Carved in Bone

chemical and physical changes that could destroy or distort the print. And if it didn’t corrode, the gack—adipocere, we lowly criminalists call it—will have either absorbed or smeared any prints that might have been there once upon a time.”
    I nodded glumly. “So what you’re saying is…”
    “…not a snowball’s chance.” I’d pretty much expected him to say something like that—he was a criminalist, after all, not a wizard—but until he actually said it, I’d held out some hope. “But still, let’s see what we can see.”
    He laid the bag on a lab table and donned a pair of latex gloves, then slid the ziplock open and extricated the waxy tag. After studying it awhile, he leaned toward a tray of tools and selected a pair of tongs, then rummaged under a counter and hauled up a small torch, the sort a chef might use to caramelize the sugar atop a dish of crème brûlée. Holding the tag by the slightly curved end—where the chain once threaded through—he began playing the torch gently over the adipocere. As it began to melt, the reek of decomp rapidly replaced the acrid fumes of superglue. “Dang, Bill, you might’ve warned me. Switch on that fan, will you?”
    I reached for the switch he’d nodded toward as he moved the fragrant object under an exhaust hood. Then I brought over some paper towels, which I folded and positioned underneath to catch the foul fluid beginning to drip from the lower end.
    “Art?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Couldn’t you have just put it in an autoclave, wrapped in some paper towels?”
    “Sure. But where’s the fun in that? It’s not every guy who gets to play with fire on the job.”
    “Are you never going to grow up?”
    “I sure hope not. My childlike immaturity’s the only thing standing between me and a major midlife crisis.”
    Art extinguished the torch and set it down, then withdrew the rectangle from under the hood. It was discolored and slightly bent, but it was a dog tag, all right, its stamped-in lettering still crisp. Art moved to a lab table with an illuminated magnifying glass, just like the one in my decomp room, and studied both sides. “Well, shoot.”
    “What?”
    “As usual, I was right. Unfortunately, in this case. Sometimes fingerprint oils will etch metals, so even after the print itself is gone, there’s still an image of it left behind. Not here, though—this tag really is corrosionproof. Wish they made cars out of this stuff.”
    “So there’s nothing there you can work with?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that. We’ve got somebody’s name, rank, and serial number here, which might—just possibly—be considered a clue. It’s not your corpse’s name, unless she was called ‘Thomas,’ but—”
    “Wait. Did you say Thomas ? First name or last?”
    “First.”
    “Here, let me see.” I scanned the tag, half-expecting to read the last name Kitchings —and feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment when I didn’t. That would have been straight out of the Twilight Zone. Even the coincidence of the first names seemed odd, somehow: a backwoods sheriff named Tom finds a corpse wearing the dog tags of another guy named Tom. I pointed it out to Art—who had already noticed it on his own, of course. “You think there’s any connection?”
    “With the sheriff?” Art shrugged. “Still, we know this is somebody who was connected to her somehow, and he’ll have a pretty good paper trail, at least while he was in Uncle Sam’s army.” It wasn’t the dramatic revelation I’d been hoping for, but it was a start. “I’ve got a old pal in Army Records,” Art said. “Want me to see what he can find out for us?”
    “Sure. Thanks. You need to hang onto the tag?”
    “Naw, just get the guy at the front desk to make me a big photocopy on your way out. You keep it with the rest of the evidence. I’d hate to have Da Grease come after me for evidence tampering in a case that’s completely outside my jurisdiction.”
    “So I shouldn’t tell him how you tried to destroy this thing with a blowtorch.”
    “If he gets wind of it, send him over. I’ll demonstrate my torch technique on his testicles.”
    “You really could have kept that little fantasy all to yourself.”
    “Hey, I’m a generous guy. I like to share.”
    “I’ll remember that. Thanks for the warning. And thanks for the help.”
    “Anytime.”
    As I left, I glanced back just in time to see Art relight the torch. I paused to watch him. First he eased