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scooping a small sampling into a
glassine envelope, which he studied before passing it on to Mike.
    "See those little
fragments?" Andy asked. "Like small caramelized bits?"
    "Yeah."
    "Good chance they're
her fingernails, broken off when the bones dropped to the ground years
ago. Submit them to the lab along with one of the older bricks. Betcha
fifty bucks you'll find some of that sealant stuck to them."
    Mike looked up at
Andy. "You're telling me this lady was clawing at a brick wall to try
to get out from behind it?"
    Andy nodded.
    "So this isn't just a
coffin, right? You're saying she was probably still breathing when she
went in here, just from what you think is underneath her nail bed?"
    Buried alive. I
shuddered at the terrifying thought of such a ghoulish demise, at the
hopelessness of her delicate fingernails scraping against the stones
that had been cemented in place. Nan and I exchanged glances.
    Mike was pumping Andy
for his techniques, unfamiliar as we both were with skeletal remains.
    "Last year's case in
midtown, some hard hats found the bones in a concrete slab when they
were digging a storage room for an Eighth Avenue pizza shop," Andy
said. "The girl still had the hair on her head and some ligature around
her wrists. Hey, can you get a shot of this?"
    One of the techs moved
closer and focused his camera on an object on the ground.
    "What do you see in
there?" Mike asked.
    "Looks like a sock.
Like a man's sock. I was hoping it would be something of hers."
    Clothing would be a
big help in the identification process, Andy explained. If it had great
age or distinctive markings, it might lead the detectives to a specific
period in time. Modern pieces with logos, labels, and trademarks could
pinpoint a year and guide them directly to the place of purchase.
    "Big enough to be a
restraint?"
    "I'll let you see it
in a few minutes. Maybe a gag, stuffed in the mouth, but nothing long
enough to tie her up, I don't think," Andy said, as he painstakingly
covered every crevice of the small space with his light.
    Mike was readying a
brown paper bag. "That'd be good. Get some saliva off it for DNA
evaluation."
    "Don't be too excited
about that until we know how long she was in here. There are some holes
in the back wall of the building. Professor, you still here?" Andy
called over his shoulder.
    "Yes."
    "What abuts this
basement on the outside?"
    "A small yard,
actually."
    "That's why she's
picked clean, Mike. May not mean she's been here two hundred years."
    "Maggots?"
    "More likely mice have
gotten in and out. Field mice, squirrels, some kind of vermin could
have squeezed through these crevices. Picked the flesh clean, but the
ligaments would have been left just like they are. Kind of dried out,
almost mummified."
    "How'd you date the
bones you found uptown?"
    "One shiny dime," Andy
said. "A 1966 ten-cent piece in the cement coffin. We knew that wasn't
necessarily the year she was killed, but it couldn't have been any
earlier than that."
    He lifted the dark
sock with a pair of tweezers and passed it out to be bagged.
    "Any pocket change?"
Mike asked.
    "Nope. But there's
something cylindrical standing on its edge." He reached in again and
removed what appeared to be a small ring. An assistant sealed and
labeled the package before passing it to me.
    The gold-toned band
was now tarnished and caked on its surface with some sort of debris. At
its widest place, I could make out an engraving in cursive black lines.
"Could be initials. Maybe an A and a T. "
    There was no date, no
hallmark. It looked like an inexpensive ring that a young woman would
wear.
    "Come in close on
this, will you?" Andy said, lying prone and making room on the basement
floor for Mike as he passed the flashlight to him. "There's some
writing."
    "Where?"
    "It looks like a piece
of canvas that got caught in the cement on one of the bricks over to
the left. See it?"
    Mike focused the beam
into the recessed brickwork and read aloud: "'Cappozelli's Rat