Body Double

Gresham slapped his cheek. “Goddamn blackflies. They sure found us.”

The clearing was surrounded by thick stands of trees; the air was close here and windless. By now, insects had caught their scent and were swarming, greedy for blood. Maura was grateful she’d chosen to wear long pants that morning; her unprotected face and arms were already turning into blackfly feeding stations.

By the time they reached the bulldozer, the cuffs of her trousers were soiled. The sun shone down, sparkling on bits of broken glass. The canes of an old rosebush lay uprooted and dying in the heat.

“There,” said Mitch, pointing.

Even before she bent down to look more closely at it, Maura already knew what it was, lodged there in the soil. She didn’t touch it, but just crouched there, her shoes sunk deep in freshly overturned earth. Newly exposed to the elements, the paleness of bone peeked through the crust of dried dirt. She heard cawing among the trees and glanced up to see crows flitting like dark specters among the branches. They know what it is, too.

“What do you think?” asked Gresham.

“It’s an ilium.”

“What’s that?”

“This bone.” She touched her own, where the pelvis flared against her slacks. She was reminded, suddenly, of the grim fact that beneath skin, beneath muscle, she too was merely skeleton. A structural frame of honeycombed calcium and phosphorus that would endure long after her flesh had rotted. “It’s human,” she said.

They were silent for a moment. The only sound on that bright June day came from the crows, a gathering flock of them, perched in the trees above, like black fruit among the branches. They stared down with eerie intelligence at the humans, and their caws built to a deafening chorus. Then, as though on cue, their screeches abruptly stopped.

“What do you know about this place?” Maura asked the bulldozer operator. “What used to be here?”

Mitch said, “There were some old stone walls here. Foundation of a house. We moved all the stones over there, figured someone could use the rocks for something else.” He pointed to a pile of boulders near the edge of the lot. “Old walls, that’s really nothing unusual. You go walking in the woods, you find a lot of old foundations like this one. Used to be sheep farms all up and down the coast. Gone, now.”

“So this could be an old grave,” said Ballard.

“But that bone’s right up where one of the old walls was standing,” said Mitch. “I don’t think you’d want to bury dear old Ma so close to the house. Bad luck, I’d think.”

“Some people believed it was good luck,” said Maura.

“What?”

“In ancient times, an infant buried alive under the cornerstone was supposed to protect the house.”

Mitch stared at her. A look of Who the heck are you, lady?

“I’m just saying that burial practices change over the centuries,” said Maura. “This could very well be an old grave.”

From overhead came a noisy flapping. The crows simultaneously rose from the tree, feathers beating the sky. Maura watched them, u

“Weird,” said Gresham.

Maura rose to her feet and looked at the trees. Remembered the noise of the bulldozer that morning, and how close it had seemed. “Which direction is the house from here? The one I stayed in last night?” she asked.

Gresham looked up at the sun to orient himself, then pointed. “That way. Where you’re facing now.”

“How far is it?”

“It’s right through those trees. You could walk it.”

The Maine state medical examiner arrived from Augusta an hour and a half later. As he stepped out of his car, carrying his kit, Maura immediately recognized the man with the white turban and neatly trimmed beard. Maura had first met Dr. Daljeet Singh at a pathology conference the year before, and they had dined together in February, when he’d attended a regional forensics meeting in Boston. Though not a tall man, his dignified bearing and traditional Sikh headdress made him seem more formidable than he really was. Maura had always been impressed by his air of quiet competence. And by his eyes; Daljeet had liquid brown eyes and the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man.

They shook hands, a warm greeting between two colleagues who genuinely liked each other. “So what are you doing here, Maura? Not enough work for you in Boston? You have to come poach my cases?”

“My weekend’s turned into a busman’s holiday.”

“You’ve seen the remains?”

She nodded, her smile fading. “There’s a left iliac crest, partially buried. We haven’t touched it yet. I knew you’d want to see it in situ first.”

“No other bones?”

“Not so far.”

“Well, then.” He looked at the cleared field, as though steeling himself for the tramp through the dirt. She noticed that he’d come prepared with the right footwear: L.L. Bean boots that looked as if they were brand-new and about to get their first test on muddy terrain. “Let’s see what the bulldozer turned up.”

By now it was early afternoon, the heat so thick with humidity that Daljeet’s face was quickly glazed with sweat. As they started across the clearing, insects swarmed in, taking bloody advantage of fresh meat. Detectives Corso and Yates from the Maine State Police had arrived twenty minutes earlier, and were pacing the field along with Ballard and Gresham.

Corso waved and called out: “Not the way to spend a beautiful Sunday, hey, Dr. Singh?”

Daljeet waved back, then squatted down to look at the ilium.

“This was an old homesite,” said Maura. “There was a stone foundation here, according to the crew.”

“But no coffin remains?”

“We didn’t see any.”

He looked across the landscape of muddy stones and uprooted weeds and tree stumps. “That bulldozer could have scattered bones everywhere.”

There was a shout from Detective Yates: “I found something else!”

“Way over there?” said Daljeet, as he and Maura crossed the field to join Yates.

“I was walking by here, got my foot caught in that knot of blackberry roots,” said Yates. “I tripped over it, and this kind of popped up from the dirt.” As Maura crouched beside him, Yates gingerly eased apart a thorny tangle of uprooted canes. A cloud of mosquitoes rose from the damp soil, lighting on Maura’s face as she stared at what was partially buried there. It was a skull. One hollow orbit stared up at her, pierced by tendrils of blackberry roots that had forced their way through openings that had once held eyes.

She looked at Daljeet. “You have a pruner?”

He opened his kit. Out came gloves, a rose pruner, and a garden trowel. Together they knelt in the dirt, working to free the skull. Maura clipped roots as Daljeet gently scooped away earth. The sun beat down, and the soil itself seemed to radiate heat. Maura had to pause several times to wipe away sweat. The insect repellant she had applied an hour ago was long gone, and blackflies were once again swarming around her face.

She and Daljeet set aside their tools and began to dig with their gloved hands, kneeling so close together that their heads bumped. Her fingers tu

She and Daljeet glanced at each other, both registering the same thought: This was not a natural death.

“I think it’s loose now,” said Daljeet. “Let’s lift it out.”

He laid out a plastic sheet, then reached deep into the hole. His hands emerged cradling the skull, the mandible partly anchored to it by helpful spirals of blackberry roots. He laid his treasure on the sheet.

For a moment, no one said anything. They were all staring at the shattered temporal bone.

Detective Yates pointed to the metallic glint of one of the molars. “Isn’t that a filling?” he said. “In that tooth?”