Unless one pointed out that there were plenty of good artists on the East Coast, so why the hell fly her all the way from the West when she was on vacation?
They drove her to the main building at the FBI Academy, had her check in her gun as was required with every agent, then escorted her to the basement, just down the hall from her own office. A sign on the door, one that hadn’t been there when she’d left for San Francisco, read: “Absolutely No Admittance.” Harcourt unlocked the door, allowing her to enter. Griffin stepped in behind her, placed his briefcase at his feet as she stopped before the only table in the center of the room where a skull sat, seemingly watching her.
“Something wrong?” Griffin asked, when she didn’t move for several seconds.
She shook her head, not willing to discuss her thoughts about working with the dead. In typical cases, when she was called, it was usually because the investigators had exhausted all leads in identifying the victim. She was often the victim’s last hope, the last voice. That was not something one explained easily—not without sounding like some narcissistic nutcase. For the obvious reasons, she kept her beliefs to herself. She’d worked from skulls before, but her instincts told her that all was not as it seemed. In fact these same instincts had been telling her so from the moment she stepped off the plane in San Francisco, then was flown back via special FBI transport.
Whatever was going on, she had no idea, and she eyed the room. There was only one chair. A coffeepot had been set up, and someone had thought to bring a box of granola bars. Other than that, the room was empty. If not for the skull, and the absence of a second chair, the place could double for a damned interrogation room, and she turned toward the men to ask what the hell was going on, but hesitated when Harcourt handed the keys to Mr. Federal, then made some excuse about being late for an appointment before rushing off.
Sydney set her overnight bag near the door, then walked to the table, depositing her briefcase at its base, examining the evidence before her. The skull had been boiled clean, a standard procedure that in her mind always seemed to depersonalize the victim, by removing the last vestiges of his or her being. What was left, the empty orbs and corporeal grin, were never recognizable as who the person had been—though often in far better shape than how that person had been found. Ever since she’d been trained in forensic art, she’d never looked at a skull or skeleton the same. Before, she’d seen them as bones, simply bones minus the flesh, never imagining who they were or what they’d been thinking. Not so anymore.
She pulled on a pair of latex gloves from a box on the table, picked up the skull, examined it. There were no obvious signs of trauma to the head. “I thought you’d lined up a forensic anthropologist,” she said, turning the skull about in her hands. “Dr. Gilbert.”
“We have her notes and measurements,” Griffin replied, handing over several sheets of paper, handwritten. “We just need you to do the drawing.”
“We usually work in concert.”
“In this case, we, uh, made other arrangements.”
She glanced at the papers he gave her, saw the notations in pencil, some of them haphazard, as though these were the notes from a report that had yet to be completed. “These are Natasha’s notes?”
“She was the forensic anthropologist you recommended.”
It took a moment for his answer to register. Tasha Gilbert was neat, fastidious. “Are you sure you have the right report? This isn’t like her, never mind she’d want to be here.”
“Like I said, we had to make other arrangements. Time is of the essence, so how soon can you have a drawing done?”
“Hard to say until I know what I have to work with.” She looked over Tasha’s notations, the measurements of skin and flesh thickness, based on height, weight, race and approximate age of the victim, all things that a forensic anthropologist would relay to Sydney through the examination of the skeleton or remains, helping her to proceed in re-creating the victim’s face. It was a complicated process, certainly not an exact science, but a science nonetheless. She flipped through the few pages, curious as to why Tasha, a perfectionist if there ever was one, would allow her rough draft report to