Dead Guilty

space to spare; she had sinks. It was a good room.
The cabinets held sliding and spreading her measuring calipers, bone instruments— board, stature charts, reference books, pencils, forms. On the counter space she had a series of microscopes. A metal frame work for mounting cameras hung from the ceiling above the tables. Standing mutely in the corner were Fred and Ethel, the male and female lab skeletons.
Her workroom had the essentials of a well-stocked anthropology lab. Much of her analysis with bones was manual labor—concentrated scrutiny, measuring and recording observations. It was a room she could work in even if the electricity went off, as often happened during the frequent springtime and summer thunder storms.
Despite her fondness for lowtech, Diane had some dazzling equipment in the vault, the secure, environ mentally controlled room where she stored skeletal remains. In it she also kept her computer and forensic software, and the 3-D facial reconstruction equipment consisting of a laser scanner for scanning skulls and another dedicated computer with software for recon structing a face from a skull.
She hadn’t invited the sheriff and Garnett to see the vault. Technically, it was part of the museum, and she didn’t want Garnett to think he had free reign in this lab.
Blue Doe’s skeleton was resting in a transparent plastic storage box on the table closest to the vault. The rope Diane had removed from Blue Doe at the autopsy sat in a separate box beside the remains. An other box containing the corresponding rope from the trees sat on top of it. A set. Bones and rope. Victim and weapon. Red and Green Doe were on separate tables, paired with their ropes.
Diane started with Blue by laying out her bones in anatomical position on the shiny metal table. This ini tial process Diane found relaxing. It was a chance to get an overview of the skeleton—how much was there, its basic condition, anything outstanding.
She rested the skull on a metal donut ring at the head of the table. She took the broken hyoid bone pieces from a small separate sack and lay them just below the skull. The hyoid is the only bone in the body that isn’t connected to another bone. In the body it anchors the muscles that are used in speech. It also supports the tongue and, like this one, is nearly always broken during strangulation.
She set the vertebrae in position—atlas, which holds the world, axis which rotates that world, and the spinal column (cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrum, coccyx) vertebra by vertebra. Followed by ribs, shoulders, pel vis, long bones, fingers and toes.
Blue had strong white bones. The internal frame work of her body was quite beautiful now that it was cleansed of rotting flesh.
Diane began her detailed examination with the pelvis—the main bones needed to reliably sex the indi vidual. Lynn Webber had already judged that Blue Doe was female, and Diane confirmed that the pelvis was indeed that of a female.
Blue had slim hips, almost androgynous—hardly wider than those of a male her age. Diane ran a thumb along the fine line representing the epiphyseal union of the iliac crest with the flared innominate bone. Fu sion occurs anywhere from fifteen to twenty-three years of age. The iliac crest was not completely fused.
She turned the pelvis in her hand and examined it for marks or distinguishing characteristics. There were none. No weapon marks, no sign of injury or disease. Nor was there sign Blue had ever been pregnant or given birth, though stress on the pelvis from pregnancy doesn’t always show. The rugged ridged look of the pubic symphysis conveyed an age of eighteen or nineteen—consistent with the epiphyseal fusion. So very young.
Diane measured the bone at all of its landmarks and recorded the information. So far she’d found nothing that would help her identify the remains, but she hadn’t really expected to in the pelvis.
After the pelvis, she went to the skull, picking it up gently. The mandible was detached now that the mus cle and ligaments were gone. She picked it up, held it in place and looked into the bone face. Blue had no cavities, a slight overbite, smooth high forehead, slight cheekbones, a pointed chin—and a nose job.
The nasal spine, the spike below the nasal opening that acts as the nose’s strut, had been modified. A portion of the bridge of the nose had been removed. Blue had undergone extensive rhinoplasty.
A satisfied feeling
tended down to her
identifying Blue