Perry crossed to a double-tiered illuminator, flipped two switches, and tapped a film lying on the box’s horizontal surface. I joined her.
An object glowed white within a segment of flesh. Bean-sized, it looked like a cartoon whitecap.
“Shark tooth,” I said.
“Yeah. There are others.” A blue-lacquered nail jabbed two more films.
“You’re thinking death by shark attack?”
Perry waggled a hand.
Dead hearts don’t pump. Bleeding at a trauma site usually means the victim was alive when injured. No blood usually means the hit was taken postmortem.
“Could the absence of hemorrhage be explained by immersion in salt water?”
“Sure.”
“So the dismemberment could have resulted from postmortem scavenging.”
“I’ve seen it before.”
I scanned the films, each taken at a different angle. Like the knee, three other hunks of flesh contained portions of skeleton.
“That’s the pubic bone and a bit of ischium.” I indicated a plate showing part of the pelvic front.
“Good for sex?”
“Not tonight.”
“Hardy fucking har.”
I braced for an arm-punch. Didn’t come.
“The V-shaped subpubic angle, blocky pubic body, and broad ischio-pubic ramus suggest male.”
Perry nodded.
“That’s a bit of iliac crest.” I pointed to a section of the curving upper border of a left pelvic half. “It’s only partially fused to the iliac blade. Assuming male gender, to be on the safe side, I’d say you’re looking at an age of sixteen to twenty-four.”
“Sonovafrigginbitch.”
“That’s a portion of proximal femoral shaft, from just below the head and neck. Left, like the knee and pelvis.” I was pointing at a plate clipped to the light box’s vertical surface. My finger moved to the one beside it. “And that’s part of the left foot and ankle. Those are remnants of distal tibia, talus, and some smaller foot bones, I’d say the navicular and the third and second cuneiforms.”
“Can you get height from them?”
I considered. “No. I could do a statistical regression off measurements taken from the partial leg bones, but the range would be almost uselessly broad.”
“But you could say if the kid was very big or very small?”
“Yes. The muscle attachments suggest a robust build.”
“What about race?”
“No way. The skin appears pale, but that could be the result of postmortem bleaching or skin sloughing due to immersion in salt water.”
Human pigmentation is contained solely in the epidermis, the skin’s outer layer. Lose the epidermis, we all look Scandinavian, a fact often misinterpreted by those unaccustomed to seeing bodies recovered from water.
Perry knew that. I knew that she knew that. The answer was strictly reflex. My attention was focused on the remains.
Returning to the table, I examined each mass in turn. Then, “Where was this found?” I waved a hand over the grisly assemblage.
“Come on, I’ll loop you in.”
Degloving, Perry led me back up the corridor. We encountered only one person, an elderly Hawaiian with a bucket and mop. The man dropped his eyes when we passed. Perry did not acknowledge his presence.
The chief ME’s office looked like Danny Tandler’s on uppers. Files and papers occupied every horizontal surface—desktop, coffee table, chair seats, windowsill, file cabinets, floor. Books, magazines, and reprints teetered in stacks. Open journals lay with spines cracking under the weight of overlying issues.
The window was covered with cheap metal blinds. The walls were hung with photos of an impressively large black dog, probably a Lab. Other decorative touches included a hanging skeleton, a pair of conch shells, now repositories for rubber bands and paper clips, several ashtrays from Vegas, a fake fern, and a collection of plastic action figures whose getups and weapons meant nothing to me.
Perry gestured to the single uncluttered chair.
I sat.
Circling the desk, my host dropped into one of those winged-meshy things designed for NASA missions to Mars.
“Nice pooch,” I said. Actually, the dog looked scruffy and mean. But Southern ladies are bred to show interest in strangers. The mechanic, the receptionist, the dry-cleaning lady. Doesn’t matter. Dixie daughters exude warmth
