With a soft clacking sound, one long bone and a few smaller ones tumbled out onto the chipped tile floor. The rest of the skeleton shifted, releasing puffs of dust and fragments of cloth or paper. Leaning in, Neil observed a layer of dehydrated body fluids and decomposed flesh under the bone heap. Some of it had dripped out and dried in a half-metre-wide stain on the floor.
The skull tipped off the rib cage and dropped onto the edge of the metal locker, rocking twice before falling to the floor. It rolled across the tiles and stopped, the teeth resting against Neil’s boot.
He flinched and backed up another step. The mandible broke away from the skull, as if the mouth had opened wide in soundless laughter.
Neil shook off his revulsion and noted the rows of flawlessly formed teeth. Then, his attention fastened on the left temple. The area near the orbital bone was a jagged black void. He reached for his phone.
The Scene of Crime team had set up lights powered by a small generator. Like an alien sun, the artificial daylight shone mercilessly on the floors and walls, reaching into every corner.
From the hallway, Neil leaned over the police tape and called to the coroner squatting in front of the locker. “Any thoughts yet, Ed?”
“Interesting,” the man replied. “This is the first time I’ve examined skeletal remains at a crime scene.”
“Same for me, Ed.”
Dr. Ed Reiner took a small flashlight out of his pocket and rammed his head and shoulders into the locker, avoiding the pieces of skull and other bones on the floor. He hummed and sniffed like a bumblebee with hay fever.
Neil shoved numb fingers into his pockets. He moved back a few feet to speak to the officer who had been first to respond to his radio call.
“What’s the story on this place, Bernie?” His gaze swept the room with its rows of metal compartments and scarred wooden benches.
Bernie watched the coroner for a moment. “They built a new high school in the south end of town about fifteen years ago and boarded this one up after the last graduation party. The town council tried to sell the building, but no bites until recently, when it was bought by a developer who plans to put up a seniors’ residence.”
Bernie Campbell was a twenty-year veteran of the Lockport Police Service. He was methodical, reliable, and marginally respectful. His ears were bright red from the cold as he watched the coroner.
When it was clear Bernie was done answering his question, Neil asked another. “What do you know about the two guys who discovered the remains?”
Bernie didn’t consult his notebook. He pointed his chin at the two men standing in front of the boys’ locker room. “Left to right, Larry Cutler and Fang Davidson. Cousins. They’re from Dogtown. They bought the salvage rights and have a week to strip the place before the wreckers arrive. Construction for the new residence starts in the spring.”
The Davidson and Cutler names meant nothing to Neil, but he knew Dogtown was a collection of house trailers and outbuildings scattered over five or six acres of countryside west of the town limits. Its residents kept to themselves, married each other, if rumours were correct, and stayed out of trouble for the most part.
“Fang?” Who gives their kid a dog’s name?
Bernie consulted his notebook for this one. “His real name is Rupert. I’d rather be called Fang, myself.”
Cutler and Davidson huddled together, the colours of their plaid shirts blending into a riot of conflicting patterns. Both men drew rapidly on cigarettes, expelling plumes of smoke into the frigid air of the corridor.
Under the harsh lights, Cutler seemed younger than Neil had thought, maybe late twenties, and Davidson a few years older, around Neil’s own age. They didn’t look much alike except for identical sets of white, even teeth.
The younger man rocked up and down on his heels, seemingly recovered from his fright and anxious to speak. In contrast, Davidson continued to stand motionless, his face drained of colour, his dark eyes red-rimmed. The cigarette shook in his fingers.
Neil asked Cutler to wait and motioned Bernie to stay with him. He drew Davidson back to stand in front of the police tape. “Please describe how you came to find the body, sir. From the beginning.”
Davidson took another drag on his cigarette. “We started in the offices and took out a few things. Trouble is, most of the wood stuff has rotted and anything metal is rusty. We’ll be lucky to make our money back.”
During his account, Davidson’s attention remained fixed on the floor of the room beyond. On the separated sections of skull. The coroner’s body concealed the rest of the skeleton from view. Ed continued to hum contentedly, but he had stopped sniffing. Neil took Davidson’s arm and pulled him away from the doorway.
“Go on.”
“We worked our way up the main hall from the office, checking the lockers for anything we can sell. When we reached the gym wing, we went into the girls’ change room first …. Well, that’s when we found it.” He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the floor.
Davidson hunched his shoulders and fingered his cigarette pack. Neil exchanged him for Cutler and heard the same story in different words. Knowing Bernie had contact information for both men, he dismissed them.
“Chief, do you need me for anything more?” Bernie kicked his toes against the wall to restore circulation.
“Yes. Stop at the station and write your report. I want to read it later this afternoon. Don’t leave until I get there.” He ignored Bernie’s exasperated expression and turned back to the locker room. Ed mumbled incoherently.
“What?”
“I’m stuck!” Ed’s narrow shoulders hit the sides of the opening as he tried to pull his body free.
Constable Thea Vanderbloom appeared at Neil’s side. At his instructions, she had photographed the rest of the school.
“You got photos of the locker and bones before Dr. Reiner arrived, didn’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. “Do you want me to suit up again and take more shots inside the perimeter?”
“Yes. You can help Oliver with the evidence collection. But, here, give me the camera.”
Holding it by the strap, he called to Oliver Mendez, the SOCO working beside Ed. “Give this to Dr. Reiner. Ed? Can you take some close-ups of our vic’s bones while you’re in there, before they’re disturbed any further? Change the setting …”
“I got it!” Half a dozen light explosions followed before the camera appeared over Ed’s hooded head again.
Oliver handed the camera back to Neil, then pulled on Ed’s shoulders and twisted his head until the coroner popped free. A few more bones spilled onto the floor.
“Well, shit,” Ed said, “isn’t this a party?” He pulled his mask down. His lips were blue from the cold, and he inspected a tear in his coveralls. “I hope my new down jacket isn’t ripped, too.”
Neil leaned against the door frame. “Learn anything, Ed? What did you smell in there?”
“Nothing. No odour of decomposition. A few bits of tissue are still adhering to the bones but not much is holding them together. Poor little girl.”
“This is a child?”
“A female. And she’s small. We’ll need a forensic anthropologist to better define the age range, but she’s not a prepubescent child.”
Ed Reiner was an OB/GYN with a thriving practice in town, making his on-the-spot determination of sex and age range more reliable than that of the average small-town coroner.
Ed stooped for a closer look at the skull. His gloved fingers probed the splintered bones of the depression. “Pretty safe to say this is the cause of death. I’ll take some more photographs at the hospital morgue.” His phone rang and he stripped off his gloves before answering.