Make No Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

time for Sunday’s preview reception for WAFA members. As a longtime associate of Albert Evan Jasper, I can assure you that this final outcome of his bequest is fully in line with his wishes.

On behalf of NSFA, welcome to the fifth biennial WAFA conference. I regret that personal business will prevent my arriving until Monday evening, but I look forward to greeting you all then.
     
    “Well, I guess you’d have to say this is pretty interesting,” Gideon said, handing it to her.
    She had hardly begun to read it when she looked up, frowning. “’Ironically, the particulars of his tragic death made such application problematical…’ What does that mean? Didn’t you tell me he was killed in a bus crash down here?”
    “It means there wasn’t much of him left, and what there was was in pretty bad shape. Burned to a crisp, in fact. Him and thirty or forty other people. The bus ran into some kind of fuel truck and pretty much exploded into flames. It was really horrible, I understand. There wasn’t much left of anybody.”
    “How do they know which one was Jasper, then?”
    “It wasn’t easy. Nellie and the others worked on the victims for days, and they never did positively identify everyone. In Jasper’s case, the jawbone and some of the teeth were still left, and they were able to match them up with his old dental charts.”
    The sounds of cars starting up drifted to them from the parking area in front of the main building. Gideon looked at his watch. “We probably ought to get going ourselves. Reception starts at five.” He smiled. “You’re right, we wouldn’t have had time.”
    Julie glanced at the letter again without getting up. “Nellie Hobert? The man who wrote this letter actually worked on the body?”
    “They all did. Nellie was one of Jasper’s ex-students too; the very first, I think. He was here at the lodge for the meeting. As I understand it, they had no idea Jasper was even on that bus. They didn’t know he’d left. In the morning they got a call from the state police saying there’d been this awful traffic accident, and could they possibly help identify the dead? Everybody pitched in, of course, and it was only after they got down to work that they realized he was probably one of the victims.” He stood up. “The dental records made it definite.”
    “Yuck.”
    Gideon shrugged. “It’s what forensic anthropologists do.”
    “I know, but the idea of his own students, people who were celebrating his retirement with him the day before—handling his teeth, poking at his bones…” She shivered. “I repeat: yuck.”
    “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve always thought there was something highly appropriate about a forensic anthropologist winding up as the subject of a forensic analysis.”
    “Maybe, but it’s highly creepy too. If you ask me, you should be glad you weren’t there.”
    Gideon couldn’t argue with that. Jasper’s remains aside, being up to his elbows in a morgue room full of the ghastly remnants of people who had been crushed and burned to death a little while before was an experience he was glad to have missed. He’d had his share of similar ones, but it wasn’t something you got used to. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy working with bones—nothing fascinated him more—but the older they were the better he liked it, with ten thousand years being just about right.
    He held out his hand. “Come on, let’s get going. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss the unveiling. You can read the rest of the letter in the car.”
    “I don’t know…” she began doubtfully.
    “Believe me, with Miranda MC’ing things, there won’t be anything morbid about it.”
    He was turning their car out of the lodge in the wake of a bus hired for those who didn’t have cars, when Julie looked up from the letter with a spluttering laugh. “He named his son
Casper Jasper?”
    “I told you, he was a bit of an oddball.”
    “Well, I guess he was.
Dr.
Casper Jasper. Is