The Bones Will Speak Read Free

I already had a reputation for being eccentric.
    â€œAre you positive it’s female?”
    â€œJust look at it!” I realized I was holding the phone over the skull and quickly put the cell back to my ear. “I’m not a forensic anthropologist, but if I had to guess, I’d say female. There’s a lack of development in the supraorbital ridges, the zygomatic process is less pronounced, there’s an absence of the external occipital protuberance—”
    â€œSpeak English.”
    â€œDon’t interrupt. She has signs of animal activity—chewing—and is missing the lower jaw. Hence she’s a cranium, not a skull, but her teeth are in good shape in the maxilla. That’s the upper jaw.”
    â€œI know what that is. You’re a forensic artist. Since when has a skull spooked you?”
    â€œIt’s not the skull; it’s the bugs.”
    â€œYeah, yeah, you and your insect phobia. I think you’re just out of practice with the real thing. You’ve been doing too much work on plaster castings.”
    â€œI don’t even want to think about plaster castings.” It was only eight months since my work in Utah and I still had nightmares.
    â€œSpeaking of that case, didn’t you find some body parts on your property in that case too? Are you turning into Montana’s version of the body farm?”
    â€œVery funny.” Leave it to Dave to know how to simultaneously calm me down and irritate me beyond belief. He treated me like a kid sister, which, in a sense, I was. His family took me in when I was fourteen.
    â€œI will concede that I haven’t reconstructed a skull from a homicide case for a while.” I smoothed my paint-stained denim shirt. “But in the past, they’ve always arrived cleaned. In a neatly labeled evidence pouch. All the slithery things inside them boiled away.”
    â€œYou’re getting mighty prissy about receiving evidence.”
    â€œHa. Do you have any missing-persons reports?” I took a deep breath, then scratched my dog behind the ear. I stopped and looked at my hand. Fresh, cow-pie green. Great. I wiped the poo on the grass.
    â€œOne came in less than an hour ago from the Missoula Police Department. Possible abduction this morning of a fourteen-year-old girl, name of Mattie Banks.”
    â€œIf she was abducted this morning, she’d hardly be down to bone by evening . . . unless someone boiled her head . . .”
    â€œYou have a sick mind.”
    â€œSo you like to point out.”
    â€œI’ll check missing persons, also give a call to the state guys, see how fast they can get here. We’re really shorthanded. I got two officers on sick leave, but I’ll be over within the hour.”
    I gazed at the vast Bitterroot wilderness stretching past my yard. Churning indigo clouds now blotted out the setting sun. April weather could change in a second in the mountains.
    â€œOn second thought, don’t come over tonight. A storm’s about to break.” I thought for a moment. “Unless you want to call in half the law enforcement in Montana, the National Guard, and every Explorer Scout in the West, I need to see if I can narrow down the possible perimeter for this homicide. Pyrs can retrieve road kill or tasty dead critters from about a five-mile radius. That gives us a lot of back country to search.”
    â€œThen we’ll get Winston to take us to her body.”
    â€œHa! Forget the ‘we.’ If you show up, Winston will just want you to pet him. Let me see what I can do with the dog first.”
    Winston wagged his tail.
    â€œYou’ve undoubtedly compromised everything to boot, Winston.”
    A splash of rain struck my arm, and I glanced up. The wind brushed through the pines, creating a sibilant murmur. “I’ll get my noble hound to track tomorrow. I’ll call you.”
    I dropped the phone into my pocket. “Come on, Winston. I’m