MacAdams stood against the wall of Struthers’ sterile, blue-hued room. It’s normal odor of chemicals and antiseptic now carried an undertone of smoke and char, and he wasn’t looking forward to the reveal.
“We can get this out of the way first,” Struthers said, gesturing to the far slab.
“I should brace myself, I take it,” MacAdams said, but Eric shook his head.
“Trust me, it could have been much worse. He is burned, yes, mostly his arms and back—but the floor collapsed. In fact, the whole house more or less ended up in the cellar. The debris mostly preserved the remains.”
Struthers pulled the sheet back, and MacAdams swallowed hard. Preserved was definitely not the right word. The clothes had been burned into the skin, and both hands were blistered beyond recognition. The face, however, remained intact.
“Recognizable,” he said. Even the singed smear on the upper lip that had once been his brush mustache.
“That’s Fleet, then,” Struthers said, mercifully covering him up again. “Both legs broken, one compound. Nose broken. I’m guessing from the angle that a vertebrae shattered on the way down. I won’t know till I’ve done a full autopsy, but I suspect he was already dead from smoke inhalation.”
MacAdams had walked to the far wall again to give his insides a chance to resettle. He’d noted the other slab. It had been covered but didn’t look much like a body.
“Ah. My surprises,” Struthers murmured. He gently picked up the sheet. “I think it’s fair to say these aren’t recent.”
Bones. They were cracked, some of them discolored by what must have been fabric; clothing or a shroud. Arranged in human shape, the skull grinned back at them.
“At first, the boys thought they’d found Detective Fleet—but the fire wouldn’t have rendered a fresh body so utterly clean. And then, of course, you have the pelvis.”
“The pelvis,” MacAdams repeated, staring at its discolored sockets.
“It’s a woman,” Struthers explained. “And that’s not all. See these smooth craters on the posterior surface of the pubic bone? I’d say the woman was—or recently had been—pregnant.”
“You found a baby?” MacAdams said.
“No. Just the woman. Not much to go on for identification. Based on the decay, I’d say at least a hundred years in the ground.”
MacAdams weighed his phone in the palm of his hand.
“I’m pretty sure I know who it is,” he said, dialing the number.
MacAdams awaited Jo’s breathless arrival in the parking lot, for fear she’d otherwise barge directly into the morgue. There would be tests to run, and forensics would need to date the bones—possibly try for a DNA match with Jo. But after everything that had happened, she had a right to know.
“Where?” Jo said, opening the driver’s door almost before coming to a complete stop.
“In the cellar.”
“No, where is she? I want to see her.” Jo’s face was flushed and earnest—wide eyes glassy and utterly serious.
“Jo, right now it’s an investigation. We’ll need proof. Then, we can work on how to return them for proper burial.” MacAdams delivered this knowing it would make absolutely no impact on Jo. She was gripping one thumb (the other still bandaged in gauze) and casting about her, as if looking for a handle—or a refutation.
“Identification,” she said finally. “People can do that, right? I’ve seen it on shows.”
“Jo,” he started—
“Let me do it! I’m next of kin. I’m all the family Evelyn’s got.” She rocked slightly on her heels as she spoke. The words were not, by themselves, enough to move him. But MacAdams also heard what she wasn’t saying. Evelyn was the only family Jo had left.
“Let me talk to Struthers,” he said.
Why was nothing like the movies? Jo waited in a warm, butter-yellow room next to an old-style coffee machine. The office was empty and quiet, save for the humming of the lights. She was about to see Evelyn. Her skeleton, MacAdams warned. She would be, of course. It depended on temperature, humidity, insects—submergence in a substrate like water, and whether any embalming had been practiced. Evelyn had been a skeleton a long time, she guessed. The thought set her foot to bouncing impatiently on the tile, and she was glad when she heard MacAdams coming down the hall.
“Ready?” he asked. She wasn’t.
“Yes.”
“It’s belowstairs,” MacAdams said. He also said something about the elevator, and the weather. She was glad to have him talking. Even if she couldn’t listen. They stopped at last next to a heavy door.
“He wasn’t prepared for a viewing. We’ll have to go inside,” MacAdams explained. Jo nodded wordlessly, and then they were through the doors.
Jo had stood a long time over the body of her mother before she made the final call. It had been a surreal moment; the body was only a vessel—the life gone, Jo touched it as she might touch wood. But here, faced with the desiccated skeleton of a woman with teeth prominent, jaw receding, and a forehead of wide, white bone, the impression had reversed.
Evelyn lived. She was real, and present. A deep, strange sound escaped Jo’s constricted throat: she had found her. She had been found.
“How did she die?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“We aren’t yet sure,” said the man in scrubs. “She had been recently pregnant. So recently, that she might have died during birth.”
Jo’s mouth tugged down in frown.
She could imagine Evelyn going into contractions without a doctor—without help—
With a dark kick in her stomach, Jo’s mind to flashed to Gwen. And William. Perhaps they never even called a midwife or doctor, for fear of letting the secret be known and disgracing their family.
But where was the baby?
“You found her in the—the cellar? Alone?”
“Buried,” MacAdams explained. “Through the dirt floor in the far corner. Not left to lie.”
“I suspect a burial shroud, as well,” the coroner said. Jo tried fitting the details into her brain. It took some effort. It took some care, at least. Yet—
“They buried her in their house,” she said, finally. “That’s why they left.”
The Ardemores had turned their home into Evelyn’s tomb.