The Mystery Megapack
she knew what she was doing. The marshal sat on the edge of his chair. “What did you come up with?”
“I’m fairly certain the skeletons are Parker and Crawford.”
“Any way to be absolutely certain?” He turned his most charming smile on her.
“My students and I can continue gluing together additional bone fragments. Then I’ll invite you and the medical examiner to come to my office for a formal display of evidence.”
“You just go ahead and do that, Ma’am,” he said. “We’ll be available.”
* * * *
Good to her word, six months later, thanks to her efforts, Marshal Simmons was able to formally issue death certificates for Parker and Crawford. Only one small hitch: Colorado officials refused to believe it.
“If this don’t beat all!” Simmons rubbed his bristling mustache in annoyance.
“What’s wrong?” Bill asked.
“They’re keeping Parker on the FBI most wanted list.”
The marshal decided to go back to see Dr. Whitney. “I don’t like having our work here questioned, Sarah.” By this time, they were on a first-name basis.
“We can be very scientific in forensics proof.”
“Enough to satisfy doubting Federal law enforcement in Washington D.C.?”
She gave him a one-hundred watt smile that dazzled him.
“I believe so. Come with me.”
He followed her into her laboratory.
“Superimposing two video images by blending x-rays from two cameras, we’re able to reconstruct skeletal pieces over a medical x-ray of the bone taken when a person was alive and see how they match.” Dr. Whitney displayed a chiropractor’s x-ray of Parker’s first right rib, then over it, superimposed an image of the man’s right rib, taken from the burned shack. “Ossification, notches, areas of density all match. Now let’s check out the girl.”
Lori Crawford‘s dental x-rays matched the female jawbone taken from the shack. Sarah also found a white dot on Parker’s jaw which analysis confirmed to be lead.
“To use your police vernacular, he ate his gun.”
“What about the girl?”
“Shot through the heart,” she said.
“Well, I guess if the FBI wants to arrest Parker, we’ll tell them to come to your office.”
“That’s right. I’ll take Parker off my shelf and turn him in,” she said with a toothsome grin.
“Much obliged,” he said.
“You should be. We even put together the reptile bones for you and discovered it was a bearded dragon. They’re pretty popular as pets around here though I can’t understand why.”
“Bearded dragons are desert reptiles so they survive well, plus they’re outgoing, friendly little critters.”
“If you say so.” She gave him a dubious look.
“I’ll say so again over a steak dinner. I owe you at least that much.”
She blinded him with that killer Miss America smile. Well, at least something good had come out of this investigation, he conceded.
* * * *
Simmons should have been able to close the case, but something still didn’t sit right. Experience told him there was more to the crime. That whole business of finding a bearded dragon’s skeleton with the other remains kept bothering him. It somehow didn’t sit right. A fleeting memory nagged at him. Marshal Simmons did some further investigating, asking questions of the local people. Two days later, he’d come full circle.
“Mind if I come in?”
Dave Paton’s eyes opened wide but he stepped aside and let the Marshal enter the small ranch house. “Some reason you’re here today, Marshal?”
“Well, Dave, I got to thinking how strange it was that this criminal chose to commit suicide in your field in your shack.
“I mean it isn’t on the main road. How would a stranger even know it was here? Didn’t sit right. So I did some more checking. Some of the older folks remember your family. You had a younger brother name of Greg Paton, didn’t you? He was a real hell raiser. Got into some trouble and left for parts unknown as I recall.”
When the rancher didn’t reply, the marshal gave him a hard look. “I seem to remember something else about your brother. Didn’t he have a strange nickname? What was it people called him? Dragon? Now why was that, I wonder?”
The rancher shook his head.
“He had a tattoo on his arm of a dragon, didn’t he? Had the work done locally. And didn’t he keep some bearded dragons as pets?”
“He could have.” Paton ripped at a dirty thumb nail.
“Mighty odd coincidence that Glen Parker had the same initials as your
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