Bone Deep. Janice Kay Johnson

to be systematic, he lifted one shovelful at a time, moving compost from the back to the front. As he poured compost from the shovel, he watched closely.

      Nada.

      His arms and shoulders ached by the time he was confident he’d examined every damn inch of that pile. Since he’d moved it to the front, he had to climb over it to get out, his shoes sinking into the soft, damp heap.

      Damn it, despite a temperature in the high thirties, he was sweating and filthy. He’d better go home and shower before he went back to the station.

      Kat appeared as soon as he leaned the shovel against the ties. Seeing the anxiety in her eyes, he didn’t make her suffer.

      “Nothing. May turn out I’m wrong and it’s from an animal. If not…” He shrugged. “Chances are, we’ll never know how that one bone ended up in there. I’ll go talk to them at Wallinger’s, though. They might’ve had an accident, or know of one at a logging site or with one of the road crews.”

      Relief leaped into her eyes. “I was thinking that earlier. It would be easy to stick a hand into a shredder.”

      He nodded. “That’s my best guess. Not something we’d necessarily hear about.”

      “Yes.” She gave a long exhalation as tension left her body. “Okay. You’ll take it, then?”

      “I’ll take it.” He already had; he’d slipped it into an evidence bag and then his pocket.

      “And you’ll let me know?”

      “Minute I hear anything.”

      “Okay.” Shyness wasn’t usual for her, but she was plainly feeling it. Still, she met his eyes. “Thank you.”

      So now she was grateful he had come, Grant realized, which meant she’d been more scared than she would want to admit.

      “Coming out here’s my job.”

      “You could have sent someone.”

      “I want to find Hugh as bad as you do.”

      Seeing the turmoil on her face, he cursed himself immediately for baiting her that way. Their history had no place here, and neither did his longing for something that wasn’t going to happen. “That’s the only major open case on our books,” he explained. Let her think that’s all he’d meant.

      After a moment, she managed to suppress her reaction and give a jerky nod. “I’ll walk you back.” Her gaze lowered, seeing his hands. “You popped a blister.”

      He’d acquired several blisters. The one that was now flattened and seeping burned. “Don’t worry. I’ll wash it up at home.”

      “I should have found you some gloves.” Kat sounded contrite. “I didn’t think.”

      “Don’t worry,” he said again. He nodded at the nursery around them. “Business looks good.”

      “It’s been great. Didn’t even slow down this winter as much as usual, maybe because of the mild weather.”

      “I was surprised to see George Slagle here.”

      “He’s planning to put in a row of trees to screen the lumberyard from Legion Park.”

      Beautification didn’t seem George’s style, but who was Grant to say?

      Changing the subject, he said, “You’ve turned this nursery into something special.”

      “Hugh and I made plans years ago.”

      He didn’t believe it. She’d probably made plans, and her husband had nodded agreeably. Hugh Riley had been known for charm but not ambition. Grant had never been one of his fans, although the fact that he coveted Riley’s wife might have had something to do with that.

      They’d arrived out front. “What smells so good?” Grant asked, at random.

      “Daphne mezereum.” She pointed out a small shrub with pink flowers just opening and no leaves.

      “I wouldn’t mind one of those in my yard,” he said at random, wanting to hold her in conversation.

      Eyebrows raised, she glanced at his blisters. “They can be fragile.”

      So, okay, she could tell he wasn’t any kind of gardener, but, irked by her pitying tone, he said, “I’ll take one.”

      Next thing he knew, she’d deftly turned him over to a brisk, wiry woman who lectured him on planting it right away, digging a hole bigger than the root-ball and filling it with compost and peat moss. Kat herself vanished long before he handed over his debit card and winced at the total, then drove away with bags of both peat moss and compost in his trunk and the shrub on the floor next to him, its sweet smell damn near sickening in the confines of his car.

      No wonder business was booming if all the customers were as easy to manipulate as he’d been.

      Putting the car into gear, Grant shook his head at his own idiocy. He didn’t want to plant anything, but now he’d spent so much money, he had to take care of the shrub as though it were a baby. Planting it would have to wait until Sunday, though. If it could sit safely in a plastic pot at the nursery, it could sit a few more days at his house.

      So…home to unload, shower and put on a clean uniform and at least one bandage, then up to the community hospital to find Dr. Arlene Erdahl, the pathologist, and get answers about the bone in his pocket.

      He might be ninety percent sure it was human, but he was praying for the other ten percent. Despite what he’d told Kat, he had an uneasy feeling about this. No human bones had turned up in Fern Bluff since he signed on as police chief. Now, assuming one had, it was at the nursery owned by Hugh Riley.

      Who so happened to be the only person who had gone missing locally in Grant’s tenure.

      He never had believed in coincidences.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “OH, DEFINITELY HUMAN.” Sitting behind her desk, Dr. Arlene Erdahl turned the single bone over in her hand. “Likely male, because not many women have hands the size this suggests.” She held out her own as a comparison.

      Grant nodded. He’d guessed as much.

      Dr. Erdahl was a brisk woman with a stocky build and close-cropped graying hair. Grant put her at about fifty. Murder victims went to the county coroner, not the pathologist at the hospital in Fern Bluff, but she was always willing to answer questions when he called or stopped by. Her husband was an E.R. doc, an interesting pairing. One fought to keep people alive, the other explored them once they were dead.

      She took a magnifying glass from a drawer and scrutinized the bone. “No sign of trauma. If this finger was cut off, it happened below the knuckle. Age…? Not juvenile, no obvious osteoarthritis… Twenties to possibly mid-forties, tops. More likely this came from an individual in his twenties or thirties.”

      He didn’t want to push his luck, but asked, “I don’t suppose you can tell which finger it is?”

      She set down the magnifying glass with a decisive movement and handed the bone to him. “Gut feeling, not the pinkie. Likely the second or third digit.”

      “Ah…middle fingers?”

      “No,” she said patiently. “Your first digit is your thumb. Index finger is second.”

      “Oh.” Grant contemplated his own hand. So. Some one had lost either the finger he pointed with, or the one he used to give people the bird.

      Unless, of course, that person was dead, and this bone had become separated only after death.

      “Given the lack of tissue, whoever this came from—” she nodded at it “—either lost the finger at least a couple of years ago, or has been dead that long. But I’ll tell you what. That bone hasn’t been in a compost pile for two years.”

      Jolted,