Lethal Fractures: Chapter 6
Major Sonja Gracy had in-processed to many military bases and hospitals over the years—including the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, several times—and knew that it would be an all-day ordeal of safety briefings, tours (which she hardly needed, considering she had spent the majority of her career within those walls), checks to make sure her Common Access Card was working properly, and more forms that required more signatures than was required to form small countries. With this in mind, she left her kids in the care of Mariana, the new nanny (this time from the Dominican Republic instead of her usual German-speaking Europeans; she felt it was time for the kids to learn Spanish) and headed in early to take care of business before being bored to tears by in-processing.
"I come bearing gifts," she announced, her already large grin widening by the sight of her friend and colleague jumping in surprise.
"Good God, if it isn't the famous Major Sonja Gracy, MD," Dr. Van Lester joked as he recovered his wits. "I saw your name go up on your new office and wondered when you'd be showing your face around here."
"I think you're confusing 'famous' for 'infamous', Van," Gracy said with a smile. "I'm sure I'll be showing my face to a lot of people who still remember me for being the pathologist who cut up her husband, then dropped out of medicine to arrest his killer, then came back to get sent to Hawaii."
"Well, no one can say your career has been boring."
She laughed. "That's what I always liked about you, Van. You always look on the bright side. A bit ironic for one in our line of work."
"Maybe. Or maybe it's the only way to stay sane." She glanced down at what he had been working on when she walked in and found herself staring at a child's skull. Maybe he had a point. "Please, have a seat. Stay and chat for awhile before you return to the side of the building dealing with people who still have flesh."
"Well, I'm in-processing today, so I doubt I'll even see that office you claim bears my name." She placed the large plastic cooler she had been carrying on the floor before picking up an intact pelvis bone from the least-cluttered of Lester's two chairs. "Male," she guessed, not even looking at it. The forensic anthropologist only had to glance at it for a second before sighing in defeat.
"I expected better of you, Sonja," he chided. She shrugged.
"Usually when we see them, there are other parts attached to the pelvis that make it pretty clear which gender it is." The two had worked together several times in the past, starting when she was a resident and he was in his last year of graduate school before earning his Ph.D. As such, she had gotten his mini-lecture on using the skull and pelvis to identify gender several times, and if she had studied it hard enough, she could have figured it out. However, she wasn't here for an anthropology quiz.
"You said something about gifts," Lester prompted. "If it's not Kona coffee, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Honestly, I don't see how anyone can be stationed in Hawaii and request to return to DC."
"I got tired of swimming in my outdoor pool in January and being surrounded by beautiful scuba diving sites," she joked. "I think all that sunshine makes people too happy. Not enough people killing each other to make the life of a forensic pathologist all that interesting. I used to meet with the trauma surgeons every so often so we could complain about how over-qualified we were to work at Tripler." She could tell by the blank expression on his face that he didn't get the joke, so she explained, "Tripler's not a trauma center. But anyway." She dug into her backpack before finding what she was looking for and produced a one-pound bag of Kona coffee.
"Vanilla hazelnut flavored Kona coffee," Lester said in amazement, holding the bag as if it were the holy grail. "I would kiss you right now, but I don't think my wife would appreciate that."
"Give her some of that coffee and I think she would understand."
"Eh, she gave up coffee for Lent."
"Van, Lent ended in April."
"Well, that explains the evil glares I've been getting when I hide the coffee." The two grinned at the silliness. "Thanks, Sonja. Why do I get the feeling this is softening me up for something?"
"Actually, I would have thought this would be the more appreciated of the gifts," she remarked as she held up that plastic cooler. He reached for it like a kid with a Christmas present, but she didn't relinquish it just yet. "First, do you know where the anthropology reports from 2003 would be?"
"Depends. Who was the FA?"
She shrugged. "I tried to remember, and couldn't come up with a name. That might have been the time when we didn't have someone on staff for about seven months."
"Well, I'll take a look around and see what I can find. Can I have my present now?" She finally released the box, which he opened eagerly.
"Wow," he said, his eyebrows raised appreciatively. "How'd you get that past the guards?"
"I told them they didn't want to see it. After they ran it through the x-ray, I think they agreed." She could have taken the disarticulated head and neck through the loading docks, where the guards were accustomed to seeing human bodies in various states of decay and disrepair, but it was too far of a walk from the visitor's parking space she had to use until she got a proper parking pass.
"Pretty girl," Lester commented, still staring down at the box.
"Usually you don't say that until after their flesh has been removed."
"True," he agreed. "I heard CID had another victim of...what was the name they gave the killer?"
She shrugged; before her brief stint as a CID special agent, a good portion of which was spent at NCIS, she hadn't paid much attention to the investigative side of the crime, just the dead body. "I think the last special agent in charge called him the Distorted Bastard, but I doubt that was his official moniker. She had a rather dry and fairly crude sense of humor off the record. I wonder what happened to her. There's a new SAC now."
"Who was the old one?" Lester asked as he frowned, trying to remember. Unlike Gracy, he liked to play an active role in investigations, often to the point of the investigators telling him to back off. She didn't know if it was actual interest, or an impression that that was what forensic anthropologists were supposed to do because that's what they did in fiction. He also liked to comment that it was time for him to start writing mystery novels, because seemed to be the latest 'in' thing for forensic anthropologists to do, citing Bill Bass and Kathy Reichs as examples. She joked in return that she didn't think he had a literary bone in his body. He would reply that, as one who studied bones for a living, he knew for a fact that there was no such thing as a literary bone.
She shrugged. "I don't remember. I don't think I met her after the first autopsy, and only a few times after the second to ask questions about something I found. She was an officer, not a civilian, I remember that. I think maybe a lieutenant colonel?"
"Ah," he said, remember. "Mann."
"No, woman."
"No," he said with a laugh. "Lt. Colonel Mann. Blond hair, shorter than you?"
"Van, most women are shorter than me. A lot of men, too." With her desert tan combat boots on, she easily passed six feet.
"Well, if she's who I'm thinking of, she went out not too long after you did."
She grimaced slightly, remembering the circumstances that surrounded her discharge from the Army, prior to her return a year later. "Hopefully for better reasons than me."
"Yeah. She was more successful at leaving, too. Last I heard, she's still retired from the Army and living in Hawaii."
"Then she's probably not in the investigative business anymore. Like I said, not enough death in Hawaii."
He smiled slightly and closed the lid of the cooler again. "I'll get to this as soon as I'm done with this," he said, holding up the skull he had been working on when she walked in. "It'll be at least a day, maybe longer since she's so fresh, to get the soft stuff off the bones, though." She nodded; she had expected that. "X-rays and records?"
"Sent via classified email this morning."
He grinned. "Ah, efficiency. I've missed you around here."
She snorted. "You work in a facility that's mostly run and staffed by military personnel. Don't try to butter me up by trying to convince me that I'm the only efficient worker around here."
"You got me," he admitted with a smile before abruptly changing the subject. "So how are Maddie and Nate? They do still like to be called Maddie and Nate, right?"
She rolled her eyes slightly. "Maddie has informed me that she hates the name Madeline and will never forgive me for giving it to her. I try to remind her that her father wanted to call her Noelle, but that doesn't seem to make a difference. They're good, both of them. They just had a swim meet this past weekend in Norfolk, their first with their new team. Maddie was upset that she didn't win all of her races. She's got a competitive streak a mile wide."
"Not at all like her mother," Lester said sarcastically.
"No, not at all," she replied, equally dry. "Nate, on the other hand, missed one of his events because he was off playing with some new friends that he had just met. To Maddie, getting out there and winning is the end-all and be-all of the sport, but it's more of a social activity for Nate. Guess I'll have to find another way to finance his college education than a swimming scholarship."
"If his parents are any indication, he certainly won't be a dullard in the classroom. Besides, he's starting, what, first grade? I don't think you need to worry about college just yet."
"Second, actually," she corrected.
"My goodness, they're getting old."
"Your oldest is only a year behind him." He and his wife had three kids, ranging from age two to six. Unlike the Gracy children, who both took after their parents in terms of athleticism and were involved in every sport they could think of—swimming, soccer, and basketball had been the big ones in Hawaii, as Sonja declared them too young to be surfing—the Lester kids—at least six-year-old Briony Lester, the only one old enough to participate anyway—seemed uninterested in sports, probably because their parents had been uninterested in sports.
"I'm glad they're doing well," he said before his smile fell, replaced by a thoughtful frown. "Time to be honest, Sonja. How have you been? Really."
She squirmed slightly under that intense gaze. "Better," she finally said. "A lot of time has gone by, Van."
"You say that, but I bet you aren't even dating yet."
"You're the second person to comment on my dating life since this case began." She tried to smile, but he was still scrutinizing her. "Seriously, Van, I'm okay."
"I was a bit surprised when you told me you're coming back to DC. There are a lot of memories here."
"Well, yeah," she admitted, consciously pushing aside the sudden image of a gun pressed to the side of a dark-haired five-year-old's head. "But mostly good. This is where I bought my first home, drank too much in med school, had my first job that paid living wages. Both of my kids were born over at Navy. I watched the fireworks over the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. I started my adult life in this city, Van. I figured it would be as good place as any to start it over, too."