Free Twisted by Laura Griffin Page B

haven’t.”
    “Well, we’re not quite as well-staffed as the Smithsonian. It’s just me and a handful of grad students.” She tossed her jacket over a chair and grabbed a lab coat from a hook on the wall. “But wait till you see our lab.”
    They followed her through the desks to yet another door, and again she did the palm-print thing. Mark had to admit he was impressed with the security here. The guard downstairs had wanted to see two forms of ID in exchange for their visitors’ badges, and those were only valid for two hours.
    “Here we are.” She stepped into what looked like an autopsy suite, complete with stainless steel tables. Sinks and hoses lined the far wall. He noted the fume hood and the hanging scales, as well as a stove with a giant metal pot that brought back memories of his grandparents’ farm. He didn’t want to think about what it was used for.
    “I got the call this morning.” Kelsey went to the sink and washed up as though scrubbing in for surgery. Then she donned some latex gloves and handed pairs to Allison and Mark.
    “Who found the bones?” Mark asked.
    “Hunters. Actually, the find occurred last winter. But until now, we haven’t had an ID. Through here.” Sheled them into an adjacent room, only this one was narrow and lined with drawers, hundreds of them, from the floor up to Mark’s shoulder. Kelsey strode about halfway down the row and pulled one open. Mark watched Allison’s body stiffen as she peered down at the drawer.
    “Is this . . . all?” she asked Kelsey.
    “These remains were scavenged, unfortunately. They conducted a full-day search, but it was pretty hopeless and we were lucky to get the skull and femur. The recovery site is right beside a river in Evans County, so I’m guessing many of the bones were swept away in that flood two summers ago.”
    Mark tensed. Two years then, at least. How many victims had he missed while he’d been distracted with other cases? People sometimes asked him why he took on such an impossible caseload. This was the reason. For every case he helped close, there were countless more where someone was out there destroying people’s lives with impunity. Too many crimes and not enough crime fighters. There would never be enough.
    “The hunters found the femur first and called the sheriff,” Kelsey said, “and he in turn called me to see if it was human.”
    Mark looked at her. “You went out there yourself?”
    “Not at first. You wouldn’t believe how many of those calls I get, especially with a long bone like this. Often it’s just a cow or a deer. Or in the case of a smaller bone, sometimes people think they’ve found a baby on their property, when in fact it’s an adult raccoon. We have a reference collection for comparison—animals native to Texas. But in this case, I knew it was human as soon as I saw the photo.”
    “How can you tell from a picture?” Allison asked.
    “Trained eye,” she said. “I could see right off this was a human femur, left side. And I confirmed that through microscopic examination.”
    “ Left side?” Allison sounded doubtful.
    “The shape tells you.” She ran her gloved hand over the ball-shaped end of the bone. “This end fits into the pelvis. Then the shaft angles slightly inward to the knee.” Kelsey smiled faintly. “In grad school one of my professors used to fill a big brown grocery sack with human bones. We had to blindfold ourselves and identify every single one by touch.”
    “How old are these remains?” Mark asked.
    “It’s not an exact science. Based on the bleaching, the drying, the way they were discovered, I put the PMI—postmortem interval—at two to five years.”
    “Why five?” Allison asked.
    “That’s where the skull comes in.” She put the femur down and picked up the skull. “This is called the cranium, to be precise, because it’s missing the mandible.”
    “Not a lot to work with,” Allison said.
    “Actually, for such a limited recovery, this is