last set of remains they examined brought them close to me.
“Odd,” he said as he stood.
That softly spoken word focused the young woman’s attention—and mine—on him. He spoke to her as a teacher would to a student, and I wondered if that didn’t define their relationship.
“Consider the numbers you’ve recorded and what we’ve seen,” he said. “Skulls with relatively large external occipital protuberances. Long bones that are, overall, quite large and robust. Femoral shaft circumferences consistently exceeding eighty millimeters. Every femoral head we’ve measured is well over forty-five millimeters. What does that tell you?”
It certainly told me nothing.
The young woman seemed stumped, too. She glanced down at her clipboard as if the answer was there.
“No, don’t look at your notes,” her older colleague snapped. “Look around you. And think!”
Apparently unoffended by—or simply used to—his tone, she took a little time to work it out. The tall man stood quietly, not looking nearly as impatient as he had sounded, a slight smile playing across his features as he watched her.
Pride, I thought. And maybe a little affection.
Abruptly, the young woman lifted her head.
“Well?” he said, soliciting her opinion.
When she spoke, she sounded awestruck.
“Males,” she said. “All of these victims are men.”
I waited to shake my head until I had moved past the teacher and student. And in my mind, I scolded them for jumping to conclusions. What you have now might be all male, but the ground search is still in its earliest stages. Maybe the remains you’ve examined so far belong only to men, but one victim is definitely a woman, I thought. Which means the continuing search will probably turn up at least a few more female victims. And more victims who are buried along the ravine, not in it.
In the time it took me to walk completely around the perimeter, three more numbered pushpins were added to the map and three more plastic sheets were filled with soil-encrusted remains.
Even I could see they were male.
Chapter 17
I went home before dusk.
There was no point in staying and watching the makeshift morgue expand one tarp at a time when there was nothing I could do there. Unlike the others at the scene, I had a town to take care of. No matter that I’d already had a grueling day and would have preferred to spend the evening sitting on the back porch and pitching balls to my dogs. It was Friday and, within a few hours, the action at the bars on Dunn Street would be in full swing. It was my job to make sure nothing swung too far out of control.
But first, I needed a shower, clean clothes and maybe a decent meal. One involving fresh vegetables and protein. After that, I figured, I’d be pretty much ready for whatever life threw at me.
Before leaving my SUV I took my holstered gun and the inhaler from my glove compartment. Temporarily, I hitched my gun belt around my waist and tucked the evidence bag into my pocket. Then I crossed the yard to the kennel area, spent a moment fiddling with the latch on Possum’s dog-food bin, and scooped out a heaping portion of kibbles as he bounced and barked with anticipation.
“Sorry, bud,” I said as I dumped the food into his dish. “No playtime tonight.”
Whatever canine disappointment Possum might have felt was lost in tail-wagging enthusiasm over his food. He didn’t even notice when I let Highball out of his kennel and walked in the direction of the house. Highball followed me across the yard, wagging his tail happily as I detoured briefly to my garden—a quartet of staked tomato plants that flourished on heat, humidity and neglect. After a quick inspection convinced Highball that the ripe tomato I pulled from the vine was not a tennis ball, he trotted to the back door and waited.
Briefly, I disrupted our routine by taking my boots off before letting us inside. Despite my trips back and forth through the stream—and though the smell I detected on my boots was now mostly in my imagination—a dog like Highball should have perceived the odor of decomposition still clinging to the rough leather. And he would have, even a few months earlier. But Highball simply sat patiently at my feet. Old and oblivious.
I felt a familiar twinge of sadness as I pushed open the door and watched him go directly to the empty food dish beside his cushion. He stared eagerly at it as I dumped my gun belt, car keys, the tomato