Page 23 of Cold, Cold Bones

The vic was nineteen-year-old Miguel Sanchez, street name Scrappy. The day before Christmas 2019, Scrappy’s ear was found nailed to a tree outside his Beacon Hill apartment in South Charlotte. Three days later, the rest of Scrappy turned up in a Wendy’s dumpster, sans liver, kidneys, and heart.

No one knew anything. Though the murder was thought to be gang related, no arrest was ever made. The dossier remained open.

Slidell was right. The two killings had little in common.

Still, the id guys persisted.

I returned to the same autopsy room I’d utilized on Monday.

The skull now sat on a rubber ring, bone gleaming white in the light from the overheads. Two squares of tissue floated in a labeled vial beside it.

Damn, Hawkins was good at his job.

I clamped a case form onto a clipboard and, carefully rotating the skull, began filling in data.

I noted small brow ridges, slender cheekbones, a delicate mandible, and gracile muscle attachments.

Sex:Female.

I observed a skull shape that was neither short and round nor long and narrow, minimal projection of the lower face, sharply angled nasal bones and a narrow nasal opening with lipping and a tiny spine at its lower border.

I took cranial measurements and ran the metrics through Fordisc 3.1. The program agreed with my assessment.

Ancestry: Caucasoid/White.

Simplistic view of race. I get it. But I don’t go into the complexities of ancestral origins, gene flow, and population boundaries with cops. Most just want to know how a vic or perp would be viewed by other people.

I assessed the state of closure of the sutures, the squiggly lines at which the individual cranial bones meet. The amount of arthritis in the mandibular joint. The condition of the teeth. Was in agreement with Leshner’s estimate.

Age: Thirty-five to forty-five years.

I double-checked everything on the X-rays. Saw no surprises. Was pleased that Henry was working with good parameters.

I scanned for anomalies, scars, lesions, deformities, and evidence of disease and unhealed trauma. Saw nothing.

My stomach growled loud enough to be heard in Taiwan.

I glanced at the wall clock.

One-forty.

I set aside the clipboard, cleaned up, and returned to my office. Pulling a lunch bag from my purse, I laid a soggy tuna sandwich and dispirited clump of grapes on my blotter.

I craved a Diet Coke but resisted. I was trying to cut back on caffeine. On whatever it was that made the stuff capable of dissolving an iron nail in four days, a tooth in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Or were those urban myths?

Note to self: Fact-check tales of Coke’s corrosiveness at Snopes.com.

While eating the sandwich, I looked up plumbers on the internet. Friendly Dale’s Plumbing Service got five stars. I dialed.

Friendly Dale said he could help me the following week. I wondered if, in the meantime, he’d help with my water bill. Didn’t ask.

The grapes were at least half a decade past their prime. And warm from the hours spent cuddling the sandwich. But I was still hungry.

I popped the greenest of the lot into my mouth. It was mushy and somewhat flavorless. I tried another, idly gazing at the survivors remaining in the bunch.

Snap!

An idea sent me upright in my chair. Plucking another grape, I sliced through the skin with my thumbnail and observed the pulp.