Page 4 of Fire and Bones

CHAPTER 1

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

The collection of tiny, gnawed fragments had once been a man. I’d known that right off.

But was that man Norbert Mirek?

I glanced at the wall clock. Eight p.m. I should have left hours ago. But here I was with Norbert. Possibly Norbert.

I was in autopsy room four. The stinky room. My usual haunt.

The whiz-bang ventilation was having little impact on the stench rising from the mix spread out before me. A mix of soil-crusted scat containing vegetation, hair, bone, and sundry unidentifiable inclusions.

The bony bits weren’t the olfactive offenders. They’d long since parted ways with any soft tissue that bound them together. The culprit was the poop.

I’m a forensic anthropologist. I regularly handle decomposed, burned, mummified, mutilated, dismembered, and skeletal remains. Putrefied flesh does not gross me out. But digging through shit has never topped my list of preferred tasks. This case was reinforcing that aversion.

Unsorted droppings lay in piles to my left, findings of interest on a blue plastic sheet to my right. Additional bags lined a counter at my back.

Here’s the story as I learned it from CMPD homicide detective Skinny Slidell. Though officially retired, due to budget cuts and personnel shortages, Slidell was stepping in occasionally to help resolve low-profile cases.

Always a treat. Skinny has all the charm of dripping snot.

Norbert Mirek, age sixty-eight, owned Lost Foot Pastures, a forty-acre tract of woods and farmland in rural Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. For decades Mirek lived alone on the property, his only companions the pack of rescue dogs he allowed to roam freely. Some thirty of them.

One year ago, Mirek went missing. Two days ago, while hunting turkey at Lost Foot, Mirek’s nephew, Halsey Banks, noted coyotes acting oddly beside a road skirting an overgrown field. Curious, Banks walked the area and found several bleached hunks he thought could be bone. And glasses he thought belonged to his uncle.

CMPD cops had run cadaver dogs over the property and collected the motherlode of canine poop. That poop now lay on the stainless-steel table over which I was bending.

Mirek’s family wanted answers. Mirek’s family’s lawyers wanted answers.

Skinny was nagging.

That’s why I was still at the lab.

Yet, I was finding it hard to focus. It wasn’t just the late hour. Or the organic bouquet invading my nostrils and permeating my clothing and hair. My mind kept looping to the upcoming Memorial Day weekend. To a rendezvous with Ryan and a leisurely three days in Savannah.

We’d booked a room at a small B&B called The Tumble Inn. Ryan would fly to Charlotte the next day. I’d pick him up at the airport and we’d head to Georgia. Four-hour drive. Easy-peasy.

Ryan, you ask?

An astute question.

Andrew Ryan, Lieutenant-détective, Section de Crimes contra la Personne, Sûreté du Québec. Retraité.

Translation: For decades, Ryan was a cop with the Quebec provincial police. Now retired, he works as a private investigator. A sort of bilingual, trans-border Philip Marlowe.

Ryan is also my longtime partner, both romantic and professional. More on that later.

Concentrate, Brennan!

I tweezed free another fragment. The round edge and large pit told me it was a chunk of femoral head. The tooth marks told me it had been doggy lunch.

I placed the chunk with the others.

Returned to Mount Turd.

“Hey, big guy.” Tossing my purse onto the kitchen counter and setting the pizza beside it. “Sorry I’m late.”

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