20,000 Skeletons And A Curious Dog

O my Constant Reader, how sorely have I neglected you! Might I make amends with a story of truth, to grasp your interest and nourish your curiosity about our world and who populates it? Thank you, I shall:

He was a good dog, he knew it because his human said so. "Good dog, Jupiter!" and he didn't know what it meant but he always got a scratch on the ears and neck when his human made those sounds. So the sound "Jupiter" told him he was being called. This tawny and black Shepard understood something basic. He loved to hear "Atta boy!" it always brought those nice massages.

Jupiter was digging in the woods, found a choice bony object which pleasantly assailed his incredible sense of smell with thousands of other scents and made him almost dizzy with the joy of it all. He started to gnaw on this bony object, then remembered his human, whom he loved with his all of his large dog heart, and decided to share his find.

David - his human - was sitting on the back steps watching his loyal dog scratching in the woods, then trot out into the open yard with something in his mouth, something hard, grayish and round. David's ancestral memory told him he knew what this was. But his logic forbade the completion of that thought. It bespoke of nightmares and things unseen but just as real.

"Hey boy, what've ya got there, huh? Come and show me fella."

Fella did. He showed him alright. It was unmistakable. A de-fleshed human skull.

Horrified, David wrapped it in his shirt and brought it into the house on top of the washing machine, out of reach of Jupiter. His heart was pounding. Then he called those magical 3 digits.

"9-1-1, what is the nature of your emergency please?"

Rapid breathing, high-pitched voice: "My dog just dug up a human head! Send an ambulance! It's a head and no body! Please send someone and hurry! My wife, she can't handle these things!"

Soon an ambulance pulled up, with patrol cars. When the policeman saw what it was, he radioed for back-up and the homicide squad, who then called in the coroner. It wasn't within this cop's expertise to know if it was 10 years old or 10 days new.

"My wife is sensitive to these things, I sent her away" lied David in answer to inquiries. He was off-balance, but intact - sane. "He's in shock" whispered one cop to another.

Homicide knew the rituals - the area of the woods was immediately cordoned off with police tape and the skull was left for the coroner to examine - and take possession of.

Jupiter was barking incessantly, just as he had earlier in the week when David and Mrs. David were arguing. It upset his doggie balance of mind/body - something we may've lost in our evolution who knows....but David was anxious to have the offending object removed - now. How little he understood what a severed head signified. This skull was dis-articulated almost surgically from any other bones, it was obvious to the coroner that something or someone had removed it manually, and with forethought.

Certain features will tell a forensic pathologist the gender of the person who owned that skull. Men have lower cranial ridges, women have specialized anomalies, they're smaller, and there was no doubt this was female. There was no pelvis to confirm this, which would've been more helpful. But on we go....

"Oh my wife, please don't let her see any of this. She's so delicate, so sensitive." What a strange thing to say thought homicide man. I thought he said he "sent her away".

"And your wife is where, sir?"

David looked annoyed. "I told you, she can't be involved in this, it'll upset her greatly. My dog finds all kinds of things you see, but I thought this was pretty important so I called you guys."

He's off topic again, thought homicide man. Coroner man was busy looking for trace evidence in the woods, anything that may look out of place, or hopefully other parts of a human skeleton.

{Note of interest: Edward Fouqard's theory: when you commit a crime, some part of you is left at the scene, and you bring away some part of the scene with you. Transfer. }

When all the commotion died down and these professionals left his property, David knew he'd started something rolling and it didn't seem even, it was slipping downhill and after him. Too late to shut the barn door, he thought.

"Why did I mention my wife???" he angrily asked the air. "They didn't want to talk to her, why did I bring her into this?"

Leaving the police tape in place, he took Jupiter into the basement and closed the door. The dog with the big heart didn't understand why he was being isolated. He whined and sat patiently.

David crept upstairs and stared at the blood-soaked bed.

Then he followed the blood spatter on the walls and ceiling with his indifferent, reptilian eyes, reliving the part when he hit her over and over with the hammer. Finally he entered the bathroom and saw what was left of his work.

"Lots to do here...." he thought calmly. "All this blood."

Having been able to strangle, dismember, and scatter his wife's remains weeks ago, David berated himself for not thinking this through more clearly. He knew that natural predation like fox and bear would carry away almost all traces of her - never expecting his own beloved dog to dig up that nicely buried head.

He thought about those last moments, the argument in the kitchen, her weak rationale, his firm belief that she was seeing another man, her lying, crying, justifying - which was what he heard when filtered through his already biased mind. David was convinced of her infidelity but couldn't produce any evidence. He expected Mrs. David to break down with her confession and dirty little secret, but she didn't. She couldn't. She had no secret.

That's when he snapped. It told him, basically, that her lack of interest in their bedtime pleasures came from something lacking in him, and this he could not accept. He wrapped his hands around her throat. And held on tight.

Squeezing with anger and psychic pain, unable to stop, David watched the life leave her gaze. She stared at him but saw nothing. Her mouth froze in a rictus of disbelief, pain, and fear. Then suddenly she opened her eyes! Still alive! His mind raced around like a cornered mouse. Grabbing the hammer from the kitchen drawer he bashed in her skull time and time again, leaving blood spatter on the walls and ceiling. Nothing on earth could stop his hand. Mrs. David died tasting her own blood.

That's how she looked, though still beautiful, when he carried her to the bathroom, rested her body in the tub, and left her there for a few days while he thought it through.

When the solution came, he was ready. After removing her clothes and jewelry, he severed her head from it's perch on her neck, he cut off her arms, then her hands, then burned her fingertips because he saw it done on TV. He cut off her legs, feet and lastly, he was left with a torso having no appendages.

Each night he took a piece of Mrs. David's once-animated corpse and buried it in the woods. He tried to keep them separate. It was alot of work and could only be done at night, a little here a little there, thinking no one would be the wiser.

Mrs. David's friends called every now and again but he put them off rudely and explained he and the wife needed space to work out their marital differences. A friend usually understands.

David couldn't stop worrying his brain about the police.

"They have her skull" he thought "and I know they'll be back. I have to go check the other parts in the woods. This has to go right, I won't lose my freedom - not for that bitch anyway. Hell, she got what she deserved - I told her never to shut me out."

During the following week, the coroner acquired Mrs. David's dental records and made a positive match. He'd already called homicide so they could take it from there. Dr. Coroner knew this was murder, not an accidental killing with a panicked attempt to hide the evidence by cutting up the remains. No, this was murder which always means Knowledge Aforethought. Even if deprived of air in her last moments in the heat of the time, it took meditative thought and preparation to slam a hammer into a skull over and over, then dismember a human being. It took a sociopath. It took David.

David. Who now decided to re-visit the woods each night and check those places where his wife's body parts were buried. But he'd been under surveillance from the day he called the police and never took a moment to realize such a basic fact. He got caught because his ego allowed him to act with immunity, an arrogant, untouchable non-suspect.

After his arrest, trial and conviction, David became quite acclimated to prison life. He managed to keep from being raped for almost a whole 3 days before his first "blanket party" then becoming someone's "wife." David learned his value in prison, and took full advantage. Besides, as a person with no empathy, no conscience, the atmosphere he thrived in best was a regulated, regimented schedule - something he could understand. It had no feelings and no thought to the human condition. Like him.

Today he sits in a 6' by 8' cell with a TV, cable, a radio, daily showers, all the writing material he wants including stamps sent to him by a young lady who thinks he's "a doll" and got a raw deal. Poor misguided girl - but who are we to say?

This is the human animal. We can kill in wars, we can murder because of hurt feelings, we don't protest a government that spends ten of thousands a day to keep our uninvited presence in Iraq, our priorities are convoluted, the same nature/nurture that created a David is now creating many more, and where does this all end?

My Constant Reader - do not be surprised to learn someday of a remote island - yes, of the damned - where this country may be forced to keep our anti-social, anti-civilized, dangerous creatures and all for the betterment of the larger society.

Because if you cannot feel another's pain, it's easier to hurt them.

And think on this if you would: In one day during the civil war, at Shiloh, over 20,000 humans were killed by their countrymen. 20,000. In one single day's work of hate and fear. Just to balance things out here - which do you feel is the worse crime and why? 20,000 during wartime, or one person in an argumentative marriage. Is Mrs. David's life more valuable because she was one victim, not thousands?

Or does it really matter? Are we bound to obey our instinctual need to destroy what we should be protecting?? I give you this planet as a prime example of poor protection skills, bad management. We are neglectful stewards of spaceship earth. But what of spaceship David? He too, was neglected - as a neglected ignored human child, he grew into a man who went on to cause utter ruination.

David is a real person, only one of so many. Who is more at fault here, a man for taking a life? Or a society which allows him to grow up without a conscience. He wasn't abused as a child, but he was ignored - I think that's worse. Kick me, punish me, just don't make me invisible. Fertile ground for a fledgling sociopath.

Parents: if you want a better world, raise decent sons. Teach them to do the same with theirs. Help them instill a conscience because it's not something we can grow.

Mrs. David would tell you that.

If she could .......