Chapter 1: The Office
"It's on the second floor, through the first set of glass doors but not the second; the door is the first on the right." The advice had come, unasked for, from a tall and thin man standing near the call button for the elevators. I looked twice at him, unsure at first he was the one who'd spoken. His face was pale, composed, and utterly still.
"What is?" I said at last, deciding in the absence of other people nearby that he must have been giving the directions to me.
"The office you're looking for," he said, turning his face to me. His eyes distracted me from getting a look at the rest of his face as I'd meant to do. They were grey, pale grey, and seemed to be taking in everything about me at once. I shifted my weight, but kept my head up. "And you're late," he said calmly, before turning back to face the opening elevator doors.
I walked into the elevator car with him against a slight feeling I shouldn't. I couldn't help but stiffen a bit when he pressed the second floor button as well as the fourth. He let out a quiet chuckle. I huffed. Before I could think up a snappy way to tell him to shove off, my phone vibrated in the bottom of my bag. I submerged my hand into the crowded mess of my work bag and scrabbled with my fingers, wincing when I caught a nail on my key ring. There. I eyed the caller ID: work.
"Connell," I said sharply.
"Doc, I've got something." Detective DuPret's voice was loud enough in his excitement to echo in the elevator. I just had to park in the fourth basement so my charming companion could eavesdrop, I groused to myself.
"Look, DuPret, I'm in the elevator; if you could just…" I began.
"I know I told you it'd be a set of bone fragments, Doc, but the guys found another set here." I shifted my bag on my hip and felt around to make sure I'd packed gloves. I had. DuPret continued. "How much time you got?"
"What do you mean?" I asked with some dread. In the hazy reflection on the stainless steel elevator doors I could see the man next to me raise his eyebrows.
"I mean your answers are going to matter on this one." DuPret said.
"You mean you need them tonight." I translated.
"Yeah, that's about it, Doc." He paused. "Listen, I've got to get back."
"See you." I said. I waited for the call to go dead before shutting my phone and pushing it back into the recesses of my bag.
Moments later the elevator doors opened on the second floor, where a knot of police officers crowded the hallway. I shifted my bag again and stepped out of the car. As I left the man pinned his keen gaze on me again. I turned toward him. "Until later, Doctor," he said quietly, a slight smirk rising on his face. I was a bit grateful when the doors closed.
After I earned my doctorate in forensic anthropology I kicked around Italy for a while, examining the bones of medieval plague victims, Christians in pauper's graves, and the odd Roman. I can say most of my friends back home thought my life was a lot more wonderful than it was. Sure, it sounds romantic to wander the Italian countryside analyzing gravesites, but it isn't. At least, it isn't when you're spending nearly every night alone in a hotel room so similar to all the others that it takes a cup of coffee and some real mental effort to figure out what city you're in.
So it wasn't just the car accident that convinced me to come home. Sure, limping around Venice with a shattered kneecap did hurry my decision, but I was nearly there anyway. I wanted to find some use for my training outside of archaeology. I wanted what I was doing to matter.
When I think that now it's hard not to laugh. I work as a consultant in the pay of the LA County Coroner. Anytime a cop finds some human bones, they call me to figure out what they are and why they might be there. Times being what they are in LA, It's not often the more rural areas get much of my time. I've been here a year, and I could swear there are fragments of bone in every building on every street in this entire sprawling city.
Don't get me wrong, I love my job. I do. I've always got a puzzle to figure out, most of the people I work with are sane, and they pay me enough to live. But so help me, I'm going to give Detective DuPret what for and why not one of these days.
"Doc!" DuPret's broad form emerged from the crowd of uniformed officers and crime scene techs in the anteroom of the small office. He wiped his palms down the front of his khakis as he walked toward me. "Doc, you'll like this one," he said, grinning.
"Got enough uniforms on the scene, DuPret?" I asked snidely.
"It's a maze back there once you get past the first door," he said. "Maybe thirty private offices and a center block of cubicles. Something like that." I nodded; he took it as a sign to continue. "Here's the story. We got a call at seven because building maintenance had some gardeners in here…"
"Gardners?" I cut in.
"Yeah. For the plantings." He shook his head. "Yuppies. Anyway a gardener pulled up a tree to put it in a bigger container and found a human hand in the bottom of the pot."
"That's terrible." I winced. DuPret grinned.
"Scared the piss out of him. So we secured the place and started processing the scene. The teams have been through most of the plants now, and I think we've got two bodies. That's what I need to know, really."
"Hold on now," I held up a hand and stopped in my tracks. While we talked we'd gone through the grey and beige waiting room, past a large granite-topped reception desk, and into a high-ceilinged office space filled with two aisles of outward-facing cubicles flanked by a ring of windowed offices. The building's ventilation system hummed loudly enough to be heard over the shuffling of several crime scene teams. Piles of soil rested on sheets of black plastic at even intervals along the carpeted walkways. I let my gaze drift up to a slowly failing fluorescent light. "You've got a hand with soft tissue and bones from another body?"
"We're sending all the fresh stuff to the M.E." DuPret said, stepping in front of me to round a pile of potting soil. "I think we've got more than a body's worth of the dry stuff."
"All in the plants?" I asked, incredulous.
"All in the plants." DuPret nodded to an officer standing by a tarp, on which my coworker Bridget was placing shards of bone darkened with adhered soil.
"Hey Bridget," I said quietly, hoping not to startle her. Her head shot up, sending her purple-red ponytail flying. She raised a gloved hand and smiled.
"What's up, buttercup?" She chirped, turning back to her cleaning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see DuPret shake his head. One more reason I didn't like him. He was cocky, he was sexist, and he didn't like Bridget. I set my bag down carefully in the corner of the cubicle and dug out a pair of gloves.
"Cleaning them to pack for the lab?" I asked Bridget as I knelt next to her.
"Yeah. We're still going to have a long night, though. Look at all that!" She gestured to a stack of trays behind her. I did a mental calculation and groaned.
Two hours later I stepped out into the anteroom of the office to stretch my cramped back and call the M.E. From my unscientific eyeballing of the evidence already collected, I thought I had enough bones to constitute a victim. That is to say I'd seen too many vertebrae for a person to lose without dying. I wandered into the hallway of the second floor while the M.E.'s phone rang.
"McLynn," the M.E. said sharply, audibly fumbling with the receiver.
"Connell," I said. I wandered farther down the hallway. "I'm here at the downtown scene," I began.
"Which one, darlin'?" Dr. McLynn laughed gently. Her East Texas accent distinguished her voice from any of the others I heard at work. I laughed too, realizing how vague I'd been.
"I'm in the office building where they found the severed hand in the potted plant," I clarified.
"Oh yes," she said. I could hear her shuffling papers. "Now I don't remember asking you to give me a hand, Connell," she teased. I groaned.
"That was awful, McLynn," I scolded. "I'm calling because I think we'll need to meet up on this tomorrow once everything's out."
"I didn't even know they had you on this one, honey," she paused. I heard her moving papers for another moment. "Oh here it is. Yes. I looked at that hand just a bit ago. Pieces of the radius and ulna attached, if you'll believe it," she said.
"Was it cut?" I asked, my puzzlement showing in my tone.
"Bashed, looked like," she said. "It looked like a premortem compound break, loads of bruising, then a clean cut of the skin and tissues right around the break. You tell me, girl."
"I couldn't say," I demurred. "I've got trays of vertebrae in there; enough for at least one body."
"Good lord help us," she said. "How's your schedule looking for lunchtime?"
"Not bad," I said, "one o'clock at Laney's?"
"You're on, Connell." I heard the light scratch of a pen, then the sound of a page being ripped from a notepad. "See you tomorrow." I snapped my phone shut and slid it into my back pocket. I walked a little farther down the hallway, now curious about the other tenants on the floor. I paused near the bank of elevators as a yawn overtook me. When I opened my eyes again after my jaw-cracking yawn, the thin man from earlier in the evening stood in front of me. I flinched, surprised.
"Alone, doctor?" His voice was loud in the hallway, though it wasn't above speaking volume. I glanced behind him as covertly as I could, suddenly worried. "What would DuPret think?" I blinked stupidly at him for a moment before I realized he was teasing me. I scowled.
"Who are you?" I put my hands on my hips. Even if I were drawn to my full height the top of my head would barely reach his chin. I looked him over for a clue to his reasons for being in the hall. He was wearing a well-tailored summer weight suit in a conservative cut. Despite the traditional tailoring he wasn't wearing a tie. The neck of his white shirt was open. His straight black hair fell near his cheekbones, and one lock pushed ahead of the others to rest against the edge of his eyebrow. As I looked at it he moved the lock back behind his hairline, but it immediately fell forward again. His build was wiry and his face thin with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. His unusual eyes caught my attention again and I looked up at him, fighting to silence the voice in my brain that kept telling me he looked about my age and a bachelor. I've got to get my mother off my case about that.
"Have you made your determinations, doctor?" He asked, cocking his head slightly.
"About what?" I snapped.
"Perhaps about whether to be afraid of me? Whether you should scream for the police?" His face creased into a mocking grin. I wanted to slap the look off his face. I could feel my nostrils flaring.
"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice radiating exasperation.
"I have tried your patience enough, doctor," he said. He reached out a hand to me. Moving back from anger to confusion, I shook his hand. "I'm Oliver Karne, detective."
"Amy Connell." I said, withdrawing my hand.
"Charmed," he said. His face twisted into the mocking smile again, but it already seemed a tiny bit less grating to me. "You've been digging for bones, doctor?"
"And I need to get back to it." I turned away from him and nearly jumped out of my skin when he reached out and caught my arm.
"Pay close attention to the ficus trees; you'll find the root structures conceal fragments." I turned toward him again, blinking. I wouldn't know a ficus tree if it bit me in the ass. "The ficus trees in that office are especially mature, if the gardener is to be believed." His eyes darted up to focus down the hall. "DuPret; good to see you as always."
"Karne! How the hell did you get in here?" DuPret and a uniformed officer strode down the hall toward us. Karne discreetly dropped his hand from my arm.
"The elevator." Karne said in a flat tone. DuPret's face reddened with annoyance.
"I can't have you just walking in…" he began, his tone rising. The officer with him appeared to be having trouble containing a grin. I stared at DuPret and Karne, stymied.
"The doctor and I were just discussing gardening soils, DuPret. Commercially prepared ones, of course." Karne brought his hands together in front of him and rocked forward. "I'm sure you know the gardening team in this building switched manufacturers of potting soil and plant food weeks ago."
"What the hell are you talking about?" DuPret growled.
"Well of course you will have wondered why there were distinct layers of soil in potted plants. It's the sort of thing you'd only expect to see outdoors." Karne's piercing eyes settled on DuPret. I turned what he was saying over in my mind. Archaeologists used layers of soil to date material. Was he saying we could use layers of potting soil to date the bones? What if he was?
"Did the gardeners place the newer potting soil on top of the older layers?" I asked, loudly cutting into their staring match. Karne turned to me, the corner of his eyes crinkling.
"They did." Karne said.
"They didn't mix them at all?" This was excellent news.
"They did not." Karne turned to address me instead of DuPret, who stood with his head cocked like a confused mutt.
"So we could get a rough date the remains were added to the pots by examining the soil we found them in?" I asked.
"You could," Karne said. The evidence teams had been dumping the soil out onto plastic sheets, not paying any attention to layers. I motioned to Karne and turned back toward the office; he trailed behind. I turned and grabbed his forearm, pulling him up beside me.
"You know the difference if you see it?" I asked as we walked.
"Of course." He said, extracting his arm from my grip and keeping pace. We walked into the crime scene together, attracting stares from several techs as we went. I gathered Karne had sparred with DuPret before, but I didn't care. DuPret nearly let a vital piece of information get away, and it was sheer luck Karne was there to get it back. And so help me, I was tired of working cases with an idiot.