Dead Guilty

face,’’ said Diane. ‘‘And you’ll have to pay attention to other details too. Sometimes knowing things like the person walked with a pronounced limp might give you a hint Fred’s and Ethel’s familiarize yourself about how to portray a facial expression. Or if a toxi cological report on a decayed victim comes back show ing a certain kind of thyroid medication, you might guess that the victim has a bug-eyed look that is a side effect of some of those medications. A big part of this work is intuitive.’’
Diane watched her look at the skull sitting on the platform.
‘‘I’ve seen how they do those skin-depth points to make a sculpture of a face. But I’ve never understood how they know what the nose looks like.’’
‘‘You can’t know the shape of the tip. However . . .’’ Diane took the skull and sat down at a desk, mo tioning Neva to draw up a chair. ‘‘The width of the nose is indicated by the size of the nasal opening. The bridge of the nose and the nasal spine—this sharp projection at the bottom of the nasal passage— determine the length of the nose. A large nose needs a strut to hold it up. That’s what the anterior nasal spine does. If you draw a line coming off the end of the nasal bone and one coming from the nasal spine, where the lines meet gives you an idea how long the nose was. The angle of each line can suggest the tilt of the nose.’’
Neva nodded. ‘‘That makes sense.’’
‘‘Another effect of a long nasal spine is upward angling of the skin between the upper lip and the nose. Notice what happens when I pull on the lower part of my nose.’’ Diane pulled the bottom of her nose forward, stretching the skin above the lip. ‘‘In a shorter nose, that part of the face is parallel to the plane of the face, but in a long nose it angles forward.’’
‘‘So this guy would have that characteristic,’’ said Neva.
‘‘I believe so. Look how far the tip of the nasal spine is from his maxilla—where his upper teeth are.’’
Neva nodded and reached out and touched the skull with her fingertips, along the spine and down the max illa. She stopped abruptly and drew her hand away. ‘‘This is one of the hanging victims, isn’t it? How did his bones get so clean?’’
‘‘Yes, he is one of the victims. The diener at the morgue cleans the bones after we take all the samples we need from the flesh.’’
‘‘What a job—I’d hate to have to do that.’’
‘‘He seems to enjoy it. Having the proper equip ment helps.’’
Neva laughed nervously. ‘‘But it has to be a mess.’’
‘‘Not a lot messier than dealing with his clothes— and you had to do that.’’
‘‘That’s true. Thank God for latex gloves.’’
‘‘And Febreze,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Oh, God, yes. When we got out of the woods, I had to spray myself down good with Febreze to kill the odor. You’d think the woods would be well ventilated.’’
‘‘Another feature that is a consequence of a large nasal spine like this one is nostrils that appear arched. That shape exposes a larger-than-normal portion of the inside of the nose—the surface of the septum.’’
‘‘Yeah, I’ve seen that in people.’’
Diane touched a point on the bridge of the nose directly between the eyes. ‘‘This is the nasion. It’s a craniometric point. Here just below the opening of the nose is the nasospinale. For physical anthropologists, the length of the nose is measured between these two points. However, the relative position of the bones as they are situated in the face determines how we per ceive the length of the nose.’’
Neva furrowed her brows, looking hard at the skull as Diane continued.
‘‘See how the bridge of the nose stands away from the face, forming a straight line from the forehead to the nose? It’s different from, say, mine.’’ Diane rubbed her finger across the nasal bone of the skull and then touched her own.
‘‘His is kind of like those Roman statues.’’
‘‘Exactly. That would make the nose look longer. In this kind of nose there is a perception that the nose is longer than it actually is because your eye sees the nose as starting at the forehead, rather than where the nose actually starts.’’
‘‘Okay, I see. What about people with a bump on their nose, like the mummy? What would the bone look like?’’
‘‘The nose is supported by bone and cartilage. You see the bone here in Green Doe’s skull, but the carti lage was destroyed by the