Carcass Trade Read Free Page B

thing I know, he was standing near me, saying, “Guess what I found.” His camera was capped and sitting on his bag near his sneakered foot, and he held both hands behind him. When I looked up, his white shirt hurt my eyes. Holding out a piece of gray bone in the shape of a croquet hoop, he said the jaw had been resting on a pot-sized rock against a tree.
    â€œThe mandible,” I said.
    â€œThe magic mandible,” he said.
    â€œMinus teeth.”
    â€œIt’s got a few.”
    â€œFind the upper, then we’ll celebrate.”
    â€œI can do that.”
    â€œHotshot. Here,” I said, and gave him a bag. “Mark it right.”
    I heard him drop the bone in the bag. I wasn’t looking when he said, “Guess again.”
    â€œWhat?”
    I looked up and found him standing in the same stupid way, with the same stupid, satisfied smile. He brought around to the front the maxilla, the upper jaw, had it hiding somewhere. “God, Doug.”
    â€œI’m great, ain’t I?”
    â€œYou are.”
    â€œHear that?” he said, looking around for witnesses. “She said it.”
    Doug pointed to a canyon sycamore. “Found it in that wedge of roots.” He turned it admiringly. The front teeth were intact, but only two others remained on each side. Finally, he admitted a raven found it. He saw the bird poking its thick black crunchers into the leaves and snatching its head around like a shoplifter on the lookout.
    I was jealous. But now ID would be that much easier, especially if I found more teeth. From dentition—the kind, number, and arrangement of teeth—an odontologist can read the patient’s history like a kindergarten book, and the morgue people delight in keeping the rate of their unidentifieds way down.
    The transport team brought the body out. They had used a sheet to extract the corpse, threading it under the remains in the tight interior. Then they tied the ends to make the bundle easier to lift up through the car door. The whole thing, sheet and all, would be put into the body bag, to make sure no evidence was lost.
    The corner’s investigator wore latex gloves as she stepped around, bent, and untied the flaps, throwing the sheet open. When she rose from bending over the body and blocking our view, we all stood silently looking at the thing that seemed no more than a charred humanoid wick, the limbs seared away and the head gone, the two charcoal knobs glued to the chest.
    â€œIt was a woman,” one of the men said.
    The investigator flipped the sheet back over the corpse and said, “There’s not much to examine here,” and began pulling off the gloves. “We’ll get it to a safe environment.”
    I needed shots of the car interior after the body was removed. Since I had coveralls and Doug didn’t, I’d have to go into the car myself. I asked Doug to stand by in case I needed anything, took some shots from above, then lowered myself in. It was like standing in a dead fireplace. I cast a light around the whole interior, then reached over the frame of the front seat for something that lay like an ashy helmet in the curl of the backseat springs, and pincered it, bringing it forward. It looked like one half of the parietal. Lightly, I ran a finger over the piece of skull. The borders were smooth, flames having eaten away the serrations by which it would fit like a jigsaw piece with the other half.
    â€œFind any money under the seat, it’s mine,” Doug called.
    â€œVery funny.”
    I did retrieve a few coins, and dug off the door a melted blob of blue plastic with one comb-tooth protruding, and spied a metal barrel I thought at first was the front seat track until it moved with a touch of my glove. Lifting the object, I unstuck a small handgun buried like a corn dog in a crust of sheepskin-padded leather. The two halves of the cover came away, the side with the sinuous zipper falling down my