The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass

screen taut. As Angie slowly dumped dirt onto it, I jiggled the box and brushed the dirt across and through the mesh, sifting the soil, prospecting for nuggets of bone. There was nothing in the first box except screws, nails, bottle caps, and old fragments of broken bottles. I was nearly through screening the second box of dirt when two small objects danced into view on the shimmying mesh. The first, about an inch long and half an inch in diameter, was the lead slug from a shotgun shell. I was glad we’d found it, because if we hadn’t, I’d worry that we’d failed to search thoroughly, but I wasn’t sure the slug would shed all that much light on things: there was no question that Kate had been shot, nor any question about what gun had fired the shot; the only question was who had pulled the trigger, and I knew the slug couldn’t answer that for us.
    The second object was a piece of bone about the size and shape of a pencil eraser. “Now, that’s interesting,” I said to Angie.
    “What is it?”
    I plucked it from the dirt with my gloved fingers. “It’s the dens epistrophei.”
    “Um . . . refresh my memory?”
    “The dens epistrophei is a little peg of bone that sticks up from the top of the second cervical vertebra, the vertebra called the axis. This peg fits into a notch on the atlas, the first cervical vertebra, to form a pivot point.” I rotated my head to the right, to the left. “When I do that, my atlas is pivoting on the axis, rotating around the dens epistrophei.”
    “And what does finding it tell us?”
    “I think it tells us more about the angle of the gun. Hang on a second.” I sifted the last of the dirt, and sure enough, I found a second shard, one whose concave surface nested perfectly with the convex curve of the dens. “This is the back of the atlas. It’s not as hard as the dens epistrophei, but it was shielded by it.” I showed Angie and Joe how the pieces fit together. “Normally a shotgun suicide blows off the parietal and occipital bones—the top and the back of the head,” I explained. “I’ve never seen one where the neck got blasted, too.” I squinted at the bones. “Hard to say for sure, but it looks like there might be a wipe of lead on the dens. See that dark streak?”
    Walsh leaned in to take a look and asked, “And would that tell you something important?”
    “Maybe,” I answered. “It would tell us that the neck was destroyed by the projectile itself, not by the shock wave around it. It helps you figure out the angle of the gun, and whether the angle is consistent with a self-inflicted wound. If we were doing this at the Regional Forensic Center in Knoxville, I’d X-ray these bone fragments to see if that streak really is lead. But anyhow, I suppose we should turn this over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation as is, and let them do the test for lead.”
    “Maybe. If they’re willing.” Angie sighed. “Thing is, the evidentiary chain is all shot to hell already. I mean, you know and I know that nobody’s messed with this stuff since it got hauled away from the scene. But legally, in terms of admissible evidence, that wouldn’t count for jack.”
    “We sealed those boxes right there at the house,” Walsh protested, “and they’ve been locked in the trailer ever since.”
    “But in court,” she pointed out, “that wouldn’t carry any real weight, would it?” I shrugged, but she had a valid point. “For instance, what would your devilish lawyer pal—Grease?—what would he do about this, if he were defending Kate’s husband?”
    “He’d rip you and me and Joe here to shreds,” I conceded. “In fact, by the time he was done, he’d probably have the jury believing that the three of us had killed your sister, so we could frame your saintly brother-in-law.” I hesitated before asking the question that had suddenly reared its ugly, demoralizing head. “But if what we’re doing isn’t going to be admissible anyhow, why are we doing