Break No Bones: A Temperance Brennan Novel

Chapter One Never fails. You're wrapping up the operation when someone blunders onto the season's big score. OK. I'm exaggerating. But it's damn close to what happened. And the final outcome was far more disturbing than any last-minute discovery of a potsherd or hearth. It was May 18, the second-to-the-last day of the archaeological field school. I had twenty students digging a site on Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina. I also had a journalist. With the IQ of plankton. "Sixteen bodies?" Plankton pulled a spiral notebook as his brain strobed visions of Dahmer and Bundy. "Vics ID'd?" "The graves are prehistoric." Two eyes rolled up, narrowed under puffy lids. "Old Indians?" "Native Americans." "They got me covering dead Indians?" No political correctness prize for this guy. "They?" Icy. "The Moultrie News. The East Cooper community paper." Charleston, as Rhett told Scarlett, is a city marked by the genial grace of days gone by. Its heart is the Peninsula, a district of antebellum homes, cobbled streets, and outdoor markets bounded by the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Charlestonians define their turf by these waterways. Neighborhoods are referred to as "West Ashley" or "East Cooper," the latter including Mount Pleasant, and three islands, Sullivan's, the Isle of Palms, and Dewees. I assumed plankton's paper covered that beat. "And you are?" I asked. "Homer Winborne." With his five-o'clock shadow and fast food paunch, the guy looked more like Homer Simpson. "We're busy here, Mr. Winborne." Winborne ignored that. "Isn't it illegal?" "We have a permit. The island's being developed, and this little patch is slated for home sites." "Why bother?" Sweat soaked Winborne's hairline. When he reached for a hanky, I noticed a tick cruising his collar. "I'm an anthropologist on faculty at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. My students and I are here at the request of the state." Though the first bit was true, the back end was a stretch. Actually, it happened like this. UNCC's New World archaeologist normally conducted a student excavation during the short presummer term each May. In late March of this year, the lady had announced her acceptance of a position at Purdue. Busy sending out resumes throughout the winter, she'd ignored the field school. Sayonara. No instructor. No site. Though my specialty is forensics, and I now work with the dead sent to coroners and medical examiners, my graduate training and early professional career were devoted to the not so recently deceased. For my doctoral research I'd examined thousands of prehistoric skeletons recovered from North American burial mounds. The field school is one of the Anthropology Department's most popular courses, and, as usual, was enrolled to capacity. My colleague's unexpected departure sent the chair into a panic. He begged that I take over. The students were counting on it! A return to my roots! Two weeks at the beach! Extra pay! I thought he was going to throw in a Buick. I'd suggested Dan Jaffer, a bioarchaeologist and my professional counterpart with the medical examiner/coroner system in the great Palmetto State to our south. I pleaded possible cases at the ME office in Charlotte, or at the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale in Montreal, the two agencies for which I regularly consult. The chair gave it a shot. Good idea, bad timing. Dan Jaffer was on his way to Iraq. I'd contacted Jaffer and he'd suggested Dewees as an excavation possibility. A burial ground was slated for destruction, and he'd been trying to forestall the bulldozers until the site's significance could be ascertained. Predictably, the developer was ignoring his requests. I'd contacted the Office of the State Archaeologist in Columbia, andReichs, Kathy is the author of 'Break No Bones: A Temperance Brennan Novel', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743297394 and ISBN 0743297393.