Faye Kellerman: Sacred and Profane

She frowned. “Is anything wrong?”

“Why don’t you tell Dr. Hennon I’m here and you can call me when she’s ready to see me?”

She was still puzzled.

“She’s with a patient.”

“Just poke your head in, huh?”

The girl got up reluctantly and came back a moment later.

“She’ll see you in a minute, Sergeant,” she announced, relieved.

“Thank you.”

She slid back the partition and it slammed shut. End of conversation.

Decker sat down on an unyielding ebony cushion and squirmed uncomfortably. Sorting through the magazines on the table, he settled on Architectural Digest, skimming through pages of mansions he’d never be able to afford. He heard a door open, and glanced upward to see a woman at the reception desk. She had to be at least his age, he thought, maybe even a couple of years older, which would put her around forty-one or -two. Her face wasn’t anything to write home about, but her figure was tight-a good bust and a dynamite ass neatly packaged in designer jeans. She knocked loudly on the receptionist’s window, turned around, and flashed him a mouth full of ivories.

“Nice smile,” Decker said, returning her grin.

“It should be,” she said. “It cost me five g’s.”

“Well, you got your money’s worth.” He realized he was coming on to her inadvertently and returned his eyes to the magazine. But he could feel the heat of her gaze.

“What are you in here for?” she asked, pulling out a gold credit card.

“Business,” he said.

“Interested in a little pleasure?” she asked, lowering two inches of lash.

“I’m married,” Decker lied.

“So am I,” she responded. “I’m on number three and he’s unappreciative.” She puffed out her chest and gave him a full view. “He never notices my smile. And I do hate to drink alone.”

“I’m happily married,” he said.

“Yeah, aren’t all you guys with the roving eyes.” She signed the credit slip, threw the card into her purse, and snapped it shut. “Suit yourself,” she said, icily.

The receptionist slid open the glass panel.

“Dr. Hennon will see you now, Sergeant.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sergeant?” the toothy woman said. “You’re a military man?”

“Cop.”

“You don’t look like a cop.”

“No?”

“No. I would have said you were an architect or a producer.”

Decker looked down at his outdated suit and white shirt. His striped tie was loosened and his shoes were scuffed. Nothing about his appearance suggested money or sophistication.

“Then again,” the woman continued, “my second husband, Lionel, always said I was a good judge of lovers, but a lousy judge of character.”

Decker agreed with Lionel on both counts.

Dr. Hennon’s office was small but cheerful. Bright yellow walls full of posters with bold swatches of color. The room contained a cluttered desk, a corkboard full of notes and dental articles, and a Formica bridge table that held casts of teeth and jaws. Above the desk was a large, wall-mounted X-ray viewing box on which hung radiographs of teeth clipped to metal hangers.

To the left of the viewing box was a waist-up frame photograph of a man and a woman at sunset. A striking shot streaked with brilliant oranges and lavenders, the sun highlighting, almost bleaching out, the woman’s face. She appeared to be in her thirties, with milky green eyes, and a head full of metallic auburn waves. Her features were sharp and her face was long, ending in a strong, dimpled chin.

Decker took out a manila folder, opened it and began to scan for forensic reports on the two Jane Does. A moment later, the woman in the photo came in and offered him a delicate, manicured hand. He stood up and held out his own.

“Annie Hennon,” she said shaking his big, freckled hand.

“Pete Decker.”

“Thanks for coming down to my office, Pete.”

“No problem.”

“I appreciate it. Most cops don’t know that forensic odontology isn’t a full-time job. I look at skulls maybe a dozen times a year-unless there’s a disaster. We haven’t had too many of those lately, thank God. If I have to take a day off from the office to meet you at the morgue, I lose a great deal of income.”

“It’s a pleasure to be on the good side of town for a change,” he said. “That’s a nice picture of you.”

“Better than the real thing, huh?”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

She laughed. “I’m just terrible. Thanks. It is a nice picture. That’s my brother and me. Mom took the picture. Mom’s an okay photographer.”

She pulled up a chair, and they both sat down.

“Actually, my brother is the one who got me interested in forensic odontology,” she said. “Him and Heinz.”

“Heinz?”

“Heinz Buchholz. A little white-haired gnome of a man who made his mark in history by identifying Hitler’s jaw. When I went to dental school, he was sixty-five, maybe seventy, and he used to roam the labs asking us students if his denture set-up would pass the state licensing examination. Can you imagine that? An important man like him decked with honors, a pioneer in forensic dentistry, and he was reduced to worrying about passing the state board.”

She shook her head and turned to Decker.

“You made quite an impression on Babs Terkel,” she said, dryly.

“Pardon?”

“My last patient. The bleached blond with the big boobs. She came back to my office girl and started pumping her about you.”

“I thought she had a nice smile.”

Hennon kissed her fingertips and spread them outward.

“My six-to-eleven porcelain fused to gold. Didn’t I do a great job?”

“I’ll say. She has a great set of teeth.”

“Now she does,” the dentist said emphatically. “You should have seen her when she walked through my door. Bucky Beaver.” She waved her hand in the air. “Babs is all right-narcissistic as hell, but she’s reliable. Keeps her appointments and pays her bills. I wish I had a thousand of those.”

She walked out of the room and came back carrying two cups of black coffee.

“You want some sugar? I’m all out of cream.”

“Black’s fine,” he said.

She noticed the forensic report.

“Been to the morgue, huh? The county one, that is, not the one out there.” She jerked her head toward the waiting room. “My partner’s wife and her decorator spent six months and ten thousand dollars redoing it to achieve the look of death. No accounting for taste. Anyway, what does the anthropologist say?”

“The report came in this morning. Doesn’t tell me too much, although I realize there’s not a hell of a lot to go on.”

“What did he come up with?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

“From the bone structure, he surmises that they were both female, young-in their late teens or early twenties at most-and Caucasian. Jane Doe One looked to be about five-four, five-five and small-boned. She had reached ninety-five percent of her postpuberty growth. Number Two was taller, maybe five eight, and had a large frame. She’d stopped growing according to the bone plates. The bodies weren’t lying in the mountains as long as I would have thought. From the skin fragments he said they probably were dumped about three months ago. They were burnt either alive or shortly after they were shot, because their fists had curled from muscle contraction due to the heat, which would only happen if there was still some muscle tone prior to rigor mortis. He also found a few partial fingerprints lodged in the inner folds of the finger joints, but that doesn’t help unless the girls had been printed. So far, I’ve struck out with that. There’s no record of their prints in our computer. They were shot with the same.38 caliber weapon-the bone rills match-and his guess is that the firearm was a Colt.”