Burial Ground by Malcolm Shuman Read Free Book Online

herself, an intense young woman named Chloe Messner. She pronounced on the skeletons that turned up in weed-grown lots and sorted out the victims of plant explosions. She loved the outré, so I didn’t waste time:
    “Ever worked with the coroner of West Feliciana?”
    “Once or twice. Why, Alan? You have something for me?”
    “Sorry, not quite.”
    “Oh.” The disappointment was clear in her tone.
    “I was just curious about what kind of job they do up there.”
    “Depends. I think they send most of their clients to Baton Rouge. Better facilities.”
    It conjured the image of a hotel with a spa for the dead and hot and cold running formaldehyde, and I shuddered.
    “So the pathologist here would find out if an accident wasn’t an accident.”
    “Theoretically. But it isn’t always easy to tell. I saw a hit-and-run victim once, beautiful girl, from her picture; she’d been lying in a field for a month and the insects had done their work, so—”
    “I get the idea,” I said, cutting her off before I gagged. “And he’d figure out if a body had too many teeth.”
    “Come again?”
    “If the victim had thirty-three teeth instead of your government-issue thirty-two.”
    “Alan, do you know somebody like that?” The excitement was back in her voice and I knew she was visualizing a research publication.
    “I don’t know. I just know of a case where the victim in a car accident had some teeth knocked out and when they scooped them up from the floor of the car he had an extra premolar, filling and all.”
    “That’s impossible. There must’ve been somebody else in the car.”
    “Who got their tooth knocked out and then ran away?”
    “Stranger things have happened. I remember the case of a woman they found burned up in her bedroom and there was a wooden leg in the bathtub. They went back through the rubble a second time looking for another body. Turned out she was killed by her husband, who set the house on fire while she was with her one-legged lover. He was taking a shower and when the place went up he took off, hopping, I guess.”
    “Must’ve been a hell of a case,” I muttered. “What I’m saying, Chloe, is what if the extra tooth didn’t belong to the victim?”
    “What are you saying, there’s a tooth fairy?”
    “All his premolars were in place. Even after he hit the steering wheel.”
    “Of course they were. Your premolars are in the side of your mouth. They don’t get knocked out like a canine or incisor. It only takes a moderately strong frontal blow. But your premolars and molars …”
    “Exactly. So I’m asking, what will they do with the extra tooth?”
    “I hope they send it to me. You can tell a lot from a tooth. Different materials have been used for fillings over the years. And as far as tooth morphology goes, American Indians—”
    “—have shovel-shaped incisors. I know. You’ll look at the tooth?”
    “Sure. As soon as we finish with this body from the train wreck. The tank car exploded and—”
    “Right. I’ll see if I can get them to send it along.”
    “Great. Later, Alan.”
    I hung up and then called Willie Dupont and told him to try to get the pathologist to send the odd tooth to Chloe. When I’d finished talking to him I sat back in my chair and stared idly through my open door and into the next room, where I saw David’s briefcase on the floor next to the sorting table. I wondered if he’d come back for it. Two hours later, when he hadn’t returned, I called his house to see if he wanted me to drop it by on my way home, but his wife told me he hadn’t come home. Maybe, I thought, he’d hit pay dirt with Absalom. At least I hoped so, because it would save us a lot of work. I closed the office and set the alarm, thinking of the empty house on Park Boulevard where I’d grown up and where I now lived.
    Since returning to Baton Rouge I’d dated many women, and been serious about several. Some were taken by the old house with its antique furniture, but