“Maybe there’s a bullet that went through his skull and has buried itself into the ground. Or it could be that someone picked it up after firing the weapon. If it was a revolver, there’d be no spent cartridge.”
“Of course.” Vitello paused. “I want to show you something on the table.” The coroner pointed to the re-creation of the rib cage inside the tent. “The thorax has sustained damage. We’ll know more once we get the bones into the lab, but to me it looks like a projectile went from the back to the front at an upward angle. It took out a floating rib and the bottom of the false ribs, traveling up, and exited.”
“What kind of a projectile?” Decker asked. “A bullet?”
“It’s messy for a bullet.”
“Then what are we looking at?” Before the coroner could answer, Decker said, “There were three students who went missing. The first one, Zeke Anderson, had a shattered rib cage and a shattered forearm and hand. I was thinking defensive wound, but as with these remains, we found no evidence of a firearm.”
Vitello nodded. “An explosion of some sort would be my guess. If you look here”—he pointed to remaining false ribs—“they have a lot of tiny scratch marks.”
Decker stared at the bones. “Am I seeing tiny frags of metal?”
“Yes. The victim was standing with his back toward something that erupted.”
“Which came first, then?” Decker asked. “The explosion or the GSW?”
“Don’t know,” the coroner said. Could be the explosion injured him and the bullet to the head finished him off.”
“Weird to murder someone by explosion,” Decker said.
“I agree,” Vitello said. “The more likely scenario is he was fatally shot first and someone had the grand idea to try to blow him to pieces to hide the bullet wound.” A pause. “Or it could have been an accidental explosion that severely injured our buried body and the shot was a mercy killing.”
“Yikes. Poor kid, regardless of how it happened.”
“Yes, that is cause for empathy,” Vitello told him. “Life is funny. Some people die old, some die young, and some should have never been born.”
Chapter 21
McAdams hung up the phone. He and Decker were back at the station house after being in the field for over eight hours. There were bags of evidence to be sorted and paperwork to be done. Their desktops were stacked with files, and a card table had to be brought out to hold everything else. He took a sip of cold coffee and said, “The remains were male by the angle of the pelvic bones. Vitello will have more information later on, but he wanted to pass that on.”
“Okay.” Decker was sitting at the card table, carefully removing the contents of one of the paper bags.
“What are you looking at?”
“These very small patches of material.” Decker picked up a magnifying glass. “This could be denim.”
“Were Velasquez and/or McCrae wearing jeans when they disappeared?”
“Probably, but that doesn’t mean anything. Almost the entire student body of the Five Colleges wear jeans.” Another stare. “There’s a fiber on the patch.” He took out a pair of tweezers, lifted it off the piece of denim, and bagged it separately. “Could be from a sweater.”
“Can you tell the color?”
“There’s a tiny bit of pigment.” He examined it closely. “Maybe red.”
“You don’t have to bother with the clothes. All the boys have their DNA on file. That should short-cut the process of identification.”
Decker put the tweezers down. “We don’t know who the fibers belong to. Could be from the body. Could be from the person who buried the body.” He stood up and stretched his back. “What do you make of the two being buried so far apart?”
“Murdered at different times?”
“So, you think they were intentional murders?”
McAdams said, “If it was an accident, why hide the bodies?”
“Fear.”
“That’s an awful lot of work for fear. And the longer you are missing, the more people are going to start looking for you. Maybe just leave the bodies where they are and get the hell out. In any case, it isn’t logical to bury one body in one place and then drag another body for two miles through wooded areas and bury it there. The inclination would be to dig a deep hole big enough for the both of them and say sayonara.”
Decker nodded. “I’m going to pack it in. What about you?”
“I’ve got a few more hours left in me,” McAdams said. “You like the coroner’s explosion theory?”
“A bomb would explain the injuries.”
“But not why they were buried so far apart.”
“More than one explosion?” Decker suggested. “The blasts went off at different times.”
McAdams thought about that. “Maybe that’s why they went camping. To make bombs. You’d need a lab for that. But why would they make bombs? They didn’t appear to be radicals.”
“People have secret sides.”
“Even with two explosions, boss, it still doesn’t explain why the two boys died two miles apart. Unless there was more than one lab. That’s a little far-fetched.”
“Agreed.”
“You’d think the dogs would have sniffed something out.”
“They’re cadaver dogs, not bomb dogs.” Decker scratched his cheek. “And even if there were trace odors from bombs—unlikely after ten years—the dogs weren’t trained to alert with explosives. That’s how it is nowadays, Harvard. Everyone’s a specialist.”
At three in the morning Decker tiptoed into the bedroom. He picked up the pajamas that had been laid out for him on the bed and went into the bathroom to change, wash, and brush his teeth. He crawled into bed and closed his eyes. A moment later, Rina said, “How was it?”
“Long. Let’s talk in the morning.”
“Sure. Sorry.”
“No apologies necessary.”
“I’m just saying I’m sorry it was long.”
“Oh. Okay. Let’s go to bed.”
“Of course.”
A few seconds passed. He said, “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t wake me. I always have an ear open when you’re gone. Do you need anything?”
“No. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Sure.” About a minute passed and Rina heard him getting up. “What do you need?”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I left a bottle of water on the nightstand.”
“Oh.” He slid back under the covers but sat up. “I didn’t see it. Thanks.”
Rina sat up. “Now I’m thirsty.” She opened her water bottle. In the dark she could see his profile. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” They clinked plastic. “When I left, the remains were still being removed. DNA will take a couple of days. We’ll know soon.”
“Do you think it’s one of the missing students?”
“I do. The remains are male. And the bones have been there for a while.”