Beverly Connor - Dead Secret

There were no healed fractures on any of her bones. One curious characteristic Diane discovered when she was looking for evidence of right-or left-handedness-the beveling on her right glenoid fossa, the right shoulder socket of the scapula, was greater than on her left. This usually indicated that there had been more rotation in the right shoulder socket-a common sign of right-handedness. Greater beveling usually went hand in hand with larger muscle attachments on the dominant arm and shoulder. But Plymouth Doe’s left muscle attachments on her arm and shoulder were larger than her right. Her glenoid fossa said she was right-handed, but her muscle attachments said she was left-handed.

One occupation Diane had read about that could cause this was waitressing. Having to balance a heavy tray with the less-dominant hand left the dominant hand free. A right-handed waitress balanced a tray on her left hand. Had Plymouth Doe been a waitress in her relatively short life? She thought about the white apron found with her clothes.

Diane moistened the skull with the spray bottle and began taking the tedious measurements on the face just as Neva entered the lab with a folder tucked under her arm.

“I have some drawings of Quarry Doe-Jake Stanley’s partner in death,” she said. Quarry Doe had been dead in the water long enough for his face to become distorted. Diane wanted Neva try to make his face look alive to help identify him. “I also scanned Caver Doe’s skull,” Neva continued, “since he was sitting there right beside it. Remember that photo we found with Caver Doe? Even though it had been soaked in Caver Doe’s blood and fluids, David got me an image from it by using the computer and some of his fancy lights. It was a photograph of a girl, and I drew her picture too.”

“That photo wasn’t stolen?” she asked.

Neva looked a little embarrassed. “I had taken it from the evidence box and had it in the desk in the vault. That’s where I’ve been working on the drawings.”

“That’s a relief. I thought we had lost it in the burglary,” said Diane. She walked over to the table, where Neva laid out the drawings.

The modern body, Quarry Doe, had a seventies shag haircut. With some guys that cut had never quite gone out of style. To be so young-the ME estimated his age at twenty-five-his face had a rough edge to it. Quarry Doe was aging fast. He had thin lips, wide eyes, black hair and a crooked nose that was slightly pug.

Beside the drawing was an autopsy photograph of Quarry Doe’s back. It was covered with tattoos-tigers, snakes, knives, fangs, guns, roses, crosses, swastikas and more-filling every square inch. Some were well-done; others were crude.

“These are prison tattoos,” said Diane. “That will make it easy for the sheriff to identify him. Did you give Sheriff Canfield a copy of your drawing of his face?” Neva nodded. “Prison tattoos are forbidden, so having them is a sign of rebellion; the more you have, the more time you had to spend getting them, and the greater the risk of getting caught. It’s a kind of prestige to have a lot of them. Probably says something about our vic.”

Diane went to the next set of drawings. Neva had placed the last two portraits together-Caver Doe and the girl in his photograph-possibly his sweetheart? Caver Doe looked young. His bones told her that he was, but his portrait really showed his youthful, graceful face-quite a contrast to the face of Quarry Doe. The face of the woman from the photograph was equally pretty. Short wavy hair, bright eyes, full lips with corners turned into a hint of a smile. Her dress had a crocheted collar. There was something about her that looked vaguely familiar.

“These are good,” said Diane. “Poignant to put a face on our caver.”

Diane was pleased with the way Neva was able to draw faces from skulls. Diane had taught her what a fleshed-out face would look like given specific underlying bone structures. She’d shown her how to calculate skin depths on the face, how to use the size of the nasal opening to find out the length of the nose, how to define the eyes. Neva picked up forensic art quickly. Diane also showed Neva how to use the sophisticated scanning software to have the computer draw the face. The computer drawing wasn’t as life-like as Neva’s drawings, but combining Neva’s artistic ability and the computer’s scanning ability made the work a lot quicker.

“Yes, it is sad. His girlfriend too-I’m guessing it’s his girlfriend. I wonder what happened to her. She must not have known what became of him.”

“Probably not.”

“Unless she conspired to leave him in the cave,” said Neva.

Diane laughed. “You’ve been in crime too long. You’re getting a cynical, suspicious mind.”

“It does come with the territory, doesn’t it?”

“When I finish Caver Doe, we’ll do a newspaper article and run it with the drawings. Maybe there is someone around who will recognize them or remember them.”

Diane looked over at Plymouth Doe. “There’s another lost soul. When I’m finished with these measurements, you can take this skull to the vault and let the laser scan her features and start building a face. When you finish, put her skull in that tank sitting on the counter.” Diane looked at all the drawings again before walking back to Plymoth Doe’s bones. “Really nice work,” she told Neva. She sprayed them down again with water.

“It’s really interesting to listen to Korey tell how he’s going to preserve the stuff from the car,” said Neva. “Do you know he froze all the magazines in a little battery-powered freezer he had in the van at the site?”

Diane nodded. “That immediately stopped any destructive chemical or biological processes going on. In his lab he’s using a process called vacuum freeze-drying. He’ll put the frozen magazines in a chamber and pump the air out and form a vacuum-that will dry them at freezing temperatures. It’s a method that changes the ice directly into gas so it never goes through a liquid state. The magazines will be dry documents when it’s finished.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Sometime when we have some downtime-if we ever do-you might enjoy spending some time in the conservation lab. They do interesting work.” Diane measured and recorded all the craniometric points on Plymouth Doe’s skull as she and Neva talked. The laser would do the same, but Diane still liked to take the measurements herself-as with caving, she liked to get to know the bones.

“You know,” said Neva, “I like the older crimes better than the new ones.”

“Less blood and putrid flesh,” said Diane.

“Yeah. And the tragedy is farther away.”

“I know what you mean,” Diane agreed.

Neva gestured toward the skeleton. “How is Korey handling her clothes?”

“There are several methods for working with waterlogged fabric, but I think he’s going to use a process that impregnates the material with silicone oil. Jin’ll have to look for trace and blood before any processing is done. I think he and Korey have come up with an experiment to see how much these methods affect the ability to do blood analysis. I know Korey wants to go to the fabric store to get different kinds of textiles for the experiment. He and Jin are writing a paper together.”

Diane finished measuring the skull and began her examination of the other bones. She started by feeling along the ribs with her fingers, searching for nicks.

“I can see how that kind of information helps us,” said Neva. “But what are Korey and the museum going to get out of the experiments?”

Diane looked up from the skull. “For one thing, archaeologists also look for blood residue. Even after thousands of years, they can still find protein markers from different kinds of animals on arrowheads. Same thing with ancient textiles they run across. It would be good for them to know how preservation techniques affect blood or other kinds of stains that might be on artifacts.”