Page 19 of The Bone Code

Things had gone slightly better for AF21-987, the lower-downand smaller of the two victims. There the macabre packaging had remained largely intact.

Herrin had supplied everything I’d requested. While I arranged equipment on a countertop—I’m finicky about placement—Klopp shot video of the remains.

Bone saw. Calipers. Magnifier. Forceps. Tweezers. Dental picks. Soft bristle brushes in graduated sizes. Toothbrush. Specimen-collection vials.

Finally, I flipped through an array of charts and diagrams, chose several, and snapped them onto a clipboard.

When I turned, Klopp was setting down the camera.

“Did you get that?” I pointed to the fifty-gallon bin dripping muddy seawater onto a tarp in one corner. Brought here at my request.

Wordlessly, Klopp crossed and began recording more footage. After labeling two vials, I joined him, a hollowness blossoming in my chest.

“The lettering’s toast.” Klopp was hunched as before, this time for close-ups. Given his height, it was quite a hunch.

“It’s a biohazard warning,” I said. “For medical waste.”

“I’ll be damned. You can read that?”

“Film the rocks in the bottom.”

“Bastard weighted the thing down to sink.”

As with the Montreal vics.

I indicated several patches of encrustation on the container’s inner and outer surfaces. “Shoot the barnacles, then I’ll collect samples.”

“Why?”

“They might be useful for determining when the container went into the water. Maybe where, if you get extraordinarily lucky.”

In my peripheral vision, I sensed the first glimmer of interest from Vislosky. Unhooking her thumbs, she straightened and watched closely as I detached a number of the tiny, stalk-like crustaceans, divided the collection, and sealed each half into a separate vial.

Intent eyes followed me back to the counter. When my gaze met hers, one penciled brow cocked up ever so slightly.

“Or they might not,” I said.

Vislosky said nothing.

An autopsy rarely provides the drama depicted in some crime fiction. Uncommon is the greatAha!moment when the microscopic scale of an extinct Patagonian reptile is tweezed from the victim’s inner ear. The goals, as with any scientific endeavor, are threefold: accuracy, precision, and documentation.

The protocol is specific, the process tedious.

Klopp and I discussed strategy. Agreed. He would focus on soft tissue. I would focus on bone. My task would turn out to be more taxing than his.

Odor swelled as Brian, Klopp, and I eased each bundle from its body bag. The noxious cocktail of rotting algae, sea creatures, and human flesh burned my eyes and forced me to breathe through my mouth.

AF21-986 made a wetthunksliding onto the stainless steel. AF21-987, feather-light, made almost no sound. Both corpses had been curled tight in order to stuff them into the container.

As Klopp shot more video and I made notes, Brian manned the wire cutters. Twenty minutes of snipping and peeling resulted in our first unobstructed view of the remains.

You might think that sinking deep below the waves would be a good way to avoid all that nasty postmortem decomp business. You’d be wrong. A corpse in the ocean is subjected to a variety of physical and biological forces, all committed to recycling the body’s molecules back to nature. Temperature, salinity, currents, depth, and the nature of the substrate all affect how long the process takes. As on land, many creatures play a role.

Marine animals are as opportunistic as their terrestrial counterparts. Fish and eels will scavenge. Arthropods, especially the large ones like lobsters, shrimp, and crabs, are experts at opening up a body. Mollusks, many of which normally dine on algae, will happilyswitch to carrion. Echinoderms such as sea stars, sand dollars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers will belly up to flesh if given the chance.

And there are the aforementioned barnacles. These and other sessile invertebrates don’t so much feed on remains as attach to them.

The polypropylene bin had survived immersion better than a metal one might have but had failed in its promise of a watertight seal. Degraded and warped, the lid had allowed the inflow of salt water and invasion by a variety of species.