“Can we let me do my job?” he asked. “You know, as the actual ME?”
Tony held out the head and showed him what he saw. Then, Chris acquiesced.
“He’s right. I’d say blunt force trauma, too. The nut is out of control, but he’s good at what he does.”
That was the truth.
Well, if anything, Tony was good with the dead and their remains.
From where he stood, Mac was confused. It was all over his face.
Join.
The.
Club.
This case was ten pounds of crazy in a five-pound sack. That was for damn sure.
“How do you know the gender? I thought that was only by the pelvis.”
At the question, Tony went into teaching mode.
“That’s if you don’t have a skull. There are sexual dimorphic features that will give me the sex of a victim. They are really pretty accurate. I was only wrong once. We had a person of little stature who I once tagged as a child. It threw the case off, and the lead investigator was a bitch about it.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat.
Why?
That was her circus, and he was her crazy. She’d been the one dealing with that whole mess, and it had been anything but fun.
“If you say‘dwarf’or anything else derogatory, Anthony, I’m sending you to HR. It took years to break you of that—mostly.”
He laughed.
“I said‘person of little stature’. I learned my lesson.”
Uh-huh.
Somehow, she doubted that.
God knew what bounced around in his head. Elizabeth didn’t want to know on a good day.
Today wasn’t a good day.
As he stood there, Mac was curious.
“Really? Can you tell us the markers?” he asked Tony, wanting to soak it all in like a sponge. Who knew if they’d get another chance to work with the FBI.
Tony turned the skull over in his hands, and he shared what he knew. If anyone could nail the gender of a skull, it was him. Elizabeth trusted him.
Completely.
Well, not completely.
Tony made questionable choices.
“The overall size is much smaller with this skull than with a normal male skull. Look at yourself and your partner, Detective. Your head is bigger. This one is smaller. The less prominent brow ridges say female. We owe those to our caveman ancestors.”
