CHAPTER NINETEEN
A shiny titanium rod was embedded inside the femur.
“It’s called an intramedullary nail,” I said. “The saw blade was designed to cut through bone, but not the harder metal.”
“What’s it for?” Shooter asked.
“Support for the fracture,” the ME said, looking to me. “How the hell did you know that was in there?”
“I didn’t.” I pointed to Shooter. “She did. Somehow the metal rod was repelling the waxy buildup. I’ll have to research why at a later time.”
“Give me a minute,” Santos said. “I can pull that outta there, outta there.”
She left the area, then came back with an extraction tool, which she used to remove the shiny metal rod.
“The manufacturer of that will give you the doctor’s name,” I said to Shooter. “From there, you can ID the victim.”
While Shooter followed this up, I headed off to check in with Richie and Cassie upstairs. As I waited for the elevator, my phonerang. It was Justin Seethers, the district attorney who was holding Travis Wells in jail down in Farner County. Our other case.
Seethers asked me if I was still in the area.
“No,” I said, mentally switching gears to the gun case. “We’re juggling another investigation. Is everything all right?”
“So far so good,” he said. “You?”
The propensity humans have for small talk constantly confounds me. When I worked in Jacksonville, we had an admin who would answer emails in which I signed off with “You’re welcome” with the response “No—you’rewelcome.”
“My colleague and I will be there in the morning,” I said to Seethers. Tomorrow would be Saturday, so I added, “Is that acceptable to you?”
“Acceptable?” He snorted. “Yeah.”
I took the elevator to the third floor. Richie and Cassie stood in a corner office, along with Detective Quinones and Patsy Davitt.
“This is Gardner Camden,” Richie said, introducing me.
Davitt sported a white lab coat, but it hung loosely on her thin figure. “Agent Camden and I have met before,” she said. “Two years ago. Another case.”
Behind Davitt were four skulls, laid out on a side table. The far-right one was placed at a distance from the other three, and I crouched to inspect the set that were grouped together. Davitt had glued red markers to each skull that approximated the depth of tissue, then laid clay in between the markers, slowly forming the contours of what was once a face.
I knew from the past case that after this, Davitt would make a silicone mold from the skulls, photograph it, digitally add hair, and color the skin.
“Have you gotten these three into the computer yet?” I asked.
Richie nodded before she could answer, flipping open his laptop. “Dr. Davitt colorized the skin an hour ago,” he said. “Added shadows for the jawline.”
I stared at the digital faces of three women. Two were Caucasian with brown, shoulder-length hair, and one was Latino. My eyes scanned from the pictures on the laptop to the skulls themselves, matching up each one. “And the fourth?” I asked, nodding at the skull that had been set apart.
“The more I studied this one,” Davitt said, putting her hands on her hips, “the more I thought that it might be a man. Slender framed. Delicate features and thin hips, but masculine. We’ll need to go back and look at the skeleton again.”
I took this in, nodding. I also noticed that Detective Quinones was wearing a suit, and I speculated that he’d put it on for a press conference.
At some point in an investigation, the need to alert the public outweighs the impulse to keep a case quiet. This is especially true if police suspect the murderer is still active in the area.
“You went out to the media?” I confirmed.
“A half hour ago,” Quinones said. “I’ve got two patrolmen taking down numbers and names as the calls come in.”
Shooter walked into the office and filled the others in on the rod we had found inside the femur.
