She leaned forward, her hands resting on his desk. Im not an expert or anything, she said, but I dont know what other animal this bone could come from. Judging by the size, it looks like a childs.
Did you see any other bones around?
Rachel and I searched the yard, but we didnt find any. The dogs couldve picked this up anywhere in the woods. Youll have to search the whole area.
Could be from an old Indian burial.
Possibly. But doesnt it still have to go to the medical examiner? Suddenly she turned, her head cocked. Whats all that commotion?
Lincoln flushed. Doreen was shouting in her cell again, letting fly a fresh torrent of abuse. Damn you, Lincoln! You jerk! You liar! Damn you to hell!
It sounds like somebody doesnt like you very much, said Claire.
He sighed and pressed his hand to his forehead. My wife.
Claires gaze softened to a look of sympathy. It was apparent she knew about his problems. Everyone in town did.
Im sorry, she said.
Hey, loser! Doreen yelled. You got no right to treat me like this!
With deliberate effort, he redirected his attention to the thigh bone. How old was the victim, do you think?
She picked up the femur and turned it over in her hands. For a moment she held it with quiet reverence, fully aware that this broken length of bone had once supported a laughing, running child. Young; she murmured. I would guess under ten years old. She lay it on the desk and stared down in silence.
We havent had any missing children reported recently; he said. The areas been settled for hundreds of years, and old bones are always turning up. A century ago, it wasnt all that unusual to die young.
She was frowning. I dont think this child died from natural causes, she said softly.
Why do you say that?
She reached over to turn on his desk lamp, and held the bone close to the light.
There, she said. Its so crusted over, you can barely see it through the dirt.
He reached in his pocket for his glasses-another reminder of the years passage, of his youth slipping away. Bending closer, he tried to see what she was pointing at. Only when shed scraped away a clot of dirt with her fingernail did he see the wedge-shaped gash.
It was the mark of a hatchet.
2
When Warren Emerson finally regained consciousness, he found he was lying next to the woodpile and the sun was shining in his eyes. His last memory was of shade, of silvery frost on the grass and bulging pockets of soil, heaved up from the cold. Hed been splitting firewood, swinging the ax and enjoying the sharp ring it made in the crisp air. The sun had not yet cleared the pine tree in his front yard.
Now it was well above the tree, which meant he had been lying here for some time, perhaps an hour, judging by its position in the sky Slowly Warren Sat up, his head aching as it always did afterwards. His hands and face were numb from the cold; both of his gloves had fallen off. He saw the ax lying beside him, its blade buried deep in one end of a maple log. A days worth of firewood, already split, lay scattered around him. It took him a painfully long time to register these observations, and to consider the significance of each in turn. The thoughts came to him with effort, as though dragged from a great distance, arriving tattered and in disarray. He was patient with himself; eventually it would all make sense.
He had come out soon after sunrise to split his wood for the day. The result of his labor now lay all around him. He had almost completed the morning chore, had just swung his ax into that last log, when the darkness came over him. He had fallen onto the woodpile; that would explain why some of the logs had rolled off the top. His underwear was soaked; he must have wet himself, as he often did during a fit. Looking down at his clothes, he saw that his jeans were saturated.
There was blood on his shirt.
He staggered to his feet and walked slowly back into the old farmhouse.
The kitchen was hot and stuffy from the woodstove; it made him feel a little dizzy and his vision had started to fade around the edges by the time he reached the bathroom. He sat down on the chipped toilet lid, clutching his head, waiting for the clouds to lift from his brain. The cat came in and rubbed against his calf, meowing for attention. He reached down to her and drew comfort from the softness of her fur.
His face was no longer numb from the cold, and he was now aware of pain throbbing insistently in his temple. Clutching the sink for support, he rose to his feet and looked in the mirror. Just over his left ear, the gray hair was stiff and matted with blood. A streak of it had dried across his cheek, like war paint. He stared at his own reflection, at a face deeply etched by sixty-six years of hard winters and honest work and loneliness. His only companion was the cat, now meowing at his feet, not from affection but hunger. He loved the cat, and someday he would mourn her passing with tears and a solemn burial and nights of longing for the sound of her purring, but he was under no illusion that she loved him.