July 19, 1899 - Truth From the Grave

Dreams haunted my sleep as I couldn’t stop thinking about the events of the day before. Bones filled my dreams, answers that we had not yet discovered, memories from ghosts in my past. However instead of these dreams keeping me up and filling me with fear, they filled my curiosity and wonder of how those bones had landed up in Widow Lake. I wondered who had put them there, what kind of story was behind them. The possibilities were endless and I knew that this case had grabbed hold of me tightly already, even though it had only just begun. 

Taking a trip back to Pearce, I rode towards Aly and Wedge’s home and left them a telegram to meet me at the coroner’s office.

It wasn’t long before Wedge joined me at the coroner’s office. “I was wonderin’... These bodies here in front of the undertaker’s office.. I kept thinking about them last night when I went to bed…” I admitted to him. 

“Uh oh… why?” 

“Well... just curious... how long they been here?” 

“Uh… Sunday, Al and me brought them over here, someone left them on the porch of the docs office.” 

“Oh really? Seems a tad strange, don’t it? Do you know who left them there?” 

“Mmhmm. As bad as it smells, I didn’t even think about them.” 

“Maybe we should determine where they came from too... Wonder how one removes flesh from bodies so that the skeletons can be preserved and studied…” 

“They were a bit squishy,” Wedge pointed out with a noticeable wince. 

“S’pose here’s a good spot as any to air them out… Guess I’ll have to wait a while till I can actually study them…” I wanted to come back later in the evening when I had my bag of equipment with me. 

“Is there anything you can do for now?” 

“I wish there was... All I can do is ask around for anyone that mighta seen anything around the lake... Or mighta overheard talk about activity round there… Amara mentioned somethin’ bout Tina making appearances in Tombstone with a shovel... and I want to find Cas and talk to him about this fight over the property ownership…” 

“Hmm, that’s news… the shovel, that is.” 

“Amara said that the shovel at Annie’s happened a few weeks back. That track with when the skeleton was found?” 

“I think Al found it sometime last week…? But it was in the water...so I’m guess all the clothes washed away….” 

“I would assume so,” I said with a nod. 

I spent the day working on notes for the case and getting familiar with the area of Pearce again. It had been a long time since I’d been there before yesterday. I sat by Widow Lake, writing and reflecting. Cas and Mystic rode around the lake on bicycles and I waved to them, calling to Cas that I needed to speak with him at some point. 

When the evening came, I swallowed my nerves and gathered my bag of supplies as I went to the undertaker’s office in Pearce. I went to the back room and set up two tables beside the table with the skeleton on it to prepare my investigations. I wondered how after all this time I had found myself in the very office that I had been avoiding all these years. It was true though that these bodies needed to be investigated and no one else was holding an undertaker’s position at that point and time, so it fell to me as detective to discover the truth of these victims’ stories. 

Taking a deep breath, I brought the two bodies from the coffins in front of the office back to the two empty tables. The smell was revolting but I held it together as I focused on the work in front of me. 

With gloved hands, I began to study the three victims in front of me. These remains belonged to people with names, families, jobs… And their stories had come to a grizzly end. These were the questions I needed answers for. Feeling around the bones, I let myself become familiar with them, studying the decay and bruises. Based on the surfaces of the cranium, pubic bones, and rib ends, I could see the age-related bone breakdown as I examined them with my magnifying glass. I remembered something that I had read from my textbooks as I studied the bones. Throughout a lifetime, bone makes new osteons — minute tubes containing blood vessels. Looking close at the bones with a magnifying glass, it wouldshow these changes, which can indicate adult age to within 5 to 10 years. Younger adults have fewer and larger osteons. Older adults have smaller osteons and more osteon fragments, as new ones form and disrupt older ones. 

Not only that, but I also remembered reading that the bones that enclose the brain grow together during childhood along lines called cranial sutures. During adulthood, bone "remodeling" could gradually erase these lines, at variable rates. Closure of cranial sutures gives general information about a person’s age. It is best used with additional indicators to estimate age, or when other age indicators are unavailable.

Using my magnifying glass more, I could find that each victim had been shot with bullets nicking the bones. Unfortunately, the bullets had not stayed in the bodies so they had been clean shots. That meant the bullets might be located around the lake if they buried deep enough in the water. I didn’t relish the idea of diving around Widow Lake for more evidence, but I knew that we might be able to find more things that could help us gather knowledge on what really happened. The question still remained however whether or not the other two bodies had been in Widow Lake too, or if the timing was just coincidental. 

From what I remembered in my reading, there are many ways to determine whether or not a skeleton was female or male. The pelvic cavity on the male is narrower and less roomier. The coccyx is less movable, the sacrum is long, narrow with concavity. The pelvis is heavy and thick and the joint surface is large. There is a greater, deep pelvis and the pubic arch is less than 900 whereas the female arch is more than 900. The Ischial tuberosity on the male is turned inward, where on the female it is turned outward. The pelvic inlet and outlet on the male skeleton are also smaller than on the female one. 

Based on my research of the parts of the bones that were present in the three victims in front of me, I could determine that the three victims were indeed male. I studied them some more and found evidence of drowning from the marks of strangulation and severe violence applied to the head. I also found bruising on the two bodies around the neck which show strangulation.

After all of this investigation, I knew I had discovered all I could from the three victims. I put the bodies back where they were in the coffins outside and then boxed up the skeleton bones back in the proper boxes. 

After dropping the incident report off in Aly and Wedge’s mailbox, I rode out to Black Diamond and went to the dance at the Dusty Saloon. It felt great to be there with everyone and I met a lot of new people which I later included into my notebook that consisted of my town master list. This list was invaluable as it helped keep my memory sharp on what I know about people throughout the years. 

At one point of the dance, an army soldier announced, “I thought I found some gold around Widow’s Lake… but it could be the sun playing tricks.” 

“Been some interesting things happening around Widow Lake lately…” I commented, wondering if anyone would know anything about the bones that had been discovered there. 

“I know who owns it now last week it was Tina now I seen a new sign,” Gunner stated. 

“Who owns it, Gunner?” DollEyes asked. 

“Not sure,” he admitted. “Was riding Sunday and the Tina sign was gone and there was a Pearce sign up.” 

“Interesting, Gunner…” I commented, wondering what that meant in the bigger picture. 

The dance continued and the subject of Widow Lake was dropped for the most part, but when I saw Wes Westland enter the saloon, I knew I had to talk to him about the disagreement between him, Tina and Cas over the ownership of the lake. We made our way to the Pinkerton office where we sat down across the table and caught up on what had been happening since we had seen each other last. 

“Ya know, seein ya again, i still feel bad about puttin that gun to your head…” 

“Feels like a lifetime ago…” I said, remembering that day with Tom in the sheriff’s office where we’d talked about trusting one another and he’d proved it by not shooting my head off in front of my husband. “I do want to talk to you about something though, and I’m hoping we can be civil about it.” 

“Oh Pinkerton, I’m always civil,” he said with a crooked smile. 

“He says after he brings up pointing a gun to my head,” I said with a chuckle. “I’ve heard talk about a fight over at Widow Lake... Over who has the rights to it?” 

Wes laughed out loud then and said, “Oh, there ain’t no fight. Half owned by Goldfield, and half owned by Pearce. Goldfield owns the clean water, Pearce owns the crap.” 

“So you’ve worked something out with Cas?” I smirked. 

He tilted his head to the side and asked, “Why would I want to do that?” 

“Sounds like a deal you just stated. Fifty percent ownership.” 

“Oh, no no, that’s who owns the property. Half of the lake is in Goldfield and the other half in Pearce.

“Oh I see. So there really isn’t much argument to be had then over it? Last I heard the three of you got in a big fight over it.” 

“Not in my mind there isn’t.  Not sure how then Pearce residence feel about it. Hmm, how how is a Pinkerton gettin involved in a lake dispute?” 

“There’s been some other things happening at Widow Lake…” I said hesitantly. I didn’t want to get into details with him as it was better to have information being shared with me rather than me sharing information on active cases. Especially not when he was a lead suspect.

“And what would that be?” He asked, looking directly in my eyes. 

“Some bones were found.” Standing I said, “I need to get back home to Natalie... Thanks for the talk, Wes.” 

“Look at that, no cuffs,” Wes said as he stood. 

“And no bullet wounds either. Have a good night, Wes.”

“You too, Pinkerton.” 

I walked out of the office and headed home, thinking about what I had learned. Maybe the tensions weren’t as big as everyone had thought they were. I would have to have a longer talk with Cas about his side of the story, but it didn’t seem like there was as much of a dispute over the lake ownership as everyone was making there out to be. 

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OOC Information: 

Research for this blog provided by: 
http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/young_old.html
http://www.majordifferences.com/2014/03/difference-between-male-and-female.html#.V4-6LpOAOko