Read skeletons for Free Online Page A

“Fractures of phalanges and metatarsais.” “Disintegration of recognizable features.”
    “What does this add up to?”
    He lit a cigarette, leaned back in his swivel, discoursed. He’d been summoned from the sack by the Sheriff’s Department around three in the morning of April 30, had driven out, examined the victim, who lay some ten feet off the interstate due north of town. Medical evidence indicated beyond doubt an involvement with a moving vehicle. Victims were sometimes hurled clear by impact, if high speed, or sometimes pulled under the vehicle, if low speed, became entangled with axles and/or suspensions and were dragged, which was obviously the situation in this case. “To be nontechnical, the guy was a mess. He had no clothing on the underside of his body, and no skin. He had no shoes because he had no feet, unless you call bone stubs and strings of tissue feet. He had no kneecaps. Finally, he had no face.” Shelley blew smoke and made a face at me through it. “Gruesome.”
    I liked him. He exuded a soapy, adolescent energy, and I’d have bet my butt he’d married a nurse as burly as he and humped her four times a week and almost broke down the bed.
    “Anything else?” he inquired.
    “Was there an inquest?”
    “What for?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know what Sansom was doing out by the interstate.”
    “Did he drink?”
    “Is the earth round?”
    “There you are.”
    “Have they found the vehicle, or the driver?”
    “No way. Thousands of cars and trucks every twenty-four hours on that highway, east and west, coast to coast. I’m sure Sheriff Chavez has done what he can. Ask him.” He essayed a smoke ring, failed. “Deceased a friend of yours?”
    “Deceased was a bastard.”
    “Really?”
    “The only reason I’m here asking questions is because someone asked me to. She was born here. Tyler Vaught.”
    “The judge’s daughter? I’ve heard of her. Jet set and all that.”
    “I went to JFK with her a few days ago when they flew in the body.” I gave him my best third-degree eye. “She thinks Sansom was murdered.”
    “Well, he was. In a sense.”
    “But not by hit-and-run.”
    “She should see a shrink.”
    “Maybe. Anyway, I’ll talk to her father and mother tomorrow and read the transcripts of some old trials and ride back where I belong.”
    He flickered. “What old trials?”
    “Oh, one when they tried her grandfather, the gunslinger.”
    “Sure. Our folk hero. Chamber of Commerce puts on a big shindig in his memory here, every spring. Buell Wood Day.”
    “The other when they caught four Villistas after the raid on Columbus. 1916 I think it was.”
    “I draw a blank there.”
    But he was still flickering. He stood up, too abruptly, loomed six inches over me, stuck out his hand. “Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Butters. Have fun in our fair city. By the way, what do you do for a living?”
    “Write.” I rose, shook, put the folder on his desk. “Children’s books.”
    “No kidding. I’ve got three myself—two girls and a boy. Unfortunately, they’re glued to the tube.”
    “Unfortunately. Thank you, Doc.”
    “Hasta la vista.”
    I left, closed his door, walked to the reception room door, opened it, closed it, tiptoed back to his office door. Because Dr. Jack Shelley II was dialing a phone. Fast.
    “Pingo? Jack Shelley. What the hell’s going on? I just had another oddball from New York in here—and believe it or not, another writer.... I let him read my report.... Because it’s a matter of public record, that’s why.... And listen—Tyler Vaught again. She thinks Sansom was murdered.... Pingo, what the hell’s going on? You’re damn right I’m concerned—I’m a licensed physician—I wrote the report.. . “ PINGO?
    Harding County Courthouse may have been red-hot architecture when constructed in 1910, but I thought it a red-brick heap. It was two-story, with a wooden two-pillar portico painted white, and undistinguished in every aspect but one.