Free Swamp Bones by Kathy Reichs

Mundane stuff.
    “Scott?” Ranger Flores’s head was poking through the partially open door. “Can I borrow you a minute?”
    “Be right back.” Thrown to me as he followed her out.
    I stepped to the locker and lifted the magazines. Nothing hidden below. Balancing the pile on one palm, I ran the fingers of my other hand along the locker’s metal seams. Zilch.
    What had I expected? Geo-coordinates for the journal’s hiding place etched on the shelf? Notes secreted in a crack?
    As I was replacing the magazines, the top three slid to the floor. I bent to retrieve them, and spotted a corner of paper sticking from the pages of one. I tugged the paper, and two sheets slid out. One looked like a page torn from a magazine. The other was lined in blue, filled with girlish handwriting. Jotted letters and numbers, not sentences. Identical crease patterns suggested the two sheets had been folded together.
    The doorknob clicked. I quickly slipped the papers into my notepad. A violation of scene protocol, but I wanted to examine them in private.
    Pierce joined me and eyed the escapee magazines.
    “Sorry.” Chilly grin. “They slid.”
    A curt nod was his only reply. So much for conviviality.
    Wordlessly, Pierce gathered and shook each fallen magazine. I watched, anxious. Nothing fluttered out.
    Pierce set the magazines on a bench and straightened to face me. “That’s it.”
    I nodded. “I’ll get this list to Yellen.”
    Pierce studied me for a very long moment. Appeared to dislike what he saw.
    I stripped off my gloves and tossed them into a trash bin.
    “It’s been real.” I turned to leave.
    “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Pierce’s tone stopped me at the door.
    I turned, mind scrambling for an excuse to justify confiscating the papers.
    Pierce dangled his keys. “I’m your ride.”
    I exhaled breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “So you are.”

Chapter Nine
    The call came shortly after we exited the park. Decomp room two was at my disposal until eight the next morning.
    I left Pierce with a quick “Thanks for the ride.” I didn’t like him. All ego.
    Once I was safely alone in the autopsy room, I used forceps to transfer James’s tear sheet and paper from my notepad into a Ziploc. I studied what I could see through the plastic.
    The first sheet was a page torn from a magazine or catalogue. It depicted a model, not James, wearing a pair of albino-python-skin pants. Nothing sinister there. I must have ripped out hundreds of magazine pages depicting coveted items. I noted the pants were manufactured by the Eugene sisters.
    The second was the lined notebook page filled with handwritten letters and numbers that looked like some sort of code. Occasionally a word popped out. Old Ingraham. Pearl Bay. Buttonwood.
    Did the words have meaning? Or did James have her own special shorthand? What did the number and letter sequences signify? Frustrated, I set the sheets aside. I wanted to study them more, but analysis of the second victim took priority.
    I composed a text to Lisa, telling her to contact me should she need her car and suggesting dinner around 7:00 P.M . I’d been the worst houseguest in planetary history. On the other hand, it was Lisa who’d gotten me into this mess.
    It was only after hitting send that I looked at my watch: 1:30. An on-time dinner was iffy, but doable.
    I gloved, tied an apron at my neck and waist, then retrieved the second victim’s bones from the cooler. Standing at the counter, I reviewed what I had.
    Arranged on four trays were two complete sets of hand bones: ten each of the distal, middle, and proximal phalanges, ten metacarpals, and fourteen carpals. I also had a complete left foot, and a partial right forearm.
    Moving two trays to the autopsy table, I started with the hands. As I touched them, I noticed a roughening of the subperiosteal surface at points. I ran a gloved fingertip over a metacarpal, then carried it to the dissecting scope. Fine pitting covered