The Secrets of Bones Page 3

  The girls applauded, and Jazz rewarded Gus with a lot of praise and his favorite tug toy.

  “What do you think?” Jazz asked them. “Think Gus can do it again?”

  They agreed that they wanted to see him try, and with another command to “Find,” Jazz sent him on his way.

  Jazz watched Gus sweep the room as he’d done the first time, all business, and getting closer and closer to the radiator on the other side of the room where she’d stashed the metacarpal.

  And then he stopped.

  Jazz stifled a groan. She was eager for the girls to see how capable a cadaver dog was, and she didn’t want Gus to blow it. She forced herself to keep her place, reminded herself that giving Gus a hint was as good as cheating.

  Gus had his own ideas. He lifted his head, pulled in a scent only the sensitive nose of a dog could detect, and went straight to the access door for the old heating system, where he barked three times and sat right down.

  “Is that where the bone is?” one of the girls asked.

  Jazz managed a smile. “No, Gus is a little off. But he’s pretty excited being here with all of you. Maybe we should try again.”

  She called him over.

  Gus didn’t budge.

  How Jazz managed to keep smiling she wasn’t sure. But then her blood was suddenly frozen and maybe her expression was, too. She took two steps in Gus’s direction, then forced herself to stop and turn to the girls.

  “Looks like he’s just not feeling the magic anymore,” she told them. “Which means our demonstration is over.” She hoped the look she sent to Cissy told her she needed a little help, and it apparently worked. When their homeroom teacher stood up, the girls did, too.

  “Wally and Gus are glad you were here to meet them.” Was that Jazz’s voice, too high and too tight? Another silent plea in Cissy’s direction and the homeroom teacher went to the stairs and stepped back so the girls could start heading down.

  What is it? Cissy mouthed the question.

  Jazz shrugged. “Could you have Eileen come up?” she asked.

  Cissy didn’t question her, and one by one the girls filed down the steps, the sounds of their footsteps retreating along with the echoes of their voices.

  It wasn’t until they were gone that Jazz wiped her suddenly sweating palms against the legs of her pants and crossed the room to where Gus waited.

  Not a squirrel.

  Not a raccoon.

  Not a dead rat.

  Gus knew better than to signal on an animal.

  Gus had been trained to detect only one scent.

  Human death.

  CHAPTER 3

  “The dog could be wrong.”

  Eileen’s voice was small and hushed. Her words settled in the dust at the corners of the attic room.

  Jazz stared where Eileen was staring, at the closed access door that led into the maze of heating pipes, a door that hadn’t been opened in years. She would have liked to agree with her boss, but she couldn’t lie, and the realization sent a cold shiver up her back. “Gus is really good at what he does.”

  “But he’s retired, right? Maybe he’s a little rusty.”

  “Maybe.” Jazz glanced at the dog sitting at her side patiently waiting for her to keep her end of the bargain. His eager look told her exactly what he was thinking—he’d followed the scent, just as she’d asked him to. He’d alerted her to it. Now it was her turn to come through.

  Open the door.

  Take a look.

  To be sure she made a complete and accurate record, she dug her phone out of her pocket and took a picture of the closed door before she turned on the flashlight app. “If he’s wrong, no one ever has to know,” she told Eileen, and reached for the door.

  Eileen clamped a hand on Jazz’s arm. “And if he’s right?”

  Jazz did her best to swallow down the dread that made it feel as if her throat was filled with sand. She’d trained for this moment, with Manny and with other dogs from her HRD group. She knew the drill.

  Except she never thought she’d have to use it inside the walls of St. Catherine’s.

  “If Gus is right…” She bobbled her phone and caught it up before it hit the floor. “I’ll secure the scene, call the cops, stay here until they arrive. That’s the procedure. If he’s right…” She drew in a breath. “If he’s right, I’ll follow procedure.”

  Eileen squeezed her eyes shut for a minute and, when she opened them again, explained, “Praying. Hoping. It’s got to be some kind of mistake.”

  There was only one way to find out.

  Jazz grabbed the handle of the door and tugged.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Well, that proves it.” The words left Eileen on the end of a whoosh of relief. “That door hasn’t been touched in years. There’s no way there could be…” She swallowed hard. “No way anything … anybody … It’s been so long, there’s just no way…”

  Eileen was looking for reassurance Jazz couldn’t provide. “Properly trained HRD dogs have been used on archaeological sites. They’ve found the remains of graves in Roman hill forts that date back to—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” Eileen waved away the rest of the information with one trembling hand. “So what’s inside there…” She slid a wary look at the closed door. “It could be very old.”

  “It’s possible.” And before she could convince herself otherwise, Jazz tried the door again.

  It creaked, budged, flew open.

  It was pitch-dark inside the room and Jazz slanted her light at the maze of pipes and the strings of rotted wiring that hung from the low ceiling like fat spiderwebs. She’d just about talked herself into the fact that Gus was, indeed, rusty and wrong to boot when her light flashed against something smooth and pale.

  She leaned forward for a better look and her breath caught and her heart bumped against her ribs.

  A skull with strands of leathery, desiccated flesh hanging from it looked back at her from a mound of plastic wrapping, its eye sockets black and empty, its mouth gaping.

  “He’s not wrong,” Jazz told Eileen, and when the principal stepped forward and saw what Jazz had discovered she let out a little whimper.

  Jazz didn’t have that luxury. A cadaver dog that’s done his job and done it well deserves praise, and she turned away from the horror of the gaping skull so she could pat Gus and take a chew toy out of her back pocket, the one toy his owner said he loved above all else. “Good boy, Gus! You’re a good, good boy.”

  She smiled when she said it and felt like a fool when she turned to Eileen and saw tears on the principal’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to be upbeat. That’s how Gus knows he’s done a good job.”

  “You don’t need to explain.” Eileen sniffled. “You do what you need to do. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  Jazz hooked the leash to Gus’s collar and handed the leash to Eileen. “If you’ll take him over with Wally, I’ll make the proper call and make sure everything’s secure.” Again she swept her light over the scene. She couldn’t say she was used to death; she was pretty sure no one could be. But she’d seen it a time or two, and it didn’t creep her out or disgust her. There was a certain stillness to it that always struck Jazz as profound, a quiet that hovered over it and around it. She wasn’t afraid of death. She wasn’t in awe of it. But she gave it its due and met its silence with her own.

  Still, when the beam of her flashlight highlighted a scrap of orange-and-brown-plaid fabric beneath the plastic, she caught her breath. And when the light winked against something metallic, she couldn’t help but gasp.

  “What?” Eileen had just turned with Gus and she stopped and spun around. She had been calm enough, all things considered, sure enough that what Gus and Jazz had found were probably the remains of some long-dead Orthodox priest that had stayed hidden in all the years since St. Catherine’s took over the seminary and all the years before that when the building was empty and silent. Now she picked up on the tremor of recognition that sent a cascade
of goose bumps up Jazz’s arms, and when she saw what Jazz saw she caught her breath.

  It was a gold cross, maybe three inches long, bigger than the ones people typically wore around their necks. The gold probably wasn’t any more real than the jewels in each arm of the cross. A red ruby at the head. A blue sapphire at the feet. An emerald on the right. A diamond on the left.

  It was ugly. Gaudy. Which had always struck Jazz as odd, because the woman who wore it every day was anything but.

  The cross and the chain that held it hung loose around the skeleton’s neck, tucked half in and half out of the plastic that contained the woman they both knew.

  “Dear God!” Eileen clutched Jazz’s arm with both her hands. “It’s Bernadette Quinn!”

  * * *

  “And so what makes you think the deceased is this…” The detective who’d arrived in response to Jazz’s phone call to the Cleveland police was a man she didn’t know. He was middle-aged and middle-sized, with a receding hairline, a wide nose, and a square jaw that made him look like he had no sense of humor. He smelled like coffee and cigarettes and he chewed on the end of his pencil while he paged through his notebook for the information she’d given him only minutes before.

  Jazz found herself wishing Nick was there instead.

  Nick would be more efficient. And he’d certainly be better dressed. Nick would be cool and professional, but underneath it all, she knew Nick would care.

  This man, Detective Gary Lindsey, was simply going through the motions.

  “Bernadette Quinn,” he said, and just hearing the name made Jazz flinch. “What makes you think it’s her?”

  “The clothes for one thing.” The crime scene techs had already arrived and they were in the cramped attic access space with what was left of the body, blocking her view, but Jazz looked that way anyway, picturing all she’d seen before they arrived—the scraps of plastic that had been torn by small animals, the shredded pieces of flesh still clinging to the bones, the places where the animals had feasted and nothing was left but bone. “Bernadette was famous for white blouses and plaid skirts. And then there’s the cross.” She swallowed down the horror of the memory of the gaudy cross that seemed less sacred and more of an abomination wrapped in plastic and nestled in rotted flesh and bone. “Bernadette always wore that cross.”

  “And she’s been missing how long?” Detective Lindsey wanted to know.

  The answer was better coming from Eileen so Jazz looked her way.

  Eileen, always so self-assured, always so calm, had aged a decade since they made their discovery. There were deep creases at the corners of her mouth and her eyes were dull. But she was, after all, the powerhouse who made St. Catherine’s tick and she knew she didn’t have the luxury of giving in to the shock or the slap of grief that had overwhelmed both Jazz and Eileen while they waited for the police to arrive.

  Eileen pulled back her shoulders and scrubbed her hands over her face. “She wasn’t missing,” she told the detective. “Not as far as we knew, anyway. Bernadette taught here for one term and she resigned a little more than three years ago.”

  “Right after Christmas,” Jazz added. “That’s when we received her resignation letter. It was in the mail when we got back from break.”

  “And you didn’t think that was odd?” the detective wanted to know.

  “There was a lot about Bernadette that was odd.” Jazz felt guilty the moment the words were out of her mouth.

  “She had the potential to be a really good teacher,” Eileen admitted. “She was willing to try new classroom techniques and she wanted so badly for the girls to be involved in their learning experiences. Exactly the kind of professional we look for here at St. Catherine’s. Unfortunately, students don’t often appreciate that teaching is a special talent. And it was Bernadette’s first year on the job. She had some problems adjusting.”

  One of Detective Lindsey’s eyebrows slanted. “Problems?”

  “Classroom discipline wasn’t her strong suit,” Eileen said, and it wasn’t Jazz’s place to contradict her. Not in front of Detective Lindsey. Discipline was a challenge for Bernadette, but it was the least of her problems. “As good as she was in the classroom, she had a difficult time connecting to the girls when she wasn’t actually teaching. She prepared up one side and down the other for each and every class. She had that kind of commitment. But when she had to talk to the girls or their parents without a prepared lesson plan in front of her, well, she was uneasy and tongue-tied. She didn’t relate well to our students, and they…” Eileen drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “They had a hard time relating to her.”

  “And we got a postcard from her!” The memory popped into Jazz’s head and she blurted out the information. “After she was gone, she sent us a postcard. Maybe…” She looked to Eileen for confirmation. “Six months? Nine months after we received the resignation letter? Bernadette sent a postcard from Florida, said she was visiting friends, that she was fine. Only…” Jazz couldn’t help herself. Again she glanced at the access door and at the techs who worked there, their backs bent and their heads ducked. She heard the crinkle when they rolled back the plastic that covered what was left of the body. “Only it looks like she wasn’t fine, doesn’t it?”

  “You still have it?” the detective wanted to know.

  “The postcard?” Jazz really didn’t have to think about it, but she pretended to just to give herself a moment to let her heartbeat slow and the whooshing of the blood in her ears settle. “I tossed it,” she admitted. “There was no reason not to. But her resignation letter would still be in her file.”

  “I’ll need it.”

  “Of course,” Eileen told him.

  “And a list of everyone who has access to this room.”

  “There hasn’t been anyone up here in years,” the principal told him. “As you can see, the space is inconvenient.”

  “But you’re here today, why?”

  “The dogs.” Even though Wally and Gus were already gone, Jazz looked toward the radiator where they’d been tied. She’d called the police first, Margaret Carlson right after that, and Margaret had come for the dogs. Jazz imagined that by now Wally was ensconced on Margaret’s couch—just as Gus always was when Jazz stopped in—chomping bits of raw carrot. She only hoped Wally didn’t get any ideas about dogs on furniture and try it at home.

  She shook away the thought and got back down to business. “I was giving a demonstration,” she explained to the detective, “about human remains detection dogs and—”

  “I dunno. Yeah, I’ve seen those cadaver dogs work and their handlers make it look pretty impressive. But I’m saying they’ve got what … a fifty-fifty chance of finding a body? Heck, I could do better than that with a good search team.” He emphasized his opinion with a snort.

  It was the wrong time to get offended, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth Jazz felt a prickle of annoyance. She lifted her chin. “Gus found the body.”

  “Why didn’t somebody find it before now?” Lindsey turned and paced as far as where the ceiling sloped and he was too tall to stand. “She must have created quite a smell.”

  It wasn’t a detail Eileen needed to think about, so Jazz jumped right in. “The space isn’t heated in the winter and if she disappeared right after we saw her last, right when we broke for Christmas vacation—”

  “Then how did she write that resignation letter? Or the postcard?” the detective asked.

  She was tempted to remind him that he was the detective and it was his job to figure it out. If Nick was there, it’s exactly what she would have told him. Then again, if Nick was there, he never would have asked anything that stupid.

  “If Bernadette was in the building any time after she sent the resignation letter,” she told Lindsey, “someone would have seen her. We have a security system and teachers and staff need to swipe their cards to get in and out. I’d say the answer is pretty obvious. Bernadette didn’t write that letter. She didn’t send the post
card, either.”

  “You think whoever killed her did.” Lindsey made a note of this, looking up at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows when he was done. “Makes me wonder how you know so much about it.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.” Jazz felt like throwing her hands in the air, a commentary on the man’s logic, his reasoning, and his people skills. She controlled herself because she knew that was exactly what he was waiting for and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. “I’m just guessing, that’s all. Just thinking that’s what makes sense.”

  “Like that dog finding the body.”

  “That makes plenty of sense. Gus is well trained and he’s certified. He’s got a great nose.”

  “But if you knew where the body was to begin with—”

  “Really?” This time, she didn’t care what Detective Lindsey thought of her or her reaction. The single word flew out of Jazz along with a snicker of disbelief. “I killed Bernadette three years ago and kept her body hidden all this time just so I could use a dog to find it and impress a bunch of seventh graders today? Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

  “Murder usually doesn’t,” Lindsey said.

  Jazz begged to differ. From what she’d seen of murder, it made plenty of sense, at least to the murderer. This …

  She looked around at the unused attic space, at the access room where Bernadette had remained hidden for so long. It made sense, all right. Perfect sense. So did the resignation letter that explained Bernadette’s absence after break and the postcard that pretty much guaranteed she and Eileen wouldn’t try to contact Bernadette. Wrapped in plastic, frozen, forgotten, decomposing in a place where no one would notice the smell or the scurrying of the small rodents that had obviously found Bernadette early on.

  It made sense, all right.

  Except for the part about how Jazz could have had anything to do with it.