“Devon Slater seems like he is bothered by this, whereas Larry is bothered by you,” he said, after his wife and Gene parked their asses in the seats.
Callen agreed.
“That was quite the end to the interview. What do you think is going on there?” he asked.
Bullshittery.
That was for damn sure. Only, she needed to know who was the bad guy, and who wasn’t. That meant making a call to someone who could help her.
She pulled out her phone and phoned an expert to help her figure this out. She needed to know one thing.
When Tony answered, she went there.
“How old are the skulls?” she asked. “Is there a way you can tell me anything about them, like how long they’ve been out of the ground?”
He laughed.
Yeah, he was accustomed to questions like this from Elizabeth, especially when she didn’t have a full body to get forensics from on a case.
“I mean, I can try, but they were boiled. The flesh was pulled off, and the rest was boiled off. There are stress fractures from hot water. We might have another eater. I haven’t seen teeth marks yet, but I’ve just started looking at them.”
She hated when he called cannibals that.
Why?
It was three days beyond nasty, and the last thing anyone wanted to hear in reference to a victim.
Tony, as per usual, was being Tony.
“Cannibal,” she corrected. “Don’t be a nut.”
Then, she went there, trying to think of another way she could get the information from the man. Sometimes, you had to change up the way you were asking the question for the doctors to give something up.
“If you were going to guess how long they’ve been in that room, what would you say? Guess for me,” she said, knowing he absolutely would.
In the background, they heard Chris.
“REALLY?”he asked, loudly. “Are you kidding me with the guessing?”
No, she wasn’t.
A girl had to use whatever she could to get a case solved.
PERIOD.
So instead, she opted to ignore the ME’s protests.
“Speculate, because I’m trying to eliminate a suspect,” she said, explaining, even though she ran this shitshow. Elizabeth owed no one an explanation.
Tony considered it.
“I’m going to say somewhere between two to three years. They were discolored from the light hitting them. When they were fleshy, they were pure white. Sunlight ages the bone, and there is definitely discoloration. They were more yellowed than a fresh set.”
Ethan knew what his wife was thinking.
“Slater acquired the building recently, so that meant they were likely there before he obtained it.”
She nodded.
