Bare Bones Quotes
"You’re a forensic anthropologist, the logic guys would say. Visiting the family is not your responsibility. The medical examiner will report your findings. The homicide detective will deliver the news. A phone call."
"I felt a deep sadness as I tucked the tiny bundle of bones into its container, fastened the lid, and wrote a file number across the plastic. So little to examine. Such a short life."
"Though I’d tried to conjure up others, this one kept reappearing."
"Gideon Banks and I had worked together at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for almost two decades until his retirement three years back."
"I’d periodically thanked him for keeping my office and lab clean, given him birthday cards and a small gift each Christmas."
"Crossing to my office, I booted up my laptop and spread my notes across the desktop."
"I didn’t mind. Like I didn’t mind suppurating boils on my buttocks."
"I gave Larabee the Look. We’d had this conversation an hour earlier."
"I wanted to go alone, but Slidell refused to take no for an answer."
"Bad luck, Mr. Banks. Looks like your youngest gave birth, wrapped the tyke in a blanket, and used him as kindling."
"In those days my research focused on the ancient dead."
"Today the only seminar I teach is in forensic anthropology."
"Using my knowledge of bones, I tease details from cadavers and skeletons."
"I give names to the skeletal, the decomposed, the mummified, the burned, and the mutilated."
"For some, I determine the manner and time of their passing."
"With Tamela’s baby there’d been but a cup of charred fragments."
"I’d been in Charlotte several weeks when an informant’s tip led to the shocking discovery in the woodstove."
"Slidell’s Ford Taurus idled at the bottom of the stairs, AC blasting, tinted windows full up."
"Erskine 'Skinny' Slidell undoubtedly thought of himself as 'old school'."
"With his knockoff Ray-Bans, Camel breath, and four-letter speech, Slidell was an unwittingly self-created caricature of a Hollywood cop."
"He stopped just past the woman, wiped his forehead with the crook of his arm, and checked his cargo of plastic bags."
"Noticing my gaze, the cart man waved. I waved back."
"The heat radiated from the building walls, and from the brick steps connecting it to a small tentacle of the parking lot."
"The other end of the shoebox houses satellite offices of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department."
"Devoid of architectural charm save a slight rounding of the edges, the building is surrounded by enough asphalt to pave Rhode Island."
"My nostrils drank in an olfactory cocktail of exhaust, smog, and hot pavement."
"The woman was fanning herself with a newspaper, animatedly arguing some point with a nonexistent adversary."
"A black woman sat in the vacant lot across College Street, back to a sycamore, elephant legs stretched full length on the grass."
"The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner facility occupies one end of a featureless brick shoebox that entered life as a Sears Garden Center."
"Visiting the family is not your responsibility."
"The homicide detective will deliver the news."
"I knew he was conscientious, polite, deeply religious, and devoted to his kids."
"That was it. Beyond the workplace, our lives did not connect."
"With a little luck, the contents would be animal bone."
"Things were going to get worse before they got worse."
"There is a merciful God, I thought, helping myself."
"The move to bipedalism had its downside, of course."
"The bones I was viewing didn’t fit that pattern."
"Often bones delivered to me as 'suspicious' turn out to be those of animals."
"I’d got at least three left femora. That means a minimum of three individuals."
"Do you want to swing by the office to pick up your car?"
"The night smelled of petunias and mown grass. A light breeze ruffled the periwinkle. A million crickets performed a summer symphony in the round."
"All the sadness and frustration and unfulfilled desire of the past few days evaporated in that instant."
"In Charlotte, you can sit on your porch on summer nights and hear the kudzu edge forward."
"Boyd’ll take on a rottweiler without batting an eye, but storms scare him silly."
"I can never avoid the sense of pity for the young and the weak who simply happened to get in the way of some psychopath."
"Life offers much more than violence and mayhem."
"Love and kindness and human compassion are becoming just a few more entries on the list of endangered species."
"Sparring. Teasing. Jousting. But underneath lay respect and affection."
"If not, could we hold on to the friendship we had?"
"I wanted to say what was on my mind, to form forbidden words, ask prohibited questions. I held back."
"The intensity of the blue always surprised me."
"You wouldn’t have any idea as to the whereabouts of these folks, now, would you, Doc?"
"The situation turned into an ornithological soap opera."
"The crossed hands rose and fell with the lime-turquoise bosom."
"Needing a male presence to calm me annoyed me."
"Confusion, delight, and surprise were now tangoing with the anger and fear."
"Knowing when the photos started may provide a clue about motive."
"Whatever twisted mutant did this doesn’t realize the world of hurt that’s about to befall him."
"Son’s usually very predictable and very reliable."
"Faculty faxing is not in my job description."
"He uses a ruler to cross things out? Jesus, this guy’s one tight spitter."
"Hells bells, I do half the student advising around here."
"Snow brought folks into the world. Park sends ’em out."
"Think there’s any point to swinging by the hospital?"
"So you think you’re going to use his computer?"
"The anthropologist insisted on equidistant spacing and ninety-degree angles."
"Slidell’s homophobia was getting on my nerves."
"Drilling us each with a look, the deb marched off down the corridor."
"Rock and E-bombs. Planning a two-for-one sale?"
"Man makes enemies, you know what I’m sayin’?"
"You got nothin' on me. I'm jus' goin' 'bout my bidness."
"Maybe I do a little bidness. That don't mean I know nothin' 'bout Tamela."
"Know how long baby killers last in the joint?"
"A terrible thought kept recycling through my brain. Tamela and her family are dead. This man knows."
"Once they've completed intake, Rinaldi and Slidell are going to grill Tyree, play him off against Sonny Pounder. One or the other will roll over."
"A manageable question. Shoving back my chair, I went in pursuit of an answer."
"What air spaces remain look diluted, but that may be due to air bubbles."
"What appeared to be coke turned out to be goldenseal."
"Scenes of normalcy. Scenes in which Tamela's baby would never have a part."
"Was I trying to link unrelated events? Disparate people and places?"
"It's really a kick to look at diatoms under magnification."
"Propped between the wiper blade and the glass was a squirrel."
"As I got out, the goose bumps did a curtain call."
"A grandfather clock stood sentry at the far end of the corridor, its slow, steady ticking the only sound in the crushing stillness."
"My mind made an addition to the services listed on the entrance sign. Funerals. Cremation. Grief support. Planning. Perpetual shadow."
"Fifty thousand plants and animals become extinct each year, Ryan. Within half a century one-quarter of the world’s species could be gone."