Read Online 206 BONES by Kathy Reichs - Free Book Online

freezer.
     
The other was a skeleton. Descriptors had been entered as: white; male; eighteen to twenty-four years of age. The bones had been in storage for thirty-eight months.
     
We bombed on both fronts.
     
Though the information had yet to be entered into the system, Corcoran learned that Freezer Man had finally been IDed two days earlier. Turned out the body was that of a nineteen-year-old student from Ohio State, a schizophrenic who’d dropped out to hit the big city without calling home. What had happened on the mean streets was anyone’s guess. Mom and Dad were awaiting delivery of the body.
     
By phoning Cukura Kundze, I learned that Lassie stood six-two and weighed roughly 190. Long bone measurements put Skeleton Man’s height at five-six, tops.
     
I pulled the case to double-check the stature estimate. Right on.
     
“Not your boy,” Corcoran said.
     
“No,” I agreed.
     
We were standing beside a worktable in the CCME storage room. Corcoran was watching as I replaced Skeleton Man’s bones in their box.
     
“Who does your anthropology?” I asked, snugging the lid into place.
     
“For years we used a guy out of Oklahoma. Now that he’s retired, it’s pretty haphazard. Sometimes a graduate student. Sometimes a resident doing a rotation here. Sometimes a staff pathologist.”
     
“People who’ll work for free,” I guessed.
     
“Walczak claims there’s no money in the budget.”
     
“One day that approach will bite him in the ass.”
     
“Hey, don’t jump on me. I agree we should use only board-certified specialists. Would make my job easier.”
     
“Who analyzed this fellow?” I laid a palm on Skeleton Man’s box.
     
Corcoran checked the case file.
     
“AP. That would be Tony Papatados, a doctoral candidate at UIC. Excavates bones in Peru. Or maybe it’s Bolivia. I don’t remember.”
     
“An archaeologist.”
     
“Weren’t you an archaeologist?”
     
“Yes. Don’t get me wrong. Many bio-archaeologists and physical anthropologists are excellent researchers. Many know a lot of osteology, how to estimate age, sex, how to measure bones properly. But they’re not trained in the full range of forensic issues. Most have little experience with modern populations.”
     
Sudden thought. If Walczak had underqualified people working his anthropology cases, it was possible some remains had been improperly evaluated.
     
“Mind if I spend a little time in here?”
     
“Fine with me. Why?”
     
“Laszlo Tot was military. And reported missing. If he came here, even as a decomp, the ID would have been a snap with dentals and prints. But suppose his body wasn’t found for a while. What if he was skeletonized and the bones were examined by someone with, shall we say, limited skills?”
     
“We could be overlooking him because the report is misleading.”
     
“Or flat-ass wrong.”
     
“I guess it’s possible.” Corcoran sounded dubious.
     
“Can you search your database for unidentified decomps and skeletons arriving during the past four years?”
     
Corcoran tapped the computer keyboard, peered at the monitor, tapped some more, then hit a single key.
     
“Hold on. There’s a printer in my office.”
     
He returned moments later with a list containing fourteen CCME numbers. He’d also pulled the police incident, morgue intake, and anthropology reports for each case.
     
Seven corpses had arrived badly decomposed. For those, the flesh had been stripped, then the skeletons cleaned by boiling. One individual had been burned, one mummified. For those, the remains had been left untouched. Five folks had rolled in as nothing but bone.
     
“They’re all over there.” Corcoran indicated the shelving to which I’d returned Skeleton Man in his absence. “But you’re on your own. A battered toddler just showed up. I caught the autopsy.”
     
“No problem.”
     
Corcoran showed me where the necessary equipment was stored, and jotted a number should I have need of a tech. Then he was gone.
     
Starting with those who’d arrived as