“Centuries?”
Vandenbrink nodded. “Carbon fourteen dating tells us she’s two thousand years old. When Jesus walked the earth, that poor girl may already have been lying in her grave.”
“Even after two centuries, they could tell how she died?” said Frost.
“She was that well preserved, from her hair to the cloth around her neck. Oh, there was damage done to her body, but it had been inflicted far more recently, when she was dredged up with the peat. Enough of her was left intact to form a portrait of who she was. And how she must have suffered. That’s the miracle of bogs, Detective. They give us a window back in time. Hundreds of these bodies have been found in Holland and Denmark, Ireland and England. Each one is a time traveler, an unfortunate ambassador of sorts, sent to us from people who left no written records. Except for the cruelties they carved into their victims.”
“But this woman”-Jane nodded at the body on the table-
“she’s obviously not two thousand years old.”
“Yet her state of preservation is every bit as exquisite. Look, you can even see the ridges on her soles and her finger pads. And see how her skin is dark, like leather? Yet her features clearly tell us she’s Caucasian.” He looked at Maura. “I completely concur with your opinion, Dr. Isles.”
Frost said, “So you’re telling us this body was preserved in the same way as that girl in the Netherlands?”
Vandenbrink nodded. “What you have here is a modern bog body.”
“That’s why I called Dr. Vandenbrink,” said Maura. “He’s been studying bog bodies for decades.”
“Unlike Egyptian mummification techniques,” said Vandenbrink, “there’s no written record of how to make a bog body. This is a completely natural and accidental process that we don’t entirely understand.”
“Then how would the killer know how to do it?” Jane asked.
“Within the bog body community, there’s been quite a bit of discussion about just this topic.”
Jane gave a surprised laugh. “You have a community?”
“Of course. We have our own meetings, our own cocktail parties. A great deal of what we discuss is purely speculative. But we do have some hard science to back up the theories. We know, for instance, that there are several characteristics about bogs that contribute to corpse preservation. They’re highly acidic, they’re oxygen-poor, and they contain layers of sphagnum moss. These factors help arrest decomposition and preserve soft tissues. They darken the skin to the color you see in this body here. If allowed to steep for centuries, eventually this corpse’s bones will dissolve, leaving only the preserved flesh, leathery and completely flexible.”
“Is it the moss that does it?” asked Frost.
“It’s a vital part of the process. There’s a chemical reaction between bacteria and the polysaccharides found in sphagnum moss. Sphagnum binds bacterial cells so they can’t degrade organic materials. If you bind the bacteria, you can arrest decomposition. The whole process happens in an acidic soup that contains dead moss and tannins and holocellulose. In other words, bog water.”
“And that’s it? Just stick the body in bog water, and you’re done?”
“It’s a little more exacting than that. There’ve been several experiments using piglet cadavers in Ireland and the UK. These were buried in various peat bogs, then exhumed months later for study. Since pigs are biochemically similar to us, we can assume the results would be the same for humans.”
“And they turned into bog pigs?”
“If the conditions were just right. First, the pigs had to be completely submerged or they would decompose. Second, they had to be placed into the bog immediately after death. If you let the corpse sit exposed for just a few hours before you submerged it, it would go on to decompose anyway.”
Frost and Jane looked at each other. “So our perp couldn’t waste any time once he killed her,” said Jane.
Vandenbrink nodded. “She had to be submerged soon after death. In the case of European bog bodies, the victims must have been walked into the bog while still alive. And only then, at the water’s edge, were they murdered.”
Jane turned and looked at the brutally shattered tibias on the X-ray light box. “This victim couldn’t have walked anywhere with two broken legs. She’d have to be carried in. If you were the killer, you wouldn’t want to do that in the dark. Not if you’re walking through a bog.”
“So he does it in broad daylight?” said Frost. “Drags her from his car and hauls her to the water? He’d have to have the location picked out ahead of time. A place he knew he wouldn’t be seen, and close enough to a road so he wouldn’t have to carry her far.”
“There are other conditions required,” said Vandenbrink.
“What conditions?” asked Jane.
“The water must be deep enough and cold enough. Temperature matters. And it would have to be remote enough so the body wouldn’t be found until he was ready to claim her.”
“That’s a long list of conditions,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to fill a bathtub with water and peat moss?”
“How can you be certain you’d properly replicate the conditions? A bog is a complex ecosystem that we don’t fully understand, a chemical soup of organic matter that has to steep over centuries. Even if you manage to make that soup in a bathtub, you’d need to initially chill it to four degrees Celsius and hold it there for at least several weeks. Then the body would need to soak for months, perhaps years. How would you keep it concealed that long? Would there be odors? Suspicious neighbors?” He shook his head. “The ideal place is still a bog. A real bog.”
But those broken legs remained a problem. Whether the victim was alive or dead, she would need to be carried or dragged to the water’s edge, over terrain that might be muddy. “How big was she, do you think?” Jane asked.
“Based on skeletal indices,” said Maura, “I estimate her height at around five foot six. And you can see she’s relatively slender.”
“So maybe a hundred twenty, a hundred thirty pounds.”
“A reasonable guess.”
But even a slender woman would weigh a man down after a short distance. And if she were already dead, time would be of the essence. Delay too long, and the corpse would begin its inevitable journey to decay. If she were still alive, there would be other difficulties to contend with. A struggling and noisy victim. The chance of being heard while you dragged her from the car. Where did you find this perfect spot, this killing place?
The intercom buzzed, and Maura’s secretary said over the speaker: “Dr. Isles, there’s a phone call on line one. It’s a Scott Thurlow from NCIC.”
“I’ll take it,” said Maura. She pulled off her gloves as she went to the telephone. “This is Dr. Isles.” She paused, listening, then suddenly straightened and shot a look at Jane that said, This one’s important. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll take a look at that right now. Hold on.” She crossed to the lab computer.
“What is it?” said Jane.
Maura opened one of her e-mails and clicked on the attachment. A series of dental X-rays appeared on the screen. Unlike the morgue panograms that showed all the teeth at once, these were spot films from a dentist’s office.
“Yes, I’m looking at them now,” said Maura, still on the phone.
“I see an occlusal amalgam on number thirty. This is absolutely compatible.”
“Compatible with what?” said Jane.
Maura held up a hand to keep her silent, her focus still on the phone conversation. “I’m opening the second attachment,” she said. A new image filled the screen. It was a young woman with long black hair, her eyes narrowed against the sunlight. She was wearing a denim shirt over a black tank top. The deeply tanned face, devoid of makeup, suggested a woman who lived her life outdoors, who thrived on fresh air and practical clothes. “I’m going to look over these files,” Maura said. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up.