The Boneman

Prologue

IN A HILLSIDE MONASTERY in central France, Abbot Focault was scouting for persimmons under the tree in the courtyard when he received word of a strange discovery made by two lay brothers in the cellars. The abbot was of the order of Cistercians, his faith in God monumental, but he was nonetheless unsettled on being summoned to the monastery's depths. He held a shallow basket, and with misgivings, put the fallen fruit aside.

Constructed on a rocky outcropping in the 14th century, the monastery had survived into the 21st, and for all the years the abbot had been there, he'd been expecting this moment. In his chamber, by candlelight, his studies of certain ciphered manuscripts had wrought more than he wished to know about necrolatry and what might be harbored in the foundations. He'd locked the manuscripts away, pursuing his life of prayer, poverty and obedience, but the ciphers of the monks and what they alluded to had never left him. The afternoon threatened rain, and as Father Focault strode through the arcade of the cloister, he thought the sky unusually dark.

He moved through the refectory, vacant at this hour, and hurried down winding stone steps. The temperature fell as he descended. In a cellar corridor he was lit by overhead bulbs as he passed seeping walls lined with burial chambers. During a time of wholesale death, many hundreds had been interred there. Gloom dimmed him where the bulbs had burned out, then the white of his habit was lit starkly by a halogen lamp glaring ahead. The pair of muddy lay brothers awaited him.

No man spoke, though their vows had not bound them to silence. The brothers had undertaken some plumbing repair that required breaking out a few bricks in a wall. They gave the abbot a flashlight to observe what their sledgehammer had uncovered. 

The abbot inspected the hole through the bricks. Just behind the brick, layered with rust, was a vertical slab of iron. He understood what it was. 

Father Focault stood back, the lay brothers watching him, their eyes caved. He nodded. 

The larger of them went to work with the sledge. Old bricks, mortar, exploded, filled the air with dust. It took only minutes to demolish an opening and expose what they'd all expected—an ancient door. 

Scaled with the saturations of time, the door was set solidly into bedrock, with great iron hinges, and a crossbar, also iron, which effectively kept it locked from the outside. Centuries ago, a holy predecessor had been diligent in barring this portal and walling the whole of it off. 

The brothers hammered the crossbar from its braces. They worked on the door edge with a crowbar, prying it forward, the hinges groaning. With the abbot's encouragement, they found purchase with their hands and hauled back on the door, the gap between the frame widening. 

From the black within, a dank exhalation drifted out. Focault's flashlight cut into a vault carved from rock and strung with curtains of ghostly web. In his life he'd passed through some forsaken places and he recognized the smell of something long dead. 

A block of shadow occupied the center of the floor. His beam shafted over it. A coffin of bronze rested on a catafalque, unadorned, layered with dust. The heavy lid had been sealed with hammered rivets. The abbot raised his beam, lighting the vault beyond. 

God our Father, one of the brothers said behind him. 

Focault's breath frosted in the air. He thought he had prepared himself for the eventuality of this discovery, but he felt his heart drain. 

Rearing upward was an aggregation that at first looked like a tower of gnarled wood. As the abbott's eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw it was actually constructed of human remains.  Captured in the light, the mass almost seemed to be writhing upward, so intricately were limb and bone pieced together.  Coiled, knobbed, snaking, its surfaces wove toward the rock of the ceiling, where from the top radiated a monstrous crown. 

Eight feet above, a dozen skulls formed a ragged ring. Like the rest of it, the heads had been scavenged from those long interred. It was an abomination – the leathery faces stretched like rotten fabric, mouths hinged wide. 

The abbot stared up, eyes streaming. Here was an altar.      

Chapter 1

MY NAME IS WALKER GRAY, and if I had to introduce the girl, I'd begin by saying she reappeared as so many others have – nameless and stripped to the bone in the dark of the woods. Her recovery was made in the coast range, not far from where I live. I know the darkness of the woods, the nature of my work is to discover what has been concealed, and a fair number of my projects have been retrieved from the gloom of the forest floor. 

This is as alone as it gets—a cold mist hanging in the cedars, a fifteen-year old runaway in a shallow grave. Decay and scavengers had disassembled her corpse, a pair of bowhunters stumbled over what remained. A sheriff's team collected it in a bag. What she left wasn't very instructive, a few underpinnings, half a mandible, most of a cranium. But in the end, it was enough for Gray & Gray.

We are forensic anthropologists, My father Dr. Jeffery Gray would announce, kicking off one of his lectures. The concern of Gray & Gray was in both our names, but the old man was a born ham, he had stage presence, so I let him carry the day. 

Our specialty is craniofacial reproduction, he informed his audience. Whether he was addressing a national convention of mystery readers, or a room full of law enforcement types seated in folding chairs, there was usually standing room only. At this point the lights would go down and he would turn to a screen and intone This is where it begins...

Where it always began was with a dramatic slideshow – in this instance, our youngster from the dark of the woods—her meager components arranged on a plastic sheet. 

Stiff, muddy rags, the old man continued. "Bones scattered or smashed. The victimized, the forgotten, the forsaken. All filed under the heading Legions to Be Identified."   

Here was a man unafraid of the grandiose. Eminent, stylish, the good Doctor was a dynamic seventy years old, a phrase he'd coined after charismatically passing the age of sixty-nine. He wore fashionable glasses and a suit in a shade he called Undertaker Black. You'd find me in something less funereal lounging at the rear. I'd seen the old man's act a hundred times and he never failed to enthrall. To look at that screen and watch the process of decomposition in reverse is an awesome thing. The renowned Dr. Gray was about to illustrate. 

He sent up another photo—the victim's incomplete skull fixed to a flexible rod in our brightly lit lab. 

Nature, he told the rapt gathering, is unfailingly efficient in cleaning up after itself. Rot, bugs, weather. We work against it. Our objective is to reincarnate the individual who once occupied this skull.

The next shot featured my handiwork—the skull wholly replicated and in the next phase, its facial planes studded with tissue-depth markers. A wire beak extending from the nasal cavity formed the proportions of a nose I was guessing at. 

My father's gaze can really sweep a room. Yes, he confirmed, for those who might have missed it the first time, I said reincarnate.

He enjoyed flirting with the occult as much as I didn't, which was unfortunate for me, because I would shortly be on the wrong side of it. What started out as a quaintly supernatural sojourn ended up plunging my world into the Stygian depths.     

Up on the screen, our subject was now at the stage of complete facial musculature, with a pair of glass eyes gaping from the orbital muscles of her head. If I may be immodest, my technique at this time, before everything came crashing down, was really good. From this cold interlacing of clay, the replica of a distinct human being was being woven. 

Dr. Gray scanned the silent onlookers. 

Reincarnate, he said once more. We peer into death and divine the victim's soul.

The final slide flashed forth. With startling authenticity, the face of the fifteen-year old victim stared unblinkingly ahead through haunting green eyes. Her name was still lost to us and she was bald thus far, her hair hadn't been recreated yet, but the flicker of that girl's shy smile was enough to break your heart.   

Exclamations rippled. Another masterwork from the legendary father-son team. We were savants, saviors, recoverers of the irrevocable. We had no idea our next case would be the last. 

I stood to leave.

The Doctor remained before the audience, his smile like chrome in the sun. He was soaking it in. He had age, he had maladies, but he wasn't slowing down. And he never tired of the adulation.        

Chapter 2

THAT WAS OUR GIG, OUR milieu, we were specialists in re-facing the faceless and we excelled at it. But about this time, things started heading in a different direction, a direction that would lead us into some very claustrophobic regions. There were signs, red flags that fluttered briefly, ones I should have paid heed to before my attention slid elsewhere. It's a peculiarity of the human psyche, I guess. We come to a point where we can see what's going to kill us pretty clearly, and most of the time we still fail to act. For me, what was coming down the road was discernable but at that time not terribly alarming. In my work, I was already a surveyor of the final terrain.   

Back at the lab, I adorned the reproduction of the green-eyed girl with a glossy red mane. I'd based her hair color on an assumption I'd made in the attribution of ancestry. This child was bog Irish, her nose and cheekbones screamed it. Her completed bust rested on a workbench in the lab and offices of Gray & Gray, a portion of a brick warehouse in an industrial corridor in Southeast Portland. That's Oregon, not Maine. Situated along the less than pristine Willamette River, we were assaulted by the din of watercraft, the clang of traffic crossing the bridge overhead, and the rumble of freight cars clattering slowly across the nearby tracks. Our building was definitely showing its age, but it remained sturdily constructed, with rugged open beams milled from one hundred-foot Douglas firs. That was back when wood was still on the large side. 

The environment of Gray & Gray was identified by a small sign with tasteful typography that had been compromised by the pigeons roosting on the cornice above. Arriving at work, I often paused to admire the cooing birds and their varied hues. I was an appreciator of largely unnoticed details, a trait that helped bring my work alive. That minute focus was also a trait that irritated friends and associates. People generally don’t like to have their peculiarities pointed out. If you're dead, like my projects, it doesn't matter, but if you're still breathing, telling someone that green shirt does not go with your complexion tends to terminate an otherwise decent conversation. It would be good timing for me to now say Just ask my ex-wife. But I had yet to be married. I loved women, but hadn't found one quirky enough to share the festival of life with. 

I was heading into my forties about this time, a rogue likeness of my father. The Doctor's looks were masculine, his gaze even, and these aspects were loaned to me, though I'd been looking a little ragged lately. Solving human puzzles is a prolonged and intense process. This latest puzzle had depleted me. Getting too close will do that. 

We use human hair on our recreations. I brushed red strands of it in place and gave the dead girl as best a memorial as I could. 

Jane O'Malley. Rapid City, South Dakota. Missing eleven years.

It's damn near a resurrection, my father declared, not one to dodge hyperbole. What I'd rendered was only a likeness, and we both knew it. The rest of Jane O'Malley wasn't coming back. That said, I could still get lost in those green eyes. 

The Doctor opened a vial, shook out a pill. We are among the chosen, Walker...

I knew what would follow and awaited him stoically. He ate the pill, searched for a chaser. Spotting a coffee mug among the tools on the workbench, he took it up. 

The few who can rebuild, he went on. Equipped with almost nothing, we are able to intuit an entire individual. He tipped the mug to his mouth, began gagging. 

I calmly watched him. You left out the computers.

Jesus, he choked out, You call this shit coffee?

I regarded him, deadpan. I never said it was coffee.

It was coffee. Two day old dregs, but why tell him that? You never know what strange  liquids might be found in the forensics environment, and I enjoyed the way the old man's eyes jacked open. We had a contest going, one that was not always unspoken, and the Doctor at his most pompous was always fun to one-up. 

He freed himself of the mug. Computers, he said. These are merely tools. They don't supply the details. That indefinable spark of creation.

I winced. I keep thinking one day you're gonna level off.

Your problem is, he told me, you lack spirituality. You're a lot like your mother...

My phone went melodic, so I was rescued momentarily. Regina, our administrator and representative of normalcy to the outside world, was on the line. She held the fort in her office at street-level, one story below.   

The O'Malleys are here, Walker.

Your beloved mother, the Doctor was saying, who left this world as unquestioning as she came into it...

Would you send them in? I asked Regina. 

There are forces that refuse to be explained by science, my father proclaimed. 

They're here, I told him.

When you've been in this business as long as I have you'll come to understand that.

The O'Malleys, I said. They're here.

He became peevish. I know they're here. 

We both turned to the length of the lab. Jane O'Malley's parents were coming up the stairs. They reached the landing, looked around uncertainly. 

I essayed a friendly hand to greet them.  

The couple approached, somber midwesterners not used to travel. I'll go one better: two wounded people hoping to at last close the gaping hole in their lives.

Jane O'Malley's father was fixed on his daughter's miraculous return. 

Dear God, he said. 

Mrs. O'Malley put a tissue to her eyes. That's our Janie, she sobbed. That's how she smiled. How she wore her hair.

The stricken husband and wife looked from the bust to me—the man who had brought their daughter back from the dead. I felt like a god. I felt like a grave robber. Moments like these, standing with the bereft, were always mixed. 

How could you know? Mr. O'Malley asked quietly. 

The Doctor held silence, looked meaningfully at me. It was his way of dropping me into a confrontation with the metaphysical. 

Loathing to get into it, I met the couple's eyes.

Well... I began. 

The O'Malley's seemed to want something more transporting. Sure, I'd leaned heavily on the intuitive for this one, I generally did, but I refused to come off like a spiritualist, a mystic. I sought a rational clarification. 

There's a lot of technical details... was all I could come up with.

Jane's mother took my hand intently.

Thank you, she said. Not having an answer all these years, that was the hardest part.

I nodded, pressed my hand compassionately over hers, and the O'Malleys and the Grays stood there solemnly, the muted uproar of bridge traffic floating in. When I glanced at dad, his  eyes were tightly closed. He seemed almost to be weeping.

Past him, Regina was delicately signaling from the stairs.

Excuse me, please, I said. 

I went over to her. Sorry to interrupt, she whispered. But two men are delivering a huge crate on the dock.

A huge crate? I whispered back. Instinctively, I turned toward my father.

Gathered with the O'Malleys, his eyes snapped open.   

He looked at me in a significant way.

Chapter 3

THE REAR DOCK OF OUR warehouse faced the tracks. We stood in the open bay door, a freight truck rumbling away on the frontage road. The Doctor held a shipping receipt, I held a bucket with an assortment of hand tools. Ahead of us was the newly arrived crate. I assessed it with a suspicion that was well-merited. 

What've you gotten us into now?

That's what Oliver Hardy always asked Stan Laurel, the old man said.

Well?

Why not open it and find out?

We dismantled the crate with prybars and hammers. I mentioned that we were backed up and didn't have the time or space for any new projects. Dad let that skim over his head. A final blow freed the top panel and we slid it off. 

The crate enclosed a coffin. I’d already guessed it would be something along those lines, but I didn’t expect it to be so old. Braced with wooden supports, it was made of bronze, ancient and unadorned.

We examined the heavy lid, secured by nylon shipping straps. Spaced along the edges of the lid were the holes of recently sheared rivets. 

Unusual to seal a coffin that way, the old man said.

Let's get some daylight on it. 

I sliced the nylon straps with my pocket knife, razor sharp. We rolled out the hoist, rigged a chain to each end of the substantial lid and jacked it up out of the crate. I swung the hoist away and the lid rocked heavily, suspended.

We stood over the coffin, a corrupt vapor leaking out. 

Man, that smells evil.

Medi-eval, the Doctor corrected.   

The deceased awaited us, a tangle of bones brown with age, cloaked in rotted black rags. 

Skull's far from intact. 

Temporal and parietal pieces missing, dad observed. The frontal cranium, facial bones and jaw are badly fractured. Several incisors smashed away.

That's what I call blunt trauma.

Further impressions?

I scanned the bones. Male... Hard to tell the age. Not old. Not young.

The Doctor nodded. "Look at those femurs.  He must have been a giant in his time. What do you think?

Hmm... Six and a half feet? 

My father cocked his head, growing poetic. The bronze is cold and unlined. There was no comfort in this coffin.

I squinted at him. Well, yeah, dad... 

I leaned down, raised a bony forearm, studied the long, hooked bones of the fingers. 

This makes no sense whatsoever.

What do you have? 

Look at the distal phalanx, I said. The ends are scored.

My father fit his bifocals on, took up the bony fingers. I went to the dangling coffin lid, crouched beneath it, studying the underside. 

There are grooves in this.

The Doctor came over and had a look.  

It appears, he speculated, that the occupant attempted to claw his way out. Long after he ran out of fingertips.

I frowned at him. With his head in pieces?

WE HAD LUNCH AT A FAVORED booth in a low-lit downtown tavern. The place was on the Historic Register, which means it had character but was shabby and worn out. They served a sizable hamburger, which the Doctor was medically prohibited from, but which he nonetheless blithely instructed the kitchen to broil medium rare and drag through the garden on his every visit. I ordered the harmless salad nicoise. I didn't eat hamburgers, nor any meat, which I suppose was a result of my detailed investigations into the aftermath of carnage. I'd had my fill of rended joints, human and otherwise. 

Lunch traditionally started with an ice-cold vodka martini with triple vermouth-soaked olives, another forbidden fruit for the Doctor. Neither of us ever ordered a second martini. Not in broad daylight. A waitress on familiar terms expertly served our filled-to-the-brim glasses. 

My father smiled appreciatively. Thank you, Margot.

My pleasure, Doc.

You're very uplifting, you know.

I try to be. She smiled down at me. "How are you today, Walker?

Good, I said cleverly. I'm good.

She patted my shoulder and ambled away.

Father and son sipped their drinks.

Did you see how she pitied you? the old man asked. 

She was commiserating.

Commiserating?

Acknowledging a burden we share.

Dad was puzzled. You could hardly be referring to me.

I stared at him, withholding comment. 

Your problem, the Doctor explained, "is you never get out of the lab. You never quite learned how to distribute yourself. You lack joie de vivre. Take romance. If you followed my example, you'd be rolling in dalliance. I'm dating three very well-preserved women. I'm a septuagenarian, for God's sake."

You're an international treasure, dad.

This asceticism of yours—

A walking Unesco Heritage Site.

—has gone too far.

I go out on dates, I told him. I'm dating someone tonight.

He observed me clinically. You won't do well. You'll sabotage yourself.