Read Sing It to Her Bones for Free Online

“If she’s been dead for eight years, it’d be a little hard to tell, don’t you think?”
    Connie took off one sandal and tapped it on the side of her leg to dislodge a stone. “I remember her now. Pretty, yes, but not terribly bright. I used to see her down at the Royal Farms convenience store. She worked as a cashier evenings and weekends.” She lowered her voice. “Gosh! There’s Katie’s parents now.” She jerked her head to the right.
    I turned in time to see an older man in denim overalls climb out of a battered red Ford 4 × 4. A toolbox was bolted across the back of the cab; plastic buckets and miscellaneous pieces of lumber with red rags tied to their ends protruded over the tailgate. A woman I took to be Mrs. Dunbar sat in the passenger seat, butshe seemed reluctant to get out. As if to persuade her, Mr. Dunbar held out his hand. Mrs. Dunbar slid across the seat to the open door on the driver’s side, took his hand, and alighted from the cab clumsily. I could see she had been crying, and she kept wiping her eyes with a huge white handkerchief. Wet splotches dotted the front of her quilted jogging suit, and she seemed to be having trouble walking in the thick-soled shoes she wore. Mrs. Dunbar’s hair was so pale it was hard to tell if it was white or blond. It was clamped high at the crown with a fluorescent plastic butterfly clip, and strands had escaped and fallen in a disorderly way around a face that was as pink as her outfit and almost as puffy. The Dunbars stood together next to their truck, looking lost. I had seen that look before. It was the haunted look of a shell-shocked veteran, the same look that had stared out at me from my own mirror in those tortured days after Emily had run away from home for the first time and I thought we’d lost her forever.
    “It’s Katie. I know it’s Katie. Who else could it be?” Mrs. Dunbar clung to her husband and continued to sob hysterically, tears falling too fast to wipe away. After a bit she returned to the pickup and, leaving the door open where any passing car would knock it off, sat in it, her ungainly feet dangling out the side.
    Mr. Dunbar patted her knee. With one motion he took off his hat, scratched his head, and stuffed the hat into his back pocket before approaching Officer Braddock.
    “My daughter’s been missing eight years, Officer.She disappeared eight years ago last October. Is that her? Is that her you found?”
    “We don’t know yet, sir. We don’t even known if it’s human remains.” He was distracted for a moment by a late-model dark blue Crown Victoria that pulled up to the drive, its turn signal flashing. “Here’s the medical examiner now, sir. Maybe we’ll have news for you soon.”
    Braddock untied the crime scene tape and trailed it across the drive so that the doctor could drive through.
    “Dr. Franklin Chase,” Connie said. “Junior. His father delivered Paul and me umpteen years ago. Took over the practice when his father retired.”
    “What’s an obstetrician doing identifying bodies?”
    “He’s a GP, Hannah. We elect our medical examiners in this county. Probably the last county in Maryland that hasn’t switched over to forensic investigators. No special qualifications needed for medical examiners, either. Hell, you could be a medical examiner if you could muster enough votes.”
    I watched the doctor climb out of his car. He looked to be in his thirties, handsome in a baby-faced sort of way, and prematurely bald. “He looks competent enough.”
    “He is,” Connie told me. “Although I don’t think Frank entirely approved of his old man. Frank is all modern equipment and newfangled remedies. Goes off to medical conferences all the time. His father was more old-fashioned; he mixed modern medicine with herbal remedies and homeopathy. Even kept a herb garden behind his house.” She waved at Dr. Chase,and he saluted in return. “Of course it’s sadly neglected now.”
    After Dr. Chase’s arrival the