Page 82 of Unnatural Death

“What I want to know is how come you’re not fucking pissed at them.” He can’t keep the hurt out of his voice as we set out along the corridor. “It’s one thing if it’s colleagues not telling us stuff. But we’re talking about your niece and your husband, the people you live with.”

“I don’t think you have any idea how pissed I am,” I reply, and the first room on our left is the anthropology lab.

It’s out of the mainstream of traffic in the far reaches of the lower level where the odor is rancid and elevator traffic doesn’t venture. Through the closed door I can hear the quiet clacking of skeletal remains defleshing in a ten-gallon soup pot of bleach and boiling water. Most of our commercial kitchenware is from Wild World, I’m unpleasantly reminded for the umpteenth time.

“Hold on a minute.” Opening the door, I’m greeted by a waft of foul humid air.

I avoid inhaling the steamy acrid stench while I approach the electric stovetop, old with a chipped avocado-green enamel finish. I lower the heat to simmer, my heart pounding furiously. Bits of tissue float on top of the scummy bubbling water, two femurs knocking against metal. The bones belong to the partial skeleton laid out on a paper-covered table, a puzzle missing important pieces.

The remains turned up at a construction site, the victim a young male whose mother was African American, based on the mitochondrial DNA. The police haven’t a clue about identity but suspect the homicide is mob-related. Possibly it goes back decades to when that area of Loudoun County was popular with Colombian drug traffickers known for executing snitches and rivals.

“We don’t want to leave the pot boiling overnight. Especially when no one’s likely coming in tomorrow if we’re buried in snow. All the water will evaporate and imagine the fucking mess. Not to mention showing a total disrespect for a victim we still can’t call by name. But he mattered to someone, goddammit.” I don’t mean to be this upset. “Why don’t people think? Do they assume I’m always going to clean up after them?”

“Fabian should have noticed. He takes the stairs all the time and walks right past the anthropology lab.” Marino can’t resist finding fault with him. “He has his lunch in here when Doctor Milton’s around. The other week I walked past and the two of them were chowing down on Domino’s pizza. Meanwhile, bones are clanking inside the pot like lobsters trying to get out.”

“Doctor Milton shouldn’t have left the damn lab with the damn burner going full blast.” I’m adamant and out of sorts. “God knows how many times he’s done it before.”

The consulting forensic anthropologist is a professor at James Madison University. Our office has been using him since long before I moved back to Virginia, and he typically shows up on an as-need basis. He must have visited today while I was out, and it’s a good thing he’s not here right now. I’m afraid of what I might say to him.

“What are you doing?” Marino asks as I use my phone to take a video of the bubbling water simmering down, the bones rattling quietly.

“Maggie’s making a thing about our account at Wild World,” I reply. “I thought she might like to see how we utilize some of what we buy.”

“As much as she hates all things disgusting?” Marino replies with a hint of glee. “Maybe add a few pics of our Wild World autopsy knives in action.”

“An excellent idea.” I close the lab door.

“And what we do with all the string and butcher paper we buy,” Marino says. “You talk about squeamish. She has a hard time picking up after her corgi, has to wear a face mask and gloves.”

“I’m feeling more inspired by the moment,” I reply, and my former secretary was never one to walk inside the autopsy suite.

Maggie rarely ventured downstairs looking for me unless she was being nosy. Even then she kept her distance, not disguising her disgust. In the main, she wanted nothing to do with the morgue and those we care for alive and dead. During Elvin Reddy’s reign, she spent her time inside her office or his. That’s when she wasn’t going to meetings and traveling, accompanying him as if she was his wife.

“It’s not a good idea mentioning the footprint cast to Doctor Milton,” Marino says as we follow dingy off-white linoleum flooring that’s supposed to be non-slip. I know from experience that it’s not if it’s wet. “Even though he’s an anthropologist it would be a really bad idea.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” I reply. “I’d be the first to tell you that he’s not a foot anatomist.”

“He goes to one of those churches withPrimitivein the name,” Marino says, and he can’t stand the anthropologist. “He doesn’t believe in evolution, thinks we’re exactly the same as we were in the flippin’ Garden of Eden. So you can imagine his attitude about a huge hairy humanoid that might be an earlier version of ourselves. I’m just telling you that he thinks Bigfoot is bullshit if not sacrilegious and is the last person we want to talk to about it.”

“Doctor Milton is old-school and has been around for a very long time,” I reply. “Age, race, sex, and that’s about as much as we can depend on him for when we deal with bones. The rest of the time we use our folks at the Smithsonian and other experts, none of whom are appropriate in this situation. Perhaps Cate Kingston can be helpful, depending on what Lucy thinks of her.”

Next is the room where we store what Shannon calls posterity pots. The door is cracked open, and I’m getting increasingly agitated.

I scan metal shelves where hundreds of plastic quart containers are filled with sections of organs and other tissue from autopsies. Each has a toe tag inside that’s labeled with the case number scrawled in waterproof marker. I can tell the fire deaths and others involving carbon monoxide, the tissue cherry red in its bath of formalin. I shut the door, making sure it’s locked this time.

“This is what I mean,” I say to Marino. “Carelessness. People getting too damn comfortable.”

“I guess when it’s as busy as it’s been, there’s a lot of traffic in and out and doors get left unlocked or open …”

“Remember the formalin spill when someone ran into the shelves with a gurney because the door was left wide open? Back in the day when the jars were glass?”

“Yeah, we lost hundreds of people. Pieces and parts of them, at any rate. But that was in Florida. Not here, Doc.”

“My point is that the door should stay locked, especially at this hour. And I’m tired of picking up after everyone. I’m not a damn den mother.”

“It’s a good thing because you’d scare away all the Cub Scouts right now,” Marino says. “You’re sure in a shitty mood all of a sudden.”

“It’s not all of a sudden.”

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