Page 31 of The Summer Guests

Chapter 16

Jo

“It never gets any easier,” said her younger brother, Finn. “Recovering a body.”

They were in Jo’s car, headed to the ME’s office in Augusta, with Jo at the wheel. Since the Maine Warden Service had transferred Finn up to Aroostook County in the north, they hadn’t been able to spend as much time together the way they used to, pitching their tents in the backwoods or clambering up mountains with their dogs. He’d always been her best friend, and really, how could anyonenotlike Finn? He was a taller, skinnier version of their father, Owen, with the same goofy laugh and ambling gait. But unlike Owen, Finn was more than a little terrified of conversing with women his age, which might explain his state of eternal bachelorhood.

With his sister, though, Finn neverstoppedtalking.

“At least this recovery was easy. Not like that one in February,” he said. “I hate having to dive under the ice. And that lake was full of tannins, murky as hell.”

“That was the kid on the snowmobile?”

“Yeah. Windchill was like twenty below, wicked hard day to be in the water. And his dad and mom wereright there, standing by the lake, watching. They must have known their kid was already dead, but theywere hanging on. Hoping they were wrong. When I brought it up in the bag, Jesus, the screams. Like wild animals. That’s what I never get used to, Jo. I can deal with the bodies, even the messed-up ones. But I’m no good at dealing with parents.”

“No. That’d be the hardest.”

“So I was really glad it wasn’t that girl’s body we pulled up, with her mother there and all. As it was, she seemed kinda crazy.”

Yes she did,Jo thought. Susan Conover had been unstoppable, clambering aboard the dive boat, clawing open the body bag. But what mother wouldn’t be half-insane, trying to reach her child?

“So where do you think that missing girl is?” asked Finn.

“I don’t know.”

“At least we know she’s not in that pond. It was a nice gravel bottom, easy to search. We didn’t spot any other anomalies on side-scan.”

“Instead, you handed me another mystery.” Jo sighed. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, itiscalled Maiden Pond. We know at least one girl has drowned there.”

“That was a hundred years ago. And she’s buried at Mountain View Cemetery.”

“So who’s the skeleton?” He looked at her. “You have any idea?”

“Whoever it is, he—or she—has been down there a long time.”

“How long, you think?”

“Months? Years?” Jo turned onto the driveway for the medical examiner’s office and pulled into a parking stall. “Let’s hope we get some answers.”

“Why, if it isn’t the Thibodeaus,” said Dr. Wass, greeting Jo and Finn with a smile as they walked into the morgue. Jo had met the chief medical examiner years ago, when she had viewed her first autopsy as a student at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. Until that day, she’dnever seen a dead human up close, and certainly had never lookedinsideone. With the rest of her class, she’d stood at the morgue table and watched Dr. Wass make the first incision. That had been the worst part, seeing the blade slice into skin, followed by the horror of hearing the ribs being cracked open. But once the chest cavity was open and the organs bared, what she saw looked very much like the insides of the deer that she and Finn used to hunt and gut in the field. On the inside, humans were scarcely different from animals, she’d thought, and that had made the rest of the autopsy easier to watch. But watching the first incision still made her cringe, because the skin being sliced open was clearly human, and very much like her own.

She was glad that today’s visit would not involve scalpels or skin. Instead, what lay on the table were bones, arranged in their approximate anatomical positions. Bending over those bones now was the state’s forensic anthropologist, Dr. Julie Volberding, whose lectures at the academy on body decomposition were legendary because of her stomach-turning slideshow. For a woman who spent her workdays boiling down human bones and collecting maggots from rotting flesh, Dr. V. always seemed as serene as a silver-haired grandmother happily puttering around in her kitchen.

“Julie, you remember Jo Thibodeau and her brother Finn?” said Wass. “Jo’s now the acting police chief in Purity. And Finn’s with the warden service. He brought up the remains.”

“Sister and brother? Keeping it all in the family, eh?” said Volberding.

“I enjoyed your lectures at the academy,” said Jo.

“Now let’s see how much you remember.” Volberding nodded at the bones on the table. “There’ll be a quiz afterward.”

“We should wait for Detective Alfond,” said Wass. “He ought to be here any minute.”

Jo winced at the mention of Alfond’s name. Because this death was a possible homicide, a state police detective would routinely be assigned to the case, but why did it have to be Alfond? She’d already tangled withhim once, back in February, when a woman’s body was found in Maggie Bird’s driveway. Even though it had happened in her town, on her beat, Alfond had effectively locked Jo out of that investigation.

She felt an ominous sense of déjà vu when the morgue door opened and Robert Alfond walked in. He took one look at her, and it was clear, by the expression on his face, that he was no happier than she was about them being thrown together again.

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