“You’ve found something,” said Carmelita. “What is it?”
“Look at this,” I said, freeing my left hand and plucking a small, cigar-shaped object — twice the size of a grain of brown rice, but hollow and almost weightless — from a nook in the rock. “I’m going to drop it now. Watch close.” I released it and watched it float down, as light as a tiny feather.
Carmelita caught it in midair, the way a child might catch a snowflake. She peered at it, then looked up at me. “What is it?”
“It’s a puparium,” I told her, wedging my fist back into the crack. “An empty pupa case. From a maggot that turned — that metamorphosed — into an adult fly. If y’all look close, you can see more of these down lower, in crevices here and there.”
“Yes,” she said after a moment, pointing. “Here’s one. And here’s another.”
“I wanted to climb to see how high they went. I followed them all the way up here.”
“Huh,” Skidder grunted. “You’re sounding kinda excited about this, Doc.”
“I am. It means there were maggots up here.”
“You sound surprised,” said Carmelita. “But didn’t you tell us, that day in the meeting at the FBI office, that you had found maggots? I thought that was one way you knew the Mexican man died the night of the crash.”
“You have a good memory,” I said. “That’s true. But those maggots were down near the ground. These are too high to be from that guy, or from the mountain lion. Maggots can fall, but they can’t climb. I’ll tell you like I tell my students: Trust the bugs. The bugs never lie.”
Skidder furrowed his brows. “And the truth that these new bugs are telling you…?”
“I think they’re telling me that some pieces from our guy — the guy in the cockpit — came through the windshield and landed in some of these crevices. If those pieces were shielded from the fire, maybe they didn’t get cooked.”
“And if you can find uncooked pieces, maybe you can get DNA after all,” he finished.
“Exactly.” I peered into every crack I could see from where I stood, clinging to the rock. As I bobbed my head and craned my neck, I caught a sudden glimmer of reflected light to my right. “Hang on,” I called, freeing my right hand this time and reaching into the recess where I’d glimpsed the reflection. “I think I might see a piece of windshield.”
“Be careful,” he said. “That could be jagged. You don’t want to get cut.”
“I’m not worried about cuts,” I said. “I’m worried about snakes.” I reached in gingerly. My hand now blocked my view, so I was working blindly, strictly by touch, praying not to encounter the open mouth of a rattlesnake. Beneath my fingertips, I felt the feather-light shells of more puparia — dozens of them! — and I groped on, eagerly. Suddenly I felt something shift against my fingers, and I heard a dry, hollow rustling—a rattlesnake’s tail buzzing? — and with a yelp, I yanked my hand from the opening. I lost my balance again and felt myself toppling backward once more — this time from much higher — but luckily, my left fist was wedged tightly enough into its crack to hold. Bombproof, I thought gratefully.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said Carmelita. “What happened?”
“Sorry,” I said. “And ouch.” My left hand felt as if it had argued with a belt sander and a claw hammer — and lost both arguments — but at least my brains weren’t spattered on the rocks. “I heard something that I thought might be a rattlesnake,” I explained sheepishly, “so I jerked my hand back.” She gasped, so I hurried on. “But it wasn’t. It was just my hand knocking a bunch of dry puparia out of the way, rustling them. Dumb. Okay, let’s try this again.” I reached into the recess once more, willing myself to ignore the rustle of the insect shells.
“You look like you’re putting your hand in the Mouth of Truth,” said Carmelita — a reference to an ancient Roman carving of a face — a man or a god — with a gaping mouth. “Tell a lie with your hand in the mouth, legend says, and the mouth bites it off.”
“The truth is, this makes me very nervous,” I said. It must not have been a lie, because my hand remained attached and unhurt. My fingers eased through the cluster of pupa cases and then came to a larger, heavier object — the thing that had shifted when my fingers grazed it. I had thought it might be a piece of windshield, but as I closed my fingers carefully around it, it felt different from a piece of shattered acrylic. It felt greasy, and it felt familiar.
“Are you sure?” asked Carmelita, staring at the small, curved fragment I had pulled from my pocket once I’d made it safely down.
“Absolutely,” I told her. “Look at the edge here. See the cross section? There’s a hard layer of bone on the outside and the inside, separated by a spongy layer in between. It’s definitely a piece of cranium. A skull fragment.”
“What are those?” asked Skidder, pointing at the inner surface, which was etched with branchy indentations. “They look like riverbeds. Dry gullies.”
“Close,” I said. “Those are meningeal grooves — grooves where blood vessels ran. More proof that it’s a skull fragment.”
“It might be from an animal,” Carmelita said.
“Might be, but it’s not,” I said. Turning the piece over, I showed them the outer surface. It still had a bit of dried scalp and a tuft of short, gray hair attached. “That’s human hair.”
“My God,” Carmelita whispered. “That’s Richard’s hair.” She clutched Skidder’s arm for support. “My husband really is dead.”
After giving Mrs. Janus a few minutes alone, i circled back to her. “Do you still have something of Richard’s, like a toothbrush or a baseball cap? Something that could be used for DNA comparison?” She might be right — it might be a tuft of Richard’s hair, and a bit of Richard’s skull, in her hand. But might be wasn’t good enough, wasn’t certain enough. I couldn’t afford to be accused of botching the identification a second time.
“I have his favorite cap,” she said. “Also a hairbrush. You need hairs that still have the follicles attached, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised and impressed. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve been through this already with the FBI. I gave them a comb and a hat.”
“Oh, great — never mind, then,” I said. “They’ve already got something to compare to this.”
She glanced at Skidder, then at me again, suddenly looking wary. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, since they’ve already got the hat and the comb, all we need to take them is the skull fragment.”
She stared at me. “We can’t take this to the FBI,” she said.
“But… we have to. It’s their case.”
“But the FBI has told everyone Richard faked his death,” she protested. “They’ve told everyone he’s still alive, somewhere in hiding. This piece of skull would prove them wrong. I don’t think they will admit their mistake.”
“Come on,” I said. “They won’t ignore clear proof that he’s dead. Teeth are one thing; teeth can be pulled — Richard’s teeth were pulled. But you can’t just pull out a piece of skull and walk away. If the DNA matches, they’ll believe it.”
“I don’t trust them,” she said. “I think they’re more interested in protecting their image than in finding the truth.”
Suddenly I had an idea — an idea that I was shocked to hear myself suggesting. “What about that obnoxious Fox News reporter, Mike Malloy?” Carmelita and Skidder shot glances at each other. “What?” I said. “Look, I don’t like him either — he’s pushy as hell — but he’s actually done the best job of covering this. Seems like he’d love another big scoop. The latest twist in the world’s most twisted case.”