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The stench roared up like heat from a blast furnace, rank and foul as rotten meat. I sensed a waver in Kemp’s smile, hidden by his mask.
Below the uppermost was another tarp of equal size and weight. Unlike its counterpart, this one lay off-kilter and rumpled, as though hurriedly tossed by those tasked with its placement.
Poking from one edge, extending almost to Kemp’s right foot, was a putrefying forearm. The hand lay palm up with fingers splayed, as though reaching for help, even in death.
Kemp flinched and took an involuntary step backward. A small one, since little room remained between the bench at our backs and the grim cargo at our feet.
No reaction from Bernadin.
“Record this before proceeding,” Musgrove said to Kemp.
As Musgrove and Bernadin held the tarp in its raised position, the CSU tech shot videos and stills. I let go long enough to snap a few photos with my phone, feet braced to counterbalance the boat’s gentle rocking, hands sweaty inside my latex gloves.
Enough flesh had slithered free or been scavenged by seabirds to expose the bones of the lower arm and hand. While zooming in and framing, my brain logged details.
A few maggots were present on the rotting flesh. Not many. Recently hatched, I presumed they were the offspring of pilgrim females who’d ventured seaward once the boat was towed closer to shore. Or the ladies may have been stowaways on the marine agents who’d delivered the tarps. Perhaps passengers on the tarps themselves.
Despite the day’s warmth, one observation sent an icy pang into my heart.
The human hand is a complex affair, composed of twenty-seven bones of differing forms and functions. The eight carpals, arranged in two rows of four, articulate with the lower arm bones—the radius and ulna—at the wrist. They are a very mixed lot, one shaped like a boat, others like a crescent, a pyramid, a pea.
The five metacarpals run across the back of the palm. Their round, bulging heads form the knuckles.
The fourteen phalanges are the slender, sometimes arrow-shaped bones that form the fingers. Three for each digit, two for the thumb.
As elsewhere in the skeleton, each hand bone develops following a predictable schedule. The carpals aren’t present at birth, and there are multiple growth caps that fuse onto the metacarpals and phalanges.
I’d need X-rays for absolute medical certainty, the phrase a lawyer would use in court. But the pattern I saw was enough.
The distal epiphyses of the radius and ulna remained separate, held in place only by threads of ligamentous tissue. Though many of the epiphyses had been lost from the hand, the wavy joint surfaces left behind indicated that they, too, had not yet fused.
The outflung arm belonged to a kid of no more than sixteen years old.
“Ready?”
Musgrove’s voice snapped me back to the present.
Pocketing my mobile, I regripped my edge. Careful not to disturb what lay below, we maneuvered the sheeting up and aft onto the swim platform.
Deep breath.
A meeting of eyes above surgical masks.
Musgrove nodded.
We lifted the lower tarp.
12
The ghastly sight was in stark contrast to the surreal beauty surrounding us.
“Bloody freakin’ hell,” Musgrove said on an indrawn breath.
I couldn’t disagree.
The dead lay in a muddle of withered limbs and rotting apparel. A head count showed the muddle contained five people.
The teen lay closest to the starboard side. He or she had died wearing a neon green Under Armour tee and matching shorts. Thick carroty curls still clung to the child’s skull. Neither the hair nor the outfit was informative as to sex.
