The Mystery of the Bones (Snow & Winter Book 4) Read online

  I stopped walking when Quinn held her hand back to put distance between us.

  Her pistol held at low ready, Quinn knocked loudly on the door. “Mr. Dover!”

  With the exception of what sounded like a jackhammer being added to the magnum opus downstairs, silence was her only response.

  Quinn put both hands on her weapon. “NYPD!” she called next.

  “We’ve already established he’s dead, Quinn,” I said from the stairs.

  She ignored me, stepped to the side, and kicked the door with her boot. The lock broke, wood splintered, and the door flew back.

  “Holy shit!” I shouted.

  She pointed at the mess and glanced at me. “That door was already open. Right?”

  “R-right,” I agreed, offering a quick nod before joining her. “I knew the door thing was cooler when cops did it.”

  Quinn gave me a dubious expression, which I’d been on the receiving end of on more than one occasion, before walking into the apartment. She kept her pistol out, methodically checked each room, then motioned for me to enter. “All right, genius.”

  “Do the thing?” I asked, walking over bits of shattered wood on the kitchen floor.

  “You got it.”

  Moving past the spacious countertops and fancy fridge, I stepped by Quinn and into the main living room on the right. Expensive leather furniture. Big-screen television. Large windows overlooking the street. A few potted orchids were dead on the sill. It was a pretty generic pad for a middle-aged bachelor, although a few framed prints—black-and-white photographs, judging by the density of the shades—hung on the walls to break up the monotony. They were pleasant enough, but contemporary art was not my forte.

  Quinn whistled from behind me like she’d found something interesting.

  I left the living room, walked past the kitchen doorway again, and turned into a weird alcove nestled in the back of the apartment. This was much more in tune with what I expected from a professional artist—an at-home studio. Lots of frames and samples, mounting tools, a laptop, camera collection on a nearby shelf, and laid out on a worktable, various prints that never reached the final stage of “gallery-ready.”

  “Find something?” I asked.

  “These, for one.” Quinn motioned to the enlarged photographs carefully set out on the table.

  I hastily took my magnifying glass out and leaned over to inspect the pictures. They were dated. Nothing antique or even retro about them, but for the fact they’d been taken on physical film. The quality of the photos had an alive sensation to them that digital pixels always seemed to lack. Further examination of the unfortunate wardrobes worn by the subjects placed these pictures sometime in the ’90s.

  The locations and faces were different in nearly every frame. The one constant—a human skull. Pictured alongside dusty, smiling men in a desert, on the cluttered desk in an office, in its own chair beside a sleeping woman at an airport gate, even settled in between two sweating cans of beer on what looked like someone’s back porch.

  “Huh” was all I got out.

  “Edward Cope,” Quinn stated.

  “We don’t know that,” I warned. “It could be the skull of Henry IV.”

  Quinn picked up a sheet from the table. “The Cope Chronicles,” she read aloud.

  I raised my head, studied the printed title with Dover’s name underneath, looked at the photographs again, and swore. “UPenn accused the Museum of Natural History of losing their Cope skull after shipping artifacts for the upcoming exhibit, and AMNH insisted UPenn never even sent the skull.”

  “The museum was right,” Quinn said.

  “No shit… but I don’t think it was anything more sinister than a simple cataloging error. Edward Cope has probably been missing from UPenn ever since Beanie Babies and fanny packs were cool. Which means he wasn’t on display. Storage, most likely. Maybe no one at UPenn had reason to even suspect he wasn’t in his assigned box.” I pointed at the laid-out photographs. “But why the hell was Dover bringing him on a sightseeing trip?”

  “Always use the buddy system when traveling.”

  I considered a plastic bin of wall mounts to the side of the table before suggesting, “I don’t think he was prepping these for a show. It looks like he was working on layouts for a book.”

  “At least it’s unique subject matter for a coffee-table display,” Quinn said with a shake of her head.

  “It might explain why he can afford this place on a teaching salary. A nice advance from a New York publishing house,” I explained. “Try checking Publishers Weekly. You might find confirmation of a contract and an agent to reach out to for details. Plus, if news like that is public, Rossi could have easily learned about it….” I tapped my chin with my magnifying glass. “He could have come here looking for the skull, thinking Dover still had it after all this time….”

  Quinn raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I griped. “You wanted me to do the thing—I’m doing the thing.”

  “All right. Anything else?”

  I straightened my hunched position and winced as my back and shoulder popped. “It might be worth looking into exactly why Dover gave up his photojournalism career. Pilfering UPenn of its famous paleontologist head might have put a bad taste in his industry’s mouth, you know? It would at least explain—” I stopped abruptly.

  “Explain?” Quinn prodded.

  “Stuff,” I muttered before hastily squeezing between her and the wall.

  “That’s real fucking helpful. Thanks.” Quinn turned to follow my line of motion. “What’re you doing?”

  I pushed in a workbench and walked to the far, heavily shelved wall opposite us. Right there, dead center, staring at me with empty and dark orbital sockets—

  Edward Drinker Cope.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “ARE YOU sure it’s a real skull?” Neil’s voice asked over speakerphone.

  “No, Neil,” I snapped. “I can’t tell the difference between human bone and polyresin.”

  “Millett,” Quinn warned. “If you get him started on the history of mourning masks or some shit, I will find you.” She had her eyes on the road while driving, but still pointed emphatically at my phone while speaking.

  I sat shotgun, holding the head portion of Cope in one hand and his mandible in the other. “A special stationery was necessary to use for those in mourning during the Victorian era,” I replied. “The envelope and notepaper were lined in black, and a gradient was used to signify—”

  Quinn and Neil both moaned simultaneously.

  “You know,” I started, motioning at Quinn with the jaw, “one day I won’t be around anymore, and then where will you be? Bored as hell.”

  “With significantly more headspace available,” Neil said from the phone resting on my thigh.

  Quinn glanced sideways. “Stop waving that at me.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I lowered the bone. “Neil, if you’re going to admit that I’m smart, believe me when I tell you this skull is the real deal.” I dug out my magnifying glass again, brought the head closer, and studied inside the socket. “There’s a serial number etched into the bone.”

  “UPenn would be able to confirm it’s theirs,” Neil muttered.

  I stuck the handle of the magnifying glass between my teeth and ran my fingertip around the smooth bone of the eye socket. “Eeeil?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Id oou et—”

  “Oh my God. Sebastian, whatever is in your mouth, spit it out,” he murmured with an overwhelming sense of restrained tension.

  I dropped the magnifying glass onto my lap. “Did you ever get the ME’s report for the body parts?”

  “In which instance?”

  “Erm… mine. The decapitated head, in particular.”

  “It came back today, actually. But I don’t have access to it. Why do you ask?”

  “I think we’ve overlooked a glaringly obvious clue to who the Collector is.”

  “I
thought it was Rossi,” Neil said.

  “It is,” I replied. “But proof of that will get you both reinstated. You do want your job back, right?”

  Neil grumbled.

  “The orbital socket is smooth on a regular skull,” I said. “Not perfectly round, but no jagged edges. Mine had one of the eyes removed, remember? That takes skill and practice and training to do without leaving a mark. Rossi isn’t a doctor. He’ll have left identifying cuts all over the bone.”

  “That’s damn right,” Quinn said, loud enough for Neil to hear. “Millett, what about trace evidence? Tell me you got something before being slapped on the wrist with a suspension.”

  “Sure, I got it. It’s in my email, which I’ve been locked out of. Apparently I’m lucky to have not been arrested for obstruction of justice,” he said sarcastically.

  “What did you do to Wainwright this morning to piss him off so much?” I asked.

  “I bet he decked him, right, Millett? You’ve got plenty of suppressed frustration under those fancy suits,” Quinn remarked with a chuckle.

  Neil declined to comment further on that topic. “I might have a work-around. How far are you from the ME’s office?”

  “Leaving Greenwich Village now,” she answered.

  “Good. Head over there. I’m going to cash in one of my favors on Dr. Asquith.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked as Quinn made an eastbound turn at the end of the block.

  “An ME I’ve worked with on a few cases. You should remember her from the dumpster-diver kid back in May,” Neil explained.

  “Oh. Right. Vaguely,” I said. Really vaguely. Quinn had been hauling my ass into the Emporium so I wouldn’t snoop on her conversation with Calvin.

  “Anyway, she’s still new enough to not have had the hopes and dreams beaten out of her. I’ll tell her to expect you, Quinn.”

  MEDICAL EXAMINERS are weird.

  And not weird like me. I meant, weird like they were in their own fucking stratosphere. But having a unique sense of humor probably made their jobs easier, considering they dealt with the very intimate remains of humans who once experienced love and loss and every emotion in between. I couldn’t imagine doing that day in and day out. I didn’t think I’d be able to professionally distance myself from the person they once were, to the corpse on the table now. I cared too deeply about stories to not care what they did with their time on Earth, and why they were moved to do so.

  I guess that’s why I collected antiques. Their stories were easier on the heart and the mind.

  Less stinky too.

  Anyway, whatever favor Neil had pulled from his magic hat worked. Quinn, well acquainted with the staff at the Manhattan office of the Chief Medical Examiner, greeted folks as if it was a usual day. Her presence was unquestioned. I was told to sign in and was given a visitor’s badge to wear before taking the elevators downstairs. I’d left Cope in my messenger bag, safely stowed in the trunk of Quinn’s car. The last thing I needed was to get stopped by security on our way out of the ME’s office and they think I was trying to smuggle old bones out.

  “I can’t believe the morgue is in the basement,” I said.

  “That upsets you?”

  “It’s banal.”

  Quinn laughed a little. She put her hands in her pockets as the elevator pinged and the doors slid open.

  Waiting against the far wall was a petite woman with a huge grin on her face. She seemed about my age but Quinn’s height, with long light-colored hair pulled into two braids. She clapped her hands together, bounced on her toes, then ran straight at me as we stepped into the hall.

  “Mr. Sebastian Snow!” she exclaimed, bypassing Quinn entirely. She grabbed my hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Detective Millett mentioned your name on the phone. I’m real happy to finally meet you!”

  I winced, sure she’d about dislocated my already-bruised shoulder. “Ah—hi. Pleasure to meet you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Quinn watched the animated doctor with that telltale eyebrow raised. “Dr. Asquith, right?”

  “That’s me,” she said without breaking eye contact. “Mr. Sebastian, you have very soft hands. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Uh… my fiancé. Sometimes. Usually to remind me that I’m not cut out for manual labor.”

  She snickered and finally released me from a Guinness Record–breaking handshake. “He’s a smart man. And handsome. All that red hair.” She grabbed her chic pigtail braids and gave them a tug. “I wish I had red hair. I was thinking of dying it, but knowing my luck, it’d come out blood-colored, which around this place?” Her eyes grew, and she laughed like we’d missed the punch line of a really good joke. Also, I don’t think she’d taken a single breath since the elevator doors opened.

  “You know my fiancé?” I asked curiously.

  “Oh, sure. It’s hard to miss a guy who’s this tall,” Asquith answered as she raised her hand over her head, then jumped for good measure. “Did you know that I was the ME on your case at Snow’s Antique Emporium? In May. The dead boy in the dumpster. I love the name of your shop. It’s so… romantic. Sensational.”

  I was hardly one to judge, considering most folks thought I was nuts to varying degrees, but umm…? The darling doc needed to see sunlight more often.

  “We’re on a deadline,” Quinn said. “I believe Detective Millett informed you I was here for an in-person look at the wound patterns of Monday’s victim?”

  “Sure, sure,” Asquith replied. She grabbed my arm, wound her own through it, and dragged me down the hall. “Although Mr. Sebastian isn’t really here to identify a body as suggested by the front desk, is he?” She looked up at me with another wide smile. “But I know when to be quiet.” She winked and made a button motion over her lips.

  I craned my neck to look at Quinn, who was following with a very disgruntled, back-seat-driver-who’d-been-told-to-can-it expression.

  “You’re not squeamish, are you?” Asquith asked me as we neared an open door at the end of the hall. She then playfully slapped my chest and answered her own question. “No, of course you aren’t.”

  She led me, and by extension, Quinn, into a sparsely furnished room that had harsh overhead lighting and a nauseating chemical cleaner smell lingering in the air. She ushered me toward a bank of freezers, told me to stay, then snapped on a pair of latex gloves pulled from the pocket of her lab coat.

  Asquith opened the locker marked 17, pulled out the retractable gurney, unzipped the bag, and displayed the skull from inside as if it were a trophy. “Ta-da!”

  “Where’s his face?” I asked, acknowledging how wrong that sounded.

  “We had to strip the flesh. It was decomposing. Plus it’s the only way to inspect the bone for additional trauma.” She picked up an evidence baggie. “And here are the teeth that were collected from the Emporium yesterday—the central and lateral incisors, as well as one canine.”

  Quinn approached the gurney. “So what kind of weapon was it that dug out the eye? Butter knife? Pocketknife? Machete?”

  Asquith stared at Quinn for a long, borderline uncomfortable moment. Then she imitated a loud buzzer sound. “Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Would you like to phone a friend, Detective Lancaster?”

  Quinn put her hands on her hips, I think purposefully showing off the shoulder holster as her unbuttoned coat opened with the motion. “Just tell us what the damn weapon was.”

  I took out my phone and checked the newly adjusted timer app. Seven hours left.

  Yes, please.

  Asquith set the bag of teeth aside and then tossed me a pair of latex gloves. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Sebastian.”

  “We don’t have time for games, doc,” Quinn said firmly.

  “Oh, pffft,” Asquith declared. “Destress your chest, Detective.”

  “Excuse me?” Quinn said in a dangerous voice, her face discoloring with what I figured was a pinkish red I’d been told was similar to and yet so different from a blush.

  I hastily put
the gloves on and grabbed what remained of poor Daniel the Intern. The kid had seen better days, that much was certain. “Walk it off, Quinn,” I said, knowing I’d be getting my own ass-kicking from her later.

  Asquith leaned over the table to put her finger on the brow of the skull. “What do you see?”

  “Not a whole hell of a lot in this lighting,” I replied.

  “That’s right,” she said, almost cooing. “You have achromatopsia.” Asquith pattered across the room and flipped two of the three light switches. “How’s that, Mr. Sebastian?”

  “Er—better, thanks.” I gave her a wary look as she returned to my side. “Sorry. How do you know about my vision condition?”

  “People talk, you know.” She again tapped the skull. “Take a look.”

  I felt unduly cautious in that moment. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly caused the hairs on my neck to stand up. A lot of folks knew about my issue with lights. Whether or not they understood the particulars of achromatopsia or any of the symptoms beyond light sensitivity, many seemed to at least be aware that I was not like most people. I had limitations, with sometimes curious workarounds, but I wasn’t particularly anxious these days about people knowing. People staring. In fact, the more who understood achromatopsia, the better. Maybe that way there’d be a cure before I died an old man, having never experienced the fiery red of Calvin’s hair.

  Asquith smiled, pointed at my eyes, then at the skull. “My bones are down here,” she teased.

  I hesitantly gave the skull my undivided attention. Daniel looked like Cope. And with the exception of Cope’s discoloration due to age and storage, bones were bones were bones. Frankly, it had a way of humbling a man.

  “I don’t see any sort of damage,” I said to Asquith. I put a finger in either socket and felt along the edges for where an untrained hand would have gouged into bone while severing an eyeball. But I couldn’t find any cuts or nicks. I stopped manhandling the skull and put it on the gurney. “Is this a trick question?”

  Asquith laughed. “Yeah. There are zero cuts to the bone,” she said before giving Quinn a leveled look.