The Bone Lady: Life As a Forensic Anthropologist

22. Bayou Bleu

BAYOU BLEU OW long can a six-week-old baby last if thrown into abayou?" the assistant district attorney calmly asked me on the phone one afternoon . I felt the sandwich I had just wolfed down for lunch rising in my throat. When the two bayou detectives entered the forensics lab, their sharp after-shave introduced a welcome freshness to the stale air. "The case is fairly simple," the clean-shaven, serious officer said, his piercing eyes looking directly into mine. I hoped he was right. "The informant told us where to look, and we looked just where he said, and we found it, the body . . . the skeleton, that is." "Well, how can I help you?" I responded. "Tell us what happened to her," Piercing Eyes said, "and tell us, if you can, where the baby might be." With one look at the adult woman's skeleton, I knew I could reI I H BAYOU BLEU 105 spond with information to the first request. The second one was an entirely different matter. "Well," I began again, hating to be put on the spot, but understanding their hurry—everyone wants an instant answer—"it looks like a bullet wound to the back of the head." That part was obvious. What was not so obvious was where the bullet went after it entered the head. I turned the skull over in my hands, noting that the fragile bones of the right eyeorbit were broken, some missing altogether. The bullet may have taken the easy way out—straight through and through. Quite often, as a bullet moves through the skull, it will leave a track of small metal fragments, called "bullet wipe," from its breakup, defining its route. A quick X ray could provide evidence that would confirm or deny my suspicion. I took anterior, posterior, and lateral shots of the skull. The developed X rays showed the course the bullet had taken with bright white spots moving across the vault and toward the eye—straight through and through. My earlier conversation with the assistant DA had not left me, nor had I forgotten the detectives' second request of me. "What about a baby?" I asked. The voice of Piercing Eyes grew a little strained. "The victim allegedly had her baby with her; the baby has not been found. Bayou Bleu is very close to where she was found." "What?" I said, feeling a terrible sadness rise up within me. "Do you think the baby went into the bayou?" He shrugged his shoulders and looked away. "How long has it been since this happened?" I whispered. "Almost a year," he said. He gazed steadily at me and asked again, "Where do you think the baby might be?" "In God's hands," I said. The defendant looked so innocent at the trial, his youthful face arguing against his capacity to commit these unspeakable horrors: murder of the mother of his child, murder of the child. The prosecution ar- 106 THE BONE LADY gued that he had killed the mother in order not to pay child support and that he had then thrown the baby into the bayou. An eyewitness to the crime testified as much for the State, saying he had not been able to sleep well since the incident had occurred. Conviction was fast, final. But the life of this former police officer was spared, and instead he was sent to prison for life without parole. This person, who had sworn an oath to protect his fellow man, was in the end saved by his eight-year-old son's plea, "Please don't kill my daddy." We never found the baby. ...