of water after working as a cop in Seattle for so long.
This is a major downshift in terms of change of pace, but a much bigger responsibility, and of course there are some politics involved, which I’m sure he hates.
” She glanced at her friend. “What do you think of the town?”
“It’s charming, and everything I imagined it would be. You’re so lucky to call this home now.”
“Wait until you see my grandma’s place.” Her place. “It’s in a really cute, quiet neighborhood, and her best friend lives next door to me. Mae’s a riot.”
“Looking forward to meeting her. How you doing there, Rufus?”
He looked up at her, tongue lolling as he trotted along beside them.
“I’ll get him some cold water when we get inside.” Willow walked ahead to open the glass front door, waiting for Bronwyn to enter before following with Rufus.
The receptionist smiled at them, then at Rufus. “Hi again, handsome. Are you hot? Would you like some water?”
“Yes, please,” Willow said, and scratched the top of his head. “Is Raf—the sheriff in his office?”
“Sure is. Want to leave Rufus with me and go on back?”
She glanced down at him. “I’m not sure he’ll allow it, but it’s worth a shot.” She went to hand his leash over. The instant she took a step away, Rufus tried to follow, staring at her with anxious eyes.
“It’s okay, you can stay with me, and I’ll get you that water,” the receptionist said to him.
A glint of panic filled Rufus’s eyes. He strained at the end of the leash, paws scrambling over the tile floor as he tried to get to Willow.
“Whoa,” she said, taking the leash back. “Easy there. You’re all right, buddy, I was gonna come back, I swear.” She petted his head, and he settled down, still panting lightly. It distressed her to see him that anxious. “Thanks anyway,” she said to the woman.
“Of course. Poor boy. I’ll grab a bowl for him. Hang on.”
“Boy, he’s sure attached to you already.” Bronwyn crouched down next to him. Rufus sniffed at her, wagged his tail slightly and bumped her with his nose.
“Aw, that means you’ve been green lighted for petting,” Willow said in amusement, and Bronwyn started stroking his head. “What a quirky guy. He sure likes the ladies.”
Bronwyn grinned and scratched his chest. “Rufus, you really are a flirt. We just met.”
The receptionist came back with a bowl. They waited until Rufus had lapped up his fill of cold water before going to Rafe’s office. Willow knocked.
“Come in.”
She pushed the door open. “Hey, this a good time?”
“Yeah, is your friend—” He stopped mid-sentence, staring as Bronwyn stepped inside. He recovered fast, standing to hold out a hand to her. “Hi. I’m Rafe. Torres. Sheriff,” he added.
Bronwyn smiled and shook his hand. “I’m Bronwyn. Nice to meet you.”
“Same.” He withdrew his hand, his interest obvious to anyone with eyes, except maybe Bronwyn, who didn’t appear to notice as he sat back down. “So, Willow tells me you’re a bone expert.”
Bronwyn shot her a wry look. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
“Whatever, you know way more about them than we do.” She gestured between her and Rafe.
“Do you still have the specimen?” Bronwyn asked him.
Rafe seemed to snap out of his trance. “Yeah.” He took the bone out of a drawer and placed it on his desk.
Bronwyn stepped closer. Glanced up at him. “May I?”
“By all means.”
She picked it up, looked at it briefly as she turned it over in her hands.
“It’s a human left tibia. Shinbone,” she added for their benefit.
“The proximal two-thirds of it, anyway. This is the bottom of the knee joint.” She tapped the flattish surface at the top of the bone, glanced at Willow. “Any sign of the other piece?”
“No, just this part.”
“You’re sure it’s human?” Rafe asked.
“Positive.” Bronwyn studied the flat end.
“The epiphysis has fully fused, so it’s an adult.
The bone is robust, and healthy. No indication of inflammation or any other pathology.
Probably young adult to early middle age.
The taphonomic changes are slight, so it’s either been buried for a long time and protected from the elements, or this person died fairly recently. ”
“How recently?”
“Impossible for me to say with any accuracy, but I can tell you this fracture is definitely postmortem damage. Meaning it happened after death.”
“How can you tell?” Rafe leaned in closer, frowning.
“The break is sharp, and there’s no visible sign of healing.
See the edges of the bone where it’s broken here?
” She traced a fingertip over the thinner surfaces around the end of the break, showing them both.
“The inside surface of the fracture is paler than the outside of the cortex. Plus the fracture itself is jagged and at almost a right angle to the diaphysis—sorry, shaft—which means the break didn’t happen while the bone was fresh. Or wet, whichever you want to call it.”
Rafe made an impressed face and looked at Willow. “Okay, she really is a bone expert.”
“Told you.” It was fascinating that Bronwyn could tell all that in just a few moments.
Her friend snorted. “I’m at Kindergarten level compared to my professors, but even I can tell all that.”
She brought the bone closer to her face, studied it with narrowed eyes.
“Ah, yeah, and there are some nice little tooth marks in there from Rufus near the nutrient foramen on the posterior surface of the diaph—shaft. Not too bad though. No sign of rodent gnawing or root etching, and there’s no weathering of the surface anywhere. ”
“Can you tell us anything else? Age? Sex maybe?” Rafe asked.
“No. In theory, sex could be determined through DNA or peptide testing, though teeth would be better. But that’s expensive and could be time consuming depending on the current workload of the lab you send it to.
Age, no, at least not a biological age. You could radiocarbon date it to find out an approximation of what year the person died, but that’s not going to help much other than to determine whether this is a recent forensic case, or an archaeological one. ”
“Ah.” Rafe nodded. “What about the person’s height maybe?”
“We can provide an estimate using long bone measurements and a regression formula, but I’d need to know the likely ancestry and biological sex to be accurate.
Also, we can only use ones that are intact, and even if this one was, the tibia isn’t all that accurate, for reasons that I can go into if you’re interested.
” She glanced between them, her expression hopeful.
“Maybe another time,” Rafe said, one side of his mouth lifting in amusement. It was clear he got a kick out of Bronwyn. And that he found her fascinating.
Bronwyn really was adorable in nerd mode. Her enthusiasm for her subject was contagious. “So, what now?” Willow asked.
“Any graves in the area?” Bronwyn asked.
“There are a few shipwrecks off that side of the island, but they were back in the mid or late 1800s.”
She nodded. “Was there a high tide or a storm recently?”
“Yeah, a couple days ago. Windstorm, big waves, especially on the west side of the island where the bone was found,” Rafe said.
“Storm could have dislodged it, then the surf picked it up and carried it into the rocks. What about a cemetery nearby?”
“Not that I know of, at least nothing marked. There could potentially be indigenous or early settlers’ graves in the area, I guess.”
“It’s possible a grave was opened by erosion, and the bones washed out by the sea. Can we go back down there and take a look? I’d like to see if we can find any more remains in that area.”
“Right now?”
Bronwyn blinked. “I was thinking that, yeah. I know you’re probably too busy, but Willow and I can go.”
“No, I’ll come along,” Rafe said, surprising Willow. He stood again, grabbing his sheriff’s hat from the edge of his desk. “I’ll drive us over there.”
“I’ve got Rufus,” Willow reminded him.
“He can ride on the backseat.” Rafe rounded the desk, held the door for them and led the way to the front entrance. “I’m out of the office for a while,” he told the receptionist as they neared her desk inside the doors. “We’re heading out to look for more evidence.”
“Come on, buddy, another car ride,” Willow told Rufus, who looked up at her with clear gold eyes. “Let’s see if you can sniff out more bones for us.”
The thrill of their impending adventure held until they reached the parking area near Shipwreck Cove and she saw the truck there with Tripp’s company logo on it.