Thousand Bones

1 Echo Bay, Michigan October 1975 The sharp buzzing noise filled her ears, coming from everywhere and nowhereat the same time. It took her a moment to realize it was coming fromsomewhere outside her brain. She looked up into the green lace of the leaves. She knew that was wherethey were, up there in the trees. That's where the cicadas were hiding asthey sang their dying summer song. A bead of sweat fell from her brow and into her eye. She blinked and lookeddown to the yellow crime-scene tape hanging limp between the trees. Down towhere the men worked over the dirt. Down to where the clean white bone hadbeen found. "Joe?" She turned toward the deep voice. "You want to come take a look?" Cliff Leach was standing at the bottom of the gully inside the yellow tape.The three other officers had all glanced up when he spoke, looked first athim, then up to her. She wished the sheriff had not singled her out, buther curiosity was stronger than any worries she had about how the othersfelt about her. Joe slipped under the tape and came down the hill. The three other deputiesdidn't give way, and she had to stand behind them to see. Not that there was really much to look at. Set in a shallow hole with alight covering of pine needles, the bone looked more like a shard of abroken white plate. Joe felt a small stab of disappointment. When the call had come in that two boys walking in the woods had found thebone, a current had crackled through the station. She had been in thewomen's bathroom changing into uniform, and through the thin walls shecould hear the others talking about it, their deep voices rising in pitchas they speculated about how a human bone had found its way into a remotescrap of woods up by Bass Lake. Things like that didn't happen in placeslike Echo Bay. Echo Bay was just a mosquito bite on the tip of the littlefinger of the Michigan mitten. That's how folks in Echo Bay pinpointedtheir place in the world. They'd hold up their right hand, palm forward andpoint to the tip of the little finger. "That's where I come from," they'dsay, "Echo Bay." The cicadas had stopped. No sound, not even the rustle of a leaf in thestill October air. "That don't look like no human bone," one of the men said. "Deer maybe," another said. "We came all the way out here for a fucking deer carcass?" Joe glanced at the last man who had spoken. Unlike the rest of them, JulianMack didn't wear the dark brown uniforms of the Leelanau County sheriff'sdepartment. He wore gray Sansabelts, and a thin black tie hung like a deadsnake down his sweat-soaked white shirt. Joe knew he was just a deputy likethe rest of them, but he was the closest thing the seven-man department hadto an investigator, and he affected the casual dress of one. Mack's brown eyes met hers. For an instant, she could see resentment inthem. She had seen it before, whenever Cliff Leach made it a point toinclude her in conversation or ask her opinion on how something should behandled. Part of that came from her status as a rookie. Most of it wasbecause she was a woman. She looked back down at the bone, inching closer so she could see better. Leach squatted down and inserted a stick into one of the bone's cavities,pulling the bone clear of the needles. They all fell silent. Joe took a deep breath. "Sir?" He looked up at her. "I think it's a pelvic bone," she said. She could feel the damp press of the polyester uniform on her back andthighs. She could feel all their eyes on her. "And I think it's from a female," she said. A snort and a chuckle, but she wasn't sure which of them it had come from.She kept her eyes on the sheriff. "Why female?" Leach asked. WParrish, P. J. is the author of 'Thousand Bones ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416525875 and ISBN 1416525874.