Page 36 of Cold, Cold Bones

We both studied the object glowing white at the femoral midshaft.

“Must be in a pocket,” I said.

Crossing to the drying rack, I lifted the jeans and tested for a lump. Felt nothing. Moving slowly, I inserted forceps into the right back pocket. Empty. The left.

Deep down, wedged against the bottom seam was something rigid. Using the tweezers, I flicked the object upright, teased it out, and walked back to show Slidell.

In my palm was a metal cylinder with a decaying wooden handle at one end. The cylinder was roughly two and a half inches long and a half inch in diameter. Attached to the handle by a half-rotted lanyard was a flat piece of metal, curved and serrated at its tip.

I looked a question at Slidell. He shrugged.

“No idea at all?” I asked, perhaps a bit too sharply.

“What am I, Tim the Tool Man?”

I placed the object under the magnifier. Thumbed on the ring light.

“There’s a logo on the handle, but the lettering’s toast.”

Wishing for Katy’s visual acuity, I readjusted the lens. “MaybeQOsomething?CC? AC?”

“Gotta hit the pavement.” Slidell’s heels squeaked across the tile. “I’ll use what I got on this guy, see if anything pops.”

I straightened.

Slidell was already pushing through the door.

I spent a few more minutes with a hand magnifier. Eventually gave up in frustration.

I spotted nothing else unusual in the skeleton. No abnormalities, no other healed or fresh fractures, no surgical inclusions. No bullets.

After shooting pics with the lab Nikon and my iPhone, I bagged and tagged the cylinder. Was placing the Ziploc beside the boots when my id tossed the same caution flag as when I’d processed the eyeball.

What?

There was absolutely nothing linking the two cases. Kwalwasser and Sanchez, maybe. Both bodies were found missing parts. But these remains were complete. A suicide by hanging.

Anapparentsuicide, I corrected myself.

My subconscious stayed vigilant but offered no help.

I checked the time. Six-ten. Suspecting the snow was having its way with the streets, I knew I should head home.

I decided to send the CSU pics to my iPhone. Was finishing when the id guys piped up again.

I looked at the image currently on the computer screen. Taken from the point at which the trail began seriously rising in elevation, it provided an overview of the body dangling from the oak. I paid closer attention than I had earlier with Slidell. Or when Hawkins and I had been freezing our asses in the snow.

The man’s head was slumped sideways toward his right shoulder. His jaw was displaced but clinging to his skull by dry and shriveled ligaments. Nothing wrong there.

The rope was knotted just below the man’s mastoid process on the left. OK. A side-positioned knot was more consistent with suicide than one located at the nape of the neck. Wasn’t it? And what about the knot itself? Having no expertise beyond Girl Scout level, I vowed to contact a knot expert. Wasn’t there one at the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale? A knotologist? Then it struck me.

The man was hanging with his toes approximately six feet above terra firma. The rope, not counting the noose, was eight feet long. I’d measured it. The man had stood five-foot five. I’d measured him, too.

I did some quick math. That put the branch at almost twenty feet above the ground. How the hell did he get up that high? The tree had small knobs projecting from its trunk. Enough to get footholds? Maybe. The “dead dude” was wearing boots.

I searched the views of the surrounding area. Saw nothing in the background that the man could have used to enable him to grasp the branch. No dead trees to drag over. No stumps to stand on. No collapsible stepladder to climb.

I considered possible scenarios.