Free Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs Page B

discovery. Then I took the Ziplocs to the stinky room, placed the bones on a tray, and submerged the pine tar node in a jar of acetone and set it in the sink.

    When finished, I called Joe Hawkins. He agreed to meet me as soon as I’d freed whatever was congealed in the node.
    A quick cup of the sludge that passes for coffee in the staff lounge, and I began photographing the ten hand bones, periodically crossing to check on progress in the sink. All morning the node remained hard as a marble.
    The bones were as uninformative as I’d feared. I tried some metric analysis based on measurements of the metacarpals. They came up middle road all the way. And finger and hand bones reveal zip about race. In the end, all I could say was young healthy adult.
    Like ME229-13. The hand bones were consistent in every way with the torso bones, but there was no conclusive proof both sets of remains came from the same person. Positive association could only be established with DNA. And I wasn’t optimistic on that front.
    Discouraged, but not surprised, I returned to my office and dialed Avery County. Ramsey was in and took my call quickly.
    “So that’s it?” he asked when I’d finished relaying my observations.
    “You can rule out old codgers wandering off in their sleep.”
    “Case practically solved.” Pause. “But you’re saying we could have two people?”
    “I think that’s highly unlikely.”
    “What about the bits in the pine sap?”
    “I’m working on it. Did you make inquiries about Cora Teague?”
    “I ran the name, got nothing. No address, no phone, no SSN, no passport, no credit or tax history. There is a birth certificate, registered with the Avery County Register of Deeds in 1993.”
    “Don’t parents apply for a social security number at the same time they apply for a birth certificate?”
    “You’re asking the wrong guy.”
    “According to Strike, after high school Teague did a brief stint as a nanny. Otherwise she never worked.”
    “Nannies are often paid under the table.” I could hear Ramsey playing with something, maybe the phone cord. “Listen, Doc. It’s a big country out there. If the kid decided to vanish, changed her name, she’ll be damn near impossible to find.”

    I nodded.
    “And Strike’s right. There’s no MP file.”
    “Did you run the parents?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Nothing popped. No arrests, complaints, calls to the home.”
    “Where do they live?”
    “Larkspur Road, off 194. Nothing out there but buzzards and pines.”
    I almost hung up without mentioning it. “I learned something odd last night. Could be meaningless.”
    Ramsey waited, still jiggling whatever he was jiggling.
    “In 2012, an article appeared in The Avery Journal-Times .” I scrolled through messages on my iPhone, found an email from Mama from 3:12 A.M. I opened it and clicked on the link. “According to the story, body parts were found off a hiking trail near the Lost Cove Cliffs Overlook.”
    “Human?”
    “That’s unclear.”
    Ramsey left a small skeptical pause. “When?”
    “April twenty-ninth.”
    “Six months before I signed on.”
    “Probably coincidence, but that’s also a viewing point for Brown Mountain.”
    “What are you suggesting?”
    “Nothing. I’m wondering about follow-up.”
    “Human remains should have gone to the coroner.”
    “Did they?”
    “I’ll look into it. And I can check whether the reporter is still around.”
    After disconnecting, I went back to the hand bones and the node.
    Five hours of soaking and poking finally got the job done. By three that afternoon, two shriveled hunks of flesh lay in the sink, slimy remnants of the node scattered around them. I inspected each with a hand lens.

    And actually arm-pumped the air. Dopey, but I did.
    Each hunk had a sliver of nail tagging one end, a distal phalange partially visible at the other. I took X-rays and examined each for detail.
    An arrow-shaped phalange told me the larger hunk was the tip of a thumb. The