me so quickly,” Quinn said as she stood next to Colin, looking down at the remains.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have much to share with you, hence the rapid turnaround time. There’s very little to go on.”
“Surely you must have learned something from the remains,” Quinn protested.
“Yes, but not nearly enough to build a picture of this person’s life and death. What we have here is an adult male. He could have been anywhere between mid-twenties to mid-thirties at the time of death. Carbon-14 dating indicates that he lived roughly two hundred to two hundred and fifty years ago, so the latter part of the eighteenth century. The ridges on his wrists and ankles would indicate that he worked with his hands and probably did a lot of walking. He’d broken the radius bone in his arm at some point, but it had healed cleanly, so it would have been years before his death, possibly when he was still in his teens. Given his height and the condition of his teeth, I’d say he enjoyed a plentiful diet. Mostly meat based. He was in reasonably good health before he died.”
“What? Is that it?” Quinn asked, gaping at him.
“I’m afraid so. I wasn’t able to extract any usable DNA. Having been buried without the benefit of a coffin and in soil that’s moist and rich in nutrients, the body would have decomposed quickly, all organic tissue and hair completely broken down within a year.”
“And the nails?”
“Rotted away.”
“But he has a mouthful of teeth,” Quinn persisted.
“Extracting DNA from a tooth is a time-consuming and costly procedure. Rhys was unable to authorize funding. Budget cuts.” Colin smiled at Quinn in a sympathetic manner. “I know it’s not much to work with.”
“What about the manner of his death?”
Colin shook his head. “I can’t say with any certainty what killed him. Most of the ribs are fractured and the pelvic bone is splintered. I think the damage was done postmortem, by the spreading roots, but I can’t be certain. The arms and legs are intact, as is the neck. There is something I found, but again, I don’t know if this happened before or after death.”
“Show me,” Quinn said.
Colin reached out a latex-clad hand and pointed to the left temple. “There’s a hairline fracture right here. Do you see it?”
Quinn leaned in and peered at the skull but couldn’t see what Colin was pointing to.
“Here,” Colin said, handing her a magnifying glass. “Look again.”
Quinn could see a tiny crack, the width of a hair. “You think this is significant?”
“It could be. A blow to the temple can lead to an intercranial hemorrhage, which can be fatal; however, I have no way to ascertain when the skull was fractured.”
“This doesn’t look like much,” Quinn said. “Would this really be enough to kill someone?”
“You don’t need to cave in someone’s skull to kill them, but I can’t confirm this was the cause of death. The skeleton is too badly damaged to allow for anything more than an educated guess.”
“Thanks, Colin,” Quinn said as she handed back the magnifying glass and accepted the nearly empty file folder from Colin. All his findings fit on one sheet of paper.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Colin said. “Let me know if you find anything that was buried with the body.”
“There was nothing. He must have been buried naked, which is odd.”
“Why do you say that?” Colin asked as he walked Quinn to the door.
“Historically, people were uncomfortable with nudity, especially in England. They bathed, made love, gave birth, and were examined by doctors while almost fully covered up. It’s only in films that you see characters in historical dramas disrobing without a second thought. Nudity was synonymous with sin, and shame. To bury someone naked would be a sign of disrespect, indifference, or even hatred. Whoever this person was, he hadn’t endeared himself to those who’d been left to bury him. No clothes, no proper grave, no marker.”
“It’s as if they’d wanted to erase him,” Colin said.
“Precisely. One day he was there, and then he wasn’t.”
“Well, that should tell you something, I suppose,” Colin said. “Not a pillar of the community, or a beloved husband or father. Or son. Someone who wouldn’t be missed.”
“Sometimes I think that’s the most tragic fate of all,” Quinn said, forcing a smile to her face when she spotted Shannon and the children at the end of the corridor, walking toward them. Mia had chocolate smudged on her cheek, and