Bones of the Lost Read Online Free PDF

studied both, then slowly exhaled through his nose.
    “No skid marks.”
    “Exactly. The driver never hit the brakes.”
    “Sonofabitch.”
    I turned to Larabee.
    “You’re putting PMI at seven to ten hours?” I was asking about postmortem interval.
    “To be safe. The body arrived here shortly after nine this morning. Air temp last night dropped to forty-eight. I observed lividity, but still got blanching. Rigor—”
    “Whoa, whoa. Back it up, doc.” Slidell pulled a pen and small spiral from his pocket and began taking notes.
    Larabee indicated the body. “Notice the purple mottling on her belly, the fronts of her thighs, the undersides of her arms, and the right half of her face?”
    Slidell glanced up, resumed scribbling.
    “That discoloration is called lividity. It’s due to the settling of blood in the body’s downside once the heart stops beating. When I pressed a thumb to her flesh, the vessels were pushed aside, leaving an area of pallor.”
    Slidell twisted his mouth to one side.
    “A white mark,” Larabee simplified. “After about ten hours the red blood cells and capillaries would have decomposed sufficiently so blanching wouldn’t have occurred.”
    “And rigor’s when the stiff gets stiff.” Slidell pronounced it
rigger
.
    Larabee nodded. “When the body arrived, rigor was complete in the small muscles, but not in the largest ones. Her jaws were locked, but I could still bend her knees and elbows.”
    “So she died more than seven hours before she got here, but less than ten.” Slidell did the math in his head. It took a while. “Sometime between eleven and two.”
    “It’s not a precise science,” Larabee said.
    “What about stomach contents? Once you get her open?”
    “Ninety-eight percent of her last meal would have left her stomach within six to eight hours of ingestion. With luck I might findsome fragments, corn, maybe tomato skin, in a rugal fold in the gastric mucosa. I’ll let you know.”
    “What about vitreous?” I was asking about fluid drawn from the eye. “Can you test for potassium?”
    “I took a sample, but it won’t really narrow the range.”
    “How close was she to the light rail?” I asked Slidell.
    “She was on the shoulder, on the side opposite the railway.”
    “How often do trains pass during those hours?”
    “Last one runs by there just after one A.M. The next isn’t until five A.M. ”
    “What about metallic spray?” I asked Larabee. “Or oil. Did you find any deposits on her skin or hair? On the clothing?”
    He shook his head. “Unlikely airborne residue would travel that far, but I’ll double-check. What are you thinking?”
    “The presence or absence of train residue might narrow the time frame.”
    Larabee spread two sinewy hands, palms up. “Worth a try.”
    I turned back to Slidell. “How was she found?”
    “A call came in a little after seven A.M. Teacher on her way to work noticed what she thought was a mannequin, pulled over, thinking she could use a dummy for the school play. Tossed her cornflakes, then dialed 911.”
    I picked up the scene photos and worked through a progression of shots moving from far to near.
    The first several showed a stretch of empty road not different from what I’d pictured in my mind. On the right, the raised light-rail tracks threw long, postdawn shadows over the embankment, the shoulder, and the pavement below.
    On the left, maybe eighty yards distant from the yellow crime-scene tape triangling the body, stood a small stucco building fronted by a gravel lot.
    “What’s that?”
    “A party supply store. Been empty for months.”
    “And that?” I pointed to a one-story, windowless structure.
    “Some sort of self-storage outfit.”
    The next series zoomed in on the body and its immediate surroundings. Rountree Road coming in from the west. Old Pinevillerunning north and south. On the latter lay one of the tan vinyl boots. My eyes traversed the pavement.
    Paralleling the right shoulder was a