I borrowed Shooter’s magnifying glass to study the femur. “I once met a forensic artist,” I said as I squinted. “He swore he could use the gamut of color on a skeleton’s fatty deposits, from white to yellow… along with the smell of the wax… to establish a rough time of death.”
Shooter glanced up. “That is a particularly disgusting thought, Gardner.”
I put gloves on and ran a finger along the femur. I had a theory in support of what Shooter was seeing, but I needed to prove it.
I moved out of the area and found the ME, her feet up on a desk that had once belonged to the Shilo medical examiner.
“Good afternoon,” I said.
Ingrid Santos’s feet came down, and she sat up. “Agent Camden,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Santos was white and in her fifties with graying brown hair. When we had worked together in Jacksonville, her face was consistently flushed with red most afternoons, and I suspected she drank at lunch. Statistically, those with a faulty version of the aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 gene lack the enzymes to break down acetaldehyde in alcohol at the same rates as others, which can cause this kind of redness.
“Agent Harris had questions about a body part,” I said. I glanced at a plate of chicken nachos in front of Santos. The cheese was congealed into a nearly flat mass, indicating the passage of at least forty-five minutes. “Youdidbring an autopsy saw with you, as I requested?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said. “I was just having lunch is all, is all.”
Santos had an iPad open, on which was displayed the home page of TMZ. I stood there, at first saying nothing.
“Did you start eating before Agent Harris asked you to follow up on her hunch? Or after?”
“Gyad,” Santos said, exhaling loudly and standing up. “I’m moving, I’m moving.”
I walked back to Shooter. A minute later, Santos arrived with a silver Mopec 5000 Autopsy Saw. In her other hand was its power supply box.
She exhaled loudly. “Where am I going with this bad boy?”
I motioned toward the bottom of the table. It wasn’t uncommon for parts of the same skeleton to decompose at different rates. In this particular victim, the bones in the arm were still connected, while those in the legs had separated completely, one from the other.
“The femur,” I replied. “Right side.”
Santos moved closer to where Shooter had been working.
“You know lunch breaks are legally required in the state of Florida, Agent Camden,” she said.
I looked at her. “That’s not exactly true,” I said. “Florida law doesn’t require employers to provide lunch breaks specifically. It does, however, set parameters for employers around rest breaks, some of which can be used for lunch.”
Santos blinked. “Where am I cutting?”
“I’d like you to measure first,” I said. “One and three-quarters inches from the head of the femur. Then cut there.”
Shooter handed the ME a measuring tape, and Santos marked off the distance, making a smallxon the bone before positioning her saw.
“And you just want me to randomly cut the bone,” she said, “right here?”
I studied the saw’s power unit, which had a row of four lights. Ounce for ounce, bones are stronger than steel, and it takes four thousand newtons of force to break one.
“Slowly,” I said. “If the overload light goes on, I’d like you to pull back and I’m going to turn the femur, allowing you to cut to the same depth all the way around.”
“Oh-kay.” Santos shrugged.
She began cutting. The sound echoed off the basement walls. Then the hum changed to a struggling whine, and the overload lightflickered. I held the other end of the femur and turned it two inches. The light went off and Santos began again, this time cutting in from the other side of the bone. When it flickered again, I rotated the femur a third time.
As we got around to where she had begun, the bone broke, and I heard Shooter gasp.
“What the hell is that?” she said.
We all leaned in to see.
