Dead Secret

do the job,” said David. “Like I know you didn’t hire me simply because I’m a friend.”
    “I know. It’s just . . . ” She shrugged.
    “Just what?”
    “Nothing. I need to get back to these bones.”
    “Jin and I are going down to the restaurant a little later for lunch; you hungry?”
    “Thanks. I’ve got some yogurt in the fridge in my museum office. I don’t feel like much more than that.”
    “Look, I’ll take you home tonight if you need to take any stronger medication. Is Frank coming over tonight?”
    “No. He’s still in Atlanta on a case.”
    David started out the door. “I’ll start tomorrow morning on Lymon. I know Garnett’s detectives are questioning Mike’s associates in Geology. They may have picked up on something. I’ll wheedle information out of them.”
    “Thanks, David.”
    “Sure.” He headed for the door, turned as if to say something, but hesitated. Finally he simply said, “I’ll let you know when I have something.”
    Diane focused her attention back to the bones lying on the metal table, forcing everything else out of her mind. She actually knew a lot about Caver Doe just by the things he had with him when he died. She just didn’t know who he was. Nor did she know why he wasn’t rescued, and the question nagged at her.
    She picked up the skull and traced her fingers over his frontal bone. Caver Doe had a gracile forehead, more so than when she saw him covered with dried flesh in the cave. If his frontal bone was all she had now Diane would have thought that he was a female. She picked up his mandible and fitted it to the skull and looked at his face. Straight on, it looked like a female skull. His chin had the roundness of a female’s. That was not so uncommon. Not every male had a prominent brow ridge or square jaw. But the placement of other markers—nuchal crests, the zygomatic process, the mastoid process—pointed to male.
    She ran a finger along his teeth, counting his dentition. The dental formula for an adult human was two, one, two, three. Two incisors, one canine, two premolars and three molars—the number of upper and lower teeth on one side, thirty-two in all. Caver Doe’s third molars, his wisdom teeth, had not yet erupted, which probably meant he was under twenty-five.
    His teeth were uneven—the incisors slightly turned and overlapping, the molars crowded. Had the wisdom teeth erupted, there would have been little room for them. Caver Doe had fourteen gold fillings.
    Diane set down the mandible, picked up her calipers and measured all the craniometric points on the face, recording them on her clipboard. Her stomach growled just as she put the skull back down on the doughnut ring. Her arm started to throb again.
    She put down her calipers. Yogurt wasn’t going to be enough. She called the museum’s restaurant and asked them to deliver a turkey sandwich, potato chips and Dr Pepper to her museum office. She took off her lab coat and went down to the first floor. The museum was filled with visitors and noise. She always found that satisfying. She stopped in front of the dinosaur room and watched a group of children having their pictures made by the brachiosaur. She smiled and continued down the length of the museum to her office. The restaurant had just delivered the sandwich to Andie when she arrived.
    “You doing okay, Dr. Fallon?” asked Andie.
    “Fine . . . a little sore.” Diane was getting a little tired of people asking if she was okay, but knew they were just being kind and concerned. She hoped she didn’t sound short when she answered. “I’m going to eat lunch in my office.”
    “I won’t put anyone through unless it’s an emergency.”
    “Thanks, Andie.” She carried the sack from the restaurant into her office lounge and set it down on the table. After putting on a CD of Native American music, she sat down to eat, listening to the peaceful sounds of flutes and drums. Better than drugs, she thought as the harmonic strains took her to a quiet place in her mind.

    The food and music had remarkable restorative powers. Diane felt much better after lunch. She went back to the lab, put on her white coat and resumed working on Caver Doe. She picked up each rib, examined and felt along the shaft for any nicks that might have been caused by a weapon. She gently squeezed the ends of the ribs toward each other to check for fractures. Nothing. Tomorrow she would put them under the dissecting microscope and examine them again.