Of course, some cases are more like that than others. I think that the most absorbing and intricate jigsaw puzzle I ever worked on was probably the case that began on April 21, 2000.
It started, as they all do, with a phone call. I carry a pager with me twenty-four hours a day every single day of the year, and I never really know what's in store for me when it goes off or when the phone rings. It might be someone with a quick question, a detective calling about some animal bones he just found. Or perhaps it's a complicated request that I can nonetheless answer from the comfort of my home or office, maybe from a coroner concerned about recovering victims' remains after an accidental house fire. Sometimes I'll get an emergency call that requires me to rush to a scene, a frantic 911 operator telling me that a plane has just gone down in some remote rural area or a county official alerting me to incinerated occupants of a motor vehicle crash-and-burn on the interstate. It can wreak havoc on my personal life. I've had to cancel Saturday night dates, leave the grocery store with a half-filled basket, and even pull a partly cooked roast out of the oven. If I'm in Kentucky, I'm on call. The only respite I can count on is to leave the Commonwealth for an occasional vacation, when I finally get to leave my pager turned off for a while.
Usually, though, I'm ready and willing to respond to the crime scene. My calls most often come from a coroner in one of Kentucky 's 120 counties, asking me to come help out with a skeleton or decomposed human remains that have just been found in his or her jurisdiction. On this peaceful Saturday night, the call was from Campbell County Coroner Dr. Mark Schweitzer. Apparently two young boys fishing in the Ohio River late that afternoon had discovered the half-buried bones of a human skeleton.
By the time he called me, Mark had already been out to the site and confirmed that these were indeed human remains. He'd noticed, too, that the bones still seemed to be wearing some pants and a long-sleeved shirt.
“The clothing was a faded workman's blue,” Mark told me. “But nobody's been reported missing lately. That area is kind of a hobo jungle-food cans scattered all over the place, lots of cheap liquor bottles, some plastic bags and dirty blankets. So the police think the bones belonged to some derelict who simply washed up onto the bank of the river and decomposed there, maybe a few months ago.”
The Fort Thomas Police Department was already on the scene, Mark went on, with Detective Mike Daly in charge. Daly was pretty new to this type of investigation, having just been promoted to detective about six months ago. This was his first case of skeletal remains, and he was eager to prove that he could resolve this matter quickly and definitively.
“So,” Mark concluded, “Daly and I figured we'd just bring those bones right down to your office.”
“Don't you dare!” I said as playfully as I could. “I hope you haven't forgotten what I taught you.” I tried to keep my tone friendly and patient, though at my end of the phone line I was rolling my eyes in exasperation. What is it about bones that makes people want to pick them up? Coroners who would never dream of disturbing other types of evidence seem to think nothing of gathering skeletal evidence and blithely removing it from the scene. Even experienced police investigators who know perfectly well that they need to see the crime scene exactly as the criminal left it don't quite understand why I, too, have to view the evidence in context.
At least in Mark's case, I could refer back to the advanced forensic anthropology workshops I'd taught, courses that he and his deputy, Al Garnick, had taken as part of the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice's extensive coroner training program. My main objective in that class is to instill one key slogan in the mind of every death investigator in the Commonwealth: When you see bone, leave it alone.
Still, it took several heated phone calls, with Mark and Daly passing the phone back and forth between them, before the two men reluctantly agreed to wait until I got to the scene the next morning.
“I'll get there by dawn,” I promised. “But this one isn't an emergency. There's just no reason to start recovering those bones at night.” I wondered how much of their urgency was due to simple inexperience, colored by countless TV images of nighttime crime scenes. An immediate response makes all kinds of sense when you're dealing with a recent murder and a fresh corpse. But these bones had been buried in the dirt and covered with rotting cloth, and from Mark's description they were perched precariously on the banks of the rain-swollen Ohio River. That was a risky place to be even during the day, let alone in the middle of the night.
By the time we'd made our arrangements, it was close to midnight. I couldn't help feeling a bit wistful; the next day was Easter Sunday, and I'd been planning to attend a sunrise service, followed by an afternoon potluck barbecue with some friends in Bourbon County. Of course, nobody in law enforcement can ever count on personal plans, but at least cops have shifts.
I lay down and tried to get a few hours of sleep, but the adrenaline that accompanies every case had kicked in and my mind was racing. Mark had told me that these bones had been found in a quiet, secluded place totally hidden from the public eye, so it wouldn't be hard for Daly to secure the scene with a twenty-four-hour guard, as was required whenever human remains are found. Guarding a scene isn't so bad when it's in town and you've got dozens of cops milling around you, but I felt sorry for the poor guy assigned to overnight duty on this case, stuck way out in the woods somewhere with nothing to do but stare at some bones. He probably felt more like a babysitter than a cop.
In his place, I'd be bored out of my mind, so I always make a point of getting to the scene as early as possible. There was nothing we could do, though, till the sun came up. I found myself running over a mental checklist of what I'd need the next day, even though I knew my crime scene van was already stocked and ready to go, as it always is. When you get as many last-minute calls as I do, you find a way to stay permanently packed.
I tried to turn my mind off but it was probably 2 a.m. before I actually got to sleep, only two hours before the alarm blasted through my bedroom. After three smacks to the snooze button and a long, warm shower I was on the road by 5:00, feeling a fresh wave of adrenaline kick in. No matter how many times I've been called out on a case (and by the time I worked this one, the number was up in the hundreds), I always feel the same rush of excitement, the same thrill of the chase. I know the cops I work with feel the same excitement, along with firefighters, paramedics, and other emergency workers. Each of us knows and mourns the human tragedy involved, but to be honest, we also enjoy the adrenaline rush we experience: heart beating faster and harder, palms starting to sweat, brain and muscles all keyed up from an extra share of blood. The day I stop feeling that thrill is the day I go back to drawing medical pictures for a living.
I'd arranged to meet Mark and Al at Mark's home in Fort Thomas, and when I pulled into Mark's driveway in the darkness, I could see that this same kind of high had hit them too. Both men were waiting for me in the yard, finishing their first cup of coffee, and anxious to get started.
Mark was a good-looking young man with a winning smile and a flair for fashion, so I had to stifle a smile when I saw what he was wearing today. Like me, he was clothed in a jumpsuit, a garment designed to handle the mud, blood, and unidentified substances that abound at most crime scenes. In sharp contrast to my faded navy uniform, however, Mark was dressed in one of the most remarkable outfits I'd ever seen. It was brand-new, for starters, with razor-sharp creases ironed into the sleeves and trousers, and every inch of the khaki shirt was covered with shiny new decals, flags, and insignia. It looked as though it hadn't even been washed yet.