“I thought you said this case was in a rough spot,” I said, trying to be tactful.
Mark smiled sheepishly. “Well, it is,” he said, “but I've never worked a skeletal case in the woods before, so my wife thought this would be a good time to break in my field gear.” He was so young and eager, I felt as if I were taking my kid brother off to scout camp. On the other hand, Al, the retired cop, his face creased from years of smoking and bad coffee, was wearing faded jeans, an old wool shirt, and a leather jacket I just knew was left over from World War II.
By seven o'clock, we had all reached the river, parking our separate vehicles in the dirt alongside the isolated road. As I got out of my van, I shivered from the wave of heavy fog that swirled up through the trees to greet me. It was still too dark to see more than a few feet ahead of us, so we groped our way along the bank until we reached the barrier of yellow crime-scene tape. Off in the woods, I could see a half-dozen tiny spots of light moving our way. They were cigarettes, I realized, in the hands of cops who had already gathered at the site. They'd heard us stumbling through the woods and came over to meet us, each with a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. They were obviously expecting us because they handed each of us a fresh cup as well, and that was all it took to make us members of the team.
We stood around waiting for the fog to clear, introducing ourselves, then starting in on the jokes and stories that always seem to bond this sort of work crew. Just as the coffee ran out, the fog started to lift, and we all slipped under the yellow crime-scene tape and moved cautiously toward the river. The officer who had spent the night at the scene led us to a steep ledge and pointed out the bright orange marker flags that Daly had placed there the night before. I could see exposed parts of the skeleton still embedded in the earth, a few bones perched precariously on chunks of sand that looked ready to break off and slide into the river. A little farther up the bank, more bones lay amid pieces of fabric.
I took a few steps back from the ledge and shook my head. Thank heavens we'd waited until it got light! Even during the daytime, recovering those bones would be a delicate, dangerous job, as my colleagues and I struggled to keep our footing on a slick, muddy riverbank that dropped about six feet straight down to the rain-swollen Ohio River. By the end of the day I knew I'd be exhausted from hours of trying to keep my balance, a trowel clutched in one hand, a safety rope wrapped around the other.
I opened up my backpack and pulled out what has become my standard working gear: thin leather gloves with the fingertips cut off, a length of rope, my kneepads, and a firefighter's belt. A few feet away, the cops watched me curiously, while I did my best to act nonchalant. Since I'm often attached to a climbing rope, grasping after the bones and body parts strewn with depressing regularity over Kentucky's big, green mountains and deep, dramatic ravines, this is routine for me, but the men sometimes seem mystified when they see me in this get-up.
“Hey, Al, give me a hand with this belt, will you?” I was taking no chances with the slick and crumbling riverbank. I looped the heavy webbing around my ample rear, pulled it tight around my waist, and clipped it onto the thick rope. Al obligingly wrapped the other end of the rope twice around a tree before grasping the other end firmly in his big hand. I could probably have stood upright even without the rope, but the small degree of constant tension helped me keep my balance and gave me that extra bit of psychological security I needed. I just prayed Al would have the strength to haul me up the bank if the soil gave out from under me.
If this had been a routine murder, every officer present would have known how to document the evidence and secure the scene. For some reason, though, bones seem to turn it into a whole new situation, so these experienced law-enforcement professionals were all looking to me.
“Okay, guys,” I said to the assembled team. “The first thing we need is a videographer. And a photographer.” It would be heartbreaking to spend hours recovering and analyzing skeletal evidence only to have it thrown out of court because someone hadn't recorded where, when, and how it was found.
Of course, the pictures, even those taken first thing this morning, would not show a pristine crime scene. There were footprints everywhere from all the people who'd been traipsing through the scene the previous evening. I didn't so much mind the folks who had legitimate tasks to perform, but I knew some of the prints had been left by cops who were just plain curious. I could read last night's frantic activity in the recently broken branches and plant stems throughout the area, and in the newly disturbed soil around the victim's skull.
At least the officers had established a definite perimeter, looping bright yellow tape around several trees and then stretching it taut to set off an area approximately of about 1,600 square feet. Any member of the public who showed up in this isolated spot would hopefully have been deterred by the large black letters warning CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS.
Down by the river, most of the remains appeared to be untouched. Even from this distance, I could make out the soft mix of sand and mud that typifies the banks along the flood-prone Ohio River, and it was this fine-grained fluvial mix, soaked by recent rains, that made the riverbank so treacherous. In the places where the bank dropped steeply down to the river, the soft soil tended to break off under even the slightest pressure.
“Once I'm down there,” I went on, “I'll have a better idea of what comes next.” Grabbing a handful of marker flags, I let Al ease me down about twenty feet to the edge of the dropoff, where the bones were down a steady, steep slope, with an overhanging ledge that jutted out over a straight drop down to the river.
“All right,” I called back up from the brink. “We don't really know what we've got yet, so we're going to have to document this just as if it's a homicide. I don't want it to get too crowded down here, so let's restrict access to the men taking the pictures. Oh, and let's have somebody taking notes and bagging the evidence. I'll recover the bones myself and hand them up to Mark.” I took another look at the slick bank. “Somebody probably should be safety officer, too, just to keep an eye on things.”
The officers looked at one another for a moment, then quickly divided up the tasks. Officer David Lambers of the Fort Thomas Police Department, a young, clean-cut kid with a shy, friendly demeanor, got the job of note-taker. He would also pack each bone into its own little evidence bag, labeling it carefully with the case number, time, and date. Two other officers picked up the cameras, while the remaining men formed a kind of bucket brigade, ready to pass each bone up the riverbank to the coroner.
As the guys quickly sorted themselves out, I was struck again by the difference between real life and TV, where you often see one single heroic scientist doing all the jobs at a crime scene, or micromanaging the cops with detailed orders. I don't do that. I concentrate on the evidence associated with the remains and try to capitalize on everyone else's special areas of expertise. I have an enormous amount of respect for the police, who know far better than I do how to document and process a crime scene. No fixed protocol works every time; each situation is unique, but you always need to remember, every step of the way, to keep a record of everything you do and of how things looked before you did it. As I recovered the bones, for example, I'd leave marker flags to show where the skull had been and how the bones had been scattered. After I collected the evidence, we'd take pictures of the flags and measure how far apart they were. If I ever had to testify in court where I found the skull, I wanted to be able to say something more precise than, “Um, I think it was kinda near the riverbank.” “Seventy-two inches from Tree A, as labeled in this photograph taken on the morning of April 22,” would make much better testimony.