We didn’t find much. The interviews were a bust. Like Norah and her mother, nobody on the street had seen, heard, or smelled anything amiss during the previous summer. No one had gone missing, no one with purple hair had been seen hanging around, and no one had made a discovery similar to Norah’s. At the last house on the block, however, nearest to where the field met the woods, we did find a man who’d lost his dog to a hit-and-run the previous August, and whose abandoned doghouse contained a small collection of fragmented, gnawed-upon shards with an ominous bony look to them.
Not that we were immediately impressed, including Tyler, much to his later discomfort. Finding bones in a doghouse, after all, was not unheard of, and this owner admitted that bones were a treat he’d regularly supplied his pet. It was more in the interest of thoroughness, therefore, that we asked Christine Evans to give us her educated opinion.
She’d been in Norah’s house throughout most of the search, keeping the Fletchers company while remaining available to us. As a result, she brought them both with her to check out what we’d found, her benignly domineering style reminding me of a Scout leader conducting a nature trip. Still, despite Ann Fletcher’s apparent tacit approval, I wondered about prolonging Norah’s exposure to what she herself had set in motion.
Evans, however, obviously believed otherwise. Arriving at the doghouse, she gathered Norah next to her before its arched doorway and played the beam of an officer’s borrowed flashlight onto the pale ivory gleam of the scattered fragments, starkly revealed amid the otherwise pitch-black shelter.
It took her about thirty seconds to reach a conclusion. “Most of those are animal bones, but that small piece in the far corner is part of a human zygomatic arch, where the mandible hinges to the rest of the skull.” She touched Norah’s cheek to demonstrate.
“Wow,” Norah murmured, easing my concern.
“Can we get a closer look?” Evans asked, shoving her head deeper into the opening.
I threw a questioning glance at Tyler.
“We’re all set-photographs and measurements are done.”
Behind him, the late dog’s owner, an older, bare-headed man with a red nose and a frost-dusted mustache, added, “It doesn’t have a floor. You can tilt it back.”
“Good,” Evans laughed. “I was wondering how I could squeeze in there.”
Four of us followed the owner’s advice and tilted the doghouse back, exposing its littered dirt floor like the innards of some large, wooden clam.
The light had dulled, the sun fading early in the winter months, so the contents of the small dwelling, now surrounded by four snowbanks instead of the walls that had once protected it, were suddenly illuminated by a half-dozen flashlights, whose bright, hovering disks swept across the hard-packed surface like theatrical spotlights.
“How big was your dog?” Evans asked the homeowner.
He held his hand out just below his waist. “Big-he was a mastiff. Really powerful.”
She looked at the rest of us. “Domesticated dogs especially tend to go after the skulls-they remind them of balls.”
Tyler, his embarrassment at missing the identification washed away by her enthusiasm, crouched by her other side and leaned over the exposed site, adding, “He probably buried what he didn’t crush up. You can see how the earth is disturbed near the back.”
Side by side in the snow, Evans and Tyler began conferring like old colleagues, pawing at the frozen earth like hampered archaeologists trying to piece together what they could.
Tyler glanced over his shoulder, his frustration plain. “We need hammers and picks to get through this crap.”
Norah Fletcher’s quiet voice floated up in the wake of this comment, reminding us that these scattered shards were more than mere parts of a puzzle. “So it really is somebody?”
Tyler, as was typical when his focus was jarred by some emotional consideration, looked startled and self-conscious. Evans, on the other hand, proved how good a teacher she could be. She sat back on her haunches and draped a burly arm around the thin girl’s waist, explaining to her in a near whisper the intricacies of human anatomy and of animal behavior, replacing some of the sudden chill in the air with a broader appreciation of what life sometimes throws in our faces.
By the time she’d finished, and after Norah’s pale face had regained some of its studious poise, a patrolman appeared with two trenching tools and a hammer he’d borrowed from a neighbor. Evans took advantage of the interruption to get up and escort Norah to where Ann Fletcher was standing uncomfortably on the fringes of our little group.
“I think we’ve probably had enough science for one day. Besides, I happen to know you’ve got homework,” Evans said, as Norah slipped her gloved hand into her mother’s.
Norah merely nodded, the full impact of the doghouse’s contents lingering despite her teacher’s best efforts.
As they turned to go, I stepped before them and crouched down so Norah and I were eye-to-eye. “I appreciate what you did. When we find out what happened here, it’ll be because you cared enough to come forward. Not many people are that observant, or show that much responsibility.”
A subtle pride radiated from behind those large glasses. She murmured, “You’re welcome,” before looking down at the ground. I no longer felt so badly about exposing her to more than what might have been appropriate. Good experiences sometimes come in odd packages, something I sensed even Norah’s mother might agree with.
I straightened and shook Ann Fletcher’s hand. “Thank you.”
“I tried to stop her,” she answered apologetically, still obviously distressed at how events had snowballed.
“You were being protective. What she did does you credit-you obviously taught her well.”
She smiled slightly, which was all I wanted to see. “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”
Tyler appeared at my elbow. His earlier frustration at the frozen ground had faded. “I didn’t mean that literally, about the pick and hammers. It’d be too destructive. We can throw a tent over the whole thing, put a space heater inside, and have the ground totally thawed within twenty-four hours. That okay?”
I turned back toward the site. “Sounds good to me. God knows how long this has been here. Anyone else come up with anything yet?”
Sammie appeared from around the back of the nearby garage. “Stennis found what looks like chicken bones on the shelf of one of the storm drains, and Lavoie got a long bone from a culvert. Both were photographed in place and bagged. Evans thinks the long bone’s from a deer. The crime lab’ll tell us for sure. I also called the State’s Attorney’s office on the cell phone.”
“They sending anyone over?” I asked.
Sammie shook her head. “Said we could brief them later.”
We returned to where Christine Evans was back on her knees scrutinizing the dirt before her.
“There may be more,” she said, pointing with a gloved finger. “See that scat?”
Sammie’s face turned sour as she focused on several two inch long, dark, twisted droppings, their ends distinctively marked by pointed, upturned spirals.
“What about it?” I asked skeptically.
“It’s from a fisher-part of the marten family-related to the weasel. They don’t like open ground, but they’re bold enough to come onto human property.”
She suddenly flashed a disarming smile at the largely ignored homeowner who was standing beside me. “Speaking purely scientifically, it’s a good thing your dog died when it did. Had he lived, he not only would’ve pulverized these fragments, but no fisher in his right mind would’ve had the guts to forage anywhere near here. As it is, this scat tells us there may be more to find, and maybe where to look for it.”
“The fisher took something?” I asked.