Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [530]
In another corner were two huge plastic bubbles. Maggie guessed they were odor hoods. She could hear the quiet wheezing of ventilation fans from inside the contraptions that reminded her of old-fashioned beauty parlor dryers. The contents below, however, quickly dispelled that image. In the double sink underneath the two hoods Maggie could see skeletal remains, soaking in what appeared to be a sudsy solution. A hand stuck up out of the foam as if waving to her, most of the flesh gone.
And then there were the tables, six-foot-long tables, three of them between the aisles, a fleshless village of skulls and bones. Several skulls stared back at her. Others, too wounded to sit up, lay with hollow sockets staring at the wall or gazing at the ceiling. The bones were a variety of sizes and shapes and pieces, as well as colors. Some were sooty black, others creamy white, some dirty gray and still others a buttery yellow—butterscotch came to Maggie’s mind. Some were laid out carefully as if reconstructing a puzzle. Others were tangled in cardboard boxes at the edge of the tables, waiting to be sorted, waiting to tell their story.
“Let me finish this, okay? Then I want to show you a few interesting things I’ve discovered.”
Bonzado put on a pair of latex gloves, then put another pair over the first. He pulled the plastic goggles and mask in place, then grabbed what looked like an oven mitt and lifted the lid off one of the pots. He waited for the steam to clear, then took an oversize wooden spoon and began fishing out what looked like chunks of boiled meat and fat and carefully placed them into an open, waiting plastic bag.
“We save as much of the tissue as we can,” he explained, raising his voice to get through the mask in what sounded like a practiced tone, perhaps his teaching voice. “These bags are great. They’re like 4.5 mil thick so we can heat-seal them, make them airtight and throw them in the freezer. Plus, they can go directly from the freezer to a boiling pot or the microwave.”
Maggie couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a chef on one of those cable cooking shows.
“The periosteum is what takes the longest to remove,” he said, holding up a long thin piece of what looked like gristle. “I’m sorry—” he looked at her over his goggles “—I hope I’m not being condescending. You probably know all this stuff.”
“No, no. Go on. I’m quite sure there’s a thing or two I don’t know.” The truth was, despite all the time she’d spent hanging around the FBI’s crime lab to pester Keith Ganza, she had never been to an anthropological lab, least of all, a teaching one. The surroundings fascinated her. And Bonzado’s enthusiasm and style were far from condescending. He simply seemed excited to share. His excitement could be contagious.
“We try to get all the way down to the bone,” he continued while he filled one plastic bag and then another. “Usually using some dishwashing detergent. My personal preference is Arm & Hammer’s Super Washing Soda,” he said, holding up the container and sounding like a commercial, “and a good long, slow boil. That usually does the trick. But this stuff takes forever.”
“The periosteum?”
“That’s right.” He smiled at her, another practiced response for his students, but practiced or not, Adam Bonzado’s smiles always seemed genuine, even to a trained FBI profiler. “All our bones are covered with it. It’s this tough fibrous material. I tell my students that a really gross comparison is when you eat barbecue ribs and there’s that tough part that sticks to the ribs. You know the stuff I’m talking about?”
She simply nodded.
“That’s the pig’s periosteum.”
This time she rewarded him with a smile and he seemed pleased, all the while she was thinking she probably wouldn’t be eating barbecue ribs any time soon. It surprised her that little things like that would make a difference, considering what didn’t bother her. But to this day