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Bone Chilling

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Failure

1. John Ruskin says if you come to danger and turn back, though it may have been the prudent thing to do, your character suffers deterioration; you are to that extent weaker, more lifeless.

2. Sir Edmund Hillary says human life is more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

3. Charlie Brown says good grief.

4. Mum says dust off and try again.

5 November, 1984

It’s our second day at this at Wanaka backpackers. I’m rereading my ratty Travels with Charlie. Steinbeck says to throw it all on paper. I’ll start with the naked truth: we didn’t make it to the summit of Aoraki Mount Cook. It wasn’t a hard call. Every time I stood, the wind blew me backward. I can take a hint when I’m not wanted.

I think C was relieved.

It was easier to catch up on my writing before the hippies from the States arrived. One has a guitar and they’re all singing Bob Dylan “Shelter From the Storm,” C the loudest.

He blows a futile horn.

Christian often blows a futile horn, but he’s my only male cuz, he’s a good climber, and he had the time to climb with me.

Tackling Mount Aspiring next is a fitting quest. In te reo Māori, Mount Aspiring is Tititea: peak of glistening white. In legend, Tititea is the younger brother of Aoraki Mount Cook. I know this because Rachel straddles Pākehā and Māori worlds. You wouldn’t know it with her pale eyes, but she told me ‘My heart aligns more with being Māori.’

I don’t know where I’m going with my scribbling (C calls it that). I’m not the first one to fail climbing Mount Cook, and if we get to the top of Mount Aspiring, I won’t be the first to do that either. Maybe an article on success vs. failure. That depends on whether we have success.

I study the guide book: Day One: Raspberry Flat to Aspiring Hut, Day Two: Aspiring Hut to French Ridge Hut, Day Three: SUMMIT(!) to Colin Hut, Day Four: back to car.

Steinbeck says in Travels with Charlie: “I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.”

 

THURSDAY

The cremains cometh.

That’s not what the text said, but that’s what it meant. Alexa Glock left the empty lab, eager to do them justice.

A thickset man in a wool coat waited in the nearly empty lobby. Alexa showed him her Auckland Forensic Service Centre badge. “Good morning. I believe those are for me.”

The man’s eyes skipped from the badge to the carton in his hands. “A most unfortunate situation. Mind you, the mistake has been rectified.”

Alexa pulled her lab coat closed. “Are you the owner of Castle Crematory?”

“Yes indeed. I’m Edward Castle.”

Techs and admins scurried into the building, the cold clinging to their coats and scarves. Auckland temperatures had dropped into the single digits last night – almost freezing, an unusual cold snap for the North Island. Mr. Castle stepped aside and gestured with his free hand. “There’s no need for this.”

Alexa assumed he meant a forensic probe. Or sift. “The family disagrees.”

He tucked the carton under his arm and removed various documents from a satchel, pointing out how this matched that. “There’s also an ID tag tucked in with the cremains. You’ll see as soon as you open them.”

Alexa shuddered. Then she got a grip. Cremation was a choice.

“We are offering the family a free urn for their trouble. Either the Fleur de Keepsake or the Weeping Angel.” He thrust a touchscreen at her. After she signed, he relinquished the carton.

She resisted the urge to shake the carton. Back in the lab, she opened the box and set the clear plastic bag of coarse gritty remains on a scale: two kilos. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Yeah. But nah.

A typical crematorium burned a body at 1800 Fahrenheit for two and a half hours. All the soft parts burn away so that only bone and teeth are left. Once cooled, they are pulverized. Ground teeth and bone filled the bag, not ashes. And the identification tag Mr. Castle had promised. Alexa slipped on gloves, undid the zip tie, and fished it out. It listed the correct certificate number and name: Phyllis Carswell.

Last night her boss Dan Goddard had called, upset. His Aunt Phyllis had died and he’d gone with his mother to Castle Crematory to pick up her remains. He discovered the identification tag didn’t match the cremation certificate. “Wrong ashes. Can you frigging believe it? Right away the owner wanted to trade them for some other ashes, but Mum refused to accept them. I told Mr. Castle to deliver them to the lab in the morning. There will be teeth fragments, right? Can you take a look?”

Teeth, the hardest substances in the human body, were Alexa’s specialty. She had canceled a date with DI Bruce Horne in order to poke and plan. She’d have plenty of time with him this weekend. They were taking a ski trip.

With. His. Daughters.

The poking took her to Castle Crematory’s website. Most reviews were good, but one client complained. ‘When my partner phoned to ask for their help regarding ‘ashes in art’ jewelry; Mr. Castle’s response was not helpful.’

No complaints about receiving the wrong ashes.

She also poked into cremation laws. Only one body can be burned at a time and pacemakers must be removed or they could explode. Then she lost ten minutes to a Māori-owned company called StardustMe. For a price, a metal token containing a small amount of cremains can be rocketed into space.

The planning of how she would figure out if the cremains were Aunt Phyllis took her to the burn pit case. She’d read about it in Forensics Science and found the journal article online.

Human bone fragments and a single damaged tooth were discovered in a burn pit at a rental property.

Naturally, the police wanted to know who the burned remains came from.

DNA degrades at high temperatures, so identification through those means was out. The police turned the tooth over to a forensic odontologist who analyzed the filling material in the tooth.

Alexa tongued a composite filling she’d had done back in Raleigh, where she had lived before moving to New Zealand. First molar, upper right, dentist’s view – tooth number 16 here but number 3 in the States, which has its own numbering system. Silver was old school. It was made of resin – a hard synthetic polymer that matched the color of her natural teeth. Resins withstand extreme heat and each brand is unique. The odontologist was able to trace the brand of resin in the charred tooth to filling material used in a missing woman’s dental records.

The person who murdered and burned the woman was never caught. A chill ran up Alexa’s spine.

Dan had sent her Aunt Phyllis’s records. She had two recent resin-filled cavities. Her dentist used PermaDenta. The Swiss-manufactured resin was new on the market and the dentist doubted anyone else in Auckland used it. Its primary component was silica.

Alexa poured the cremains onto a paper-covered tray. Some of Maybe Aunt Phyllis wafted up and tickled her nose. She pulled on a mask and scooped some into a paper baking cup. Then she readied a portable X-ray fluorescence device – it looked like a ray gun – and scanned the first batch. Its chemical components would display on the little screen. It took seven seconds to process.

Round one: nada for silica. Round two – the same. Batch after batch was negative. If this wasn’t Aunt Phyllis, then who was it?

“Any luck?”

The sudden voice made her wiggle the XRF. She hadn’t heard Dan enter the lab. “Not yet.”

He frowned at the baking cup. “Is that…?”

“It’s a portion of the cremains. I have the brand name of the resin used in your Aunt Phyllis’s restorations. If I identify some fragments with the XRD, I’ll use the electron microscope to determine if it’s the same brand.”

Dan took off his glasses and polished them with his polo shirt. His nose was red, probably from riding his bike to work on such a cold morning.

“People don’t realize the fillers in their teeth are mostly made of glass, silica, and ceramic.”

He shuffled from one Converse tennis shoe to the other. “How much longer?”

She refocused on Maybe Aunt Phyllis. “An hour or two. What will you do if it isn’t her?”

“Our solicitor said no crime has taken place. I’ll report it to the Cremation Regulatory Board either way.” His shoulders sagged as he walked out the door.

On the twenty-third batch the screen registered SiO2 for silicon dioxide. Maybe this was Aunt Phyllis. It took ten minutes to winnow the sample to a small positive sample. She took her prize and settled at the electron microscope.

She added the sample to the chamber, turned the electron beam on, and zoomed.

Bingo. Its composition was consistent with PermaDenta. After cleaning up and reassembling the cremains into the plastic bag, she summoned Dan to the lab. “I found fragments of the resin Aunt Phyllis’s dentist used in her teeth.”

He looked at the bag squatting on the table. “So it’s her?”

“It’s not like a DNA match, but given the circumstances, I’m certain the remains are your aunt. Mr. Castle is throwing in a free urn for your troubles.”

Dan let out a long breath.“I was on my way to see you. An away case just came in.”

Her heart sank. No ski trip.

“You can still go.” Dan knew she was off to the slopes tomorrow. “Two weeks ago a couple of ice climbers were crossing a glacier. One of them slipped. When he got up, he saw a skull poking out of the snow.”

A skull on ice? What the hell?

“Search and Rescue had to wait for the weather to clear to go in. Snow and high winds, all that. This morning is it.”

“Where’s this glacier?”

“Mount Aspiring National Park.”

She must have looked blank.

“An hour from Queenstown. That’s where you’re skiing, right? The local police and rangers are headed there now. They need an odontologist to be a part of the recovery team. Teeth are the quickest way to ID him.”

“You want me to go to a glacier?” She almost said ‘glass-ee-er’ like Dan, but reverted to the American pronunciation.

“It’s stable.”

“They need a forensic archaeologist.”

“These aren’t historic remains like Ötzi,” Dan said.

“Who is Ötzi?”

“You know, the Iceman. He lived in the Alps thousands of years ago. There’s a modern boot and some rope near our skull. Search and Rescue suspect it’s a climber who went missing thirty years ago. Teeth will be the quickest way to identify him.”

From teeth on fire to teeth on ice. She hopped on board. “Who is this missing climber? Does he have dental records on file?”

“I’ll send you the details. You’re flying out at noon.”

On the drive to her apartment to pack, she thought of her mother’s book of Robert Frost poems, left behind and lonely in her storage pod in Raleigh. One poem was “Fire and Ice.” How did it go?

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.