anthropologist anymore? What happened in South America?”
Diane stopped and looked into Frank’s blue-green eyes. “Just one mass grave too many.”
Chapter 2
Diane walked with Frank to pick up his briefcase and led him to her office off a corridor to the right of the museum entrance. She moved a stack of books from a chair, pulled it up to her desk and motioned for Frank to sit down. She tore off a piece of butcher paper from a roll standing in the corner beside a tall oak bookcase and spread it on her desktop. “I’ve been back in town three months.”
“I just found out last week. I saw Andie in the grocery store and she told me. I’ve been on a big computer fraud case for a couple of months and staying in Atlanta, shuttling back and forth to New York. Why didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t know you knew Andie.”
“We met a few months ago in a karaoke bar.”
“Karaoke? There is so much about you that I don’t know.”
“I know, boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”
Diane held out her hand for the bone, half dreading to touch it. “If the parents want to know if it’s their daughter, they might be able to have a DNA test run.” Though when she saw the bone, she doubted that there would be any DNA strands left.
Frank shook his head. “She was adopted.”
Adopted. Diane was unsure if she could go on with the examination. She fingered the bone a moment through the plastic bag before taking it out.
“Okay-This is a right clavicle, a collarbone. Been gnawed by rats. See these parallel teeth marks?”
“Rats. Does that mean anything?”
“Just means the body was where animals could get to it. You don’t happen to have X rays of the girl’s shoulder, do you?”
“No. But I have these.” He handed her a large tan envelope.
Diane opened the envelope and removed several photographs of the missing girl and flipped through them. One was of her at the beach with her family. Most were portraits. Diane looked at Frank. “Even you know this isn’t a bone from her head. Why the head shots?”
“These are what her parents gave me.” He shrugged. “They’re all I have.”
Diane selected an 8-by-10 studio photograph of the girl wearing a drape, showing a bare, slender neck and shoulders. She turned it over and looked at the back of the photograph, hoping there was a date or an age. It was blank. “How recent is this photo? Do you know?”
“I believe her mother said that one was taken three or four months ago.”
“How old is she?”
“Sixteen. Her name’s-”
Diane cut off his words. “I don’t want to know her name. How tall is she?”
“Five-four or five-five.”
Diane raised her eyes from the picture to Frank. “Exactly how tall is she?”
He took a notebook from his briefcase and flipped through a few pages, stopping to read his notes. “Five-five and a half,” he said.
Diane took calipers from her drawer and measured the length and breadth of the girl’s face and scribbled numbers on the butcher paper. Knowing the measurements of the image in the photograph and the girl’s actual height, and knowing that bones usually have a standard ratio to each other, she could make a reasonable guess as to what percent smaller the photograph was, compared to the girl herself.
She made three pencil points along the girl’s right collarbone in the picture and measured the distance between each point. “I don’t suppose you know if this is a mirror image of the girl or not?” she asked.
“What?”
“Sometimes when the photographer develops the film he-oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter that much. I don’t even know why I’m doing this.”
“To stop me from asking you questions about why you abandoned your career.”
Diane picked up the bone and turned it over in her hand, ignoring his prodding. “I don’t believe it belongs to her. There’s a good possibility it’s male.”
Frank raised his eyebrows.
“Males have broader shoulders than females. Their clavicles are longer. You guys are also more muscular than us girls. Your collarbones are going to be more robust. The girl in these photographs is relatively small and delicate.”
Diane measured the bone and compared it with the math-altered measurements she made from the photograph. She shook her head. “It’s not a match. Not even close. This bone is much bigger than hers would be.”
Frank leaned forward. “She would be larger than the photograph.”
Diane stared at him for a long moment. “Frank, I took that into consideration.”
“Well, I’ve never seen you work. If I knew how to do this, I would have done it myself.”
The way he grinned, she didn’t know if he was kidding her or not. She shook her head and gave him a lopsided smile, then turned back to the analysis.
“The distal end is broken. It happened antemortem or perimortem and would have been very painful.”
Frank frowned. “What would make a break like that?”
She shook her head. “A fall, like from a horse. Hit with something big like a club. Hit by a truck-any number of things.”
Diane laid a piece of typing paper on her desk and searched in her drawer until she found a long pair of tweezers. Holding the bone under the desk lamp, she pulled a gossamer wad from the small cavity in the shaft.
“What?” asked Frank, leaning forward.
“Spiderweb.”
She put the web in a small wax envelope similar to ones that stamp collectors use. She gently tapped the bone. Tiny dark specks fell from the hollow of the bone to the paper. She examined the detritus with a hand lens. Frank stood and leaned on the desk. The hair on the tops of their heads touched. Diane raised her head and looked directly into his eyes, which were so close to hers she thought she could probably feel the flutter of his eyelashes.
“Bug parts,” she said.
“Bug parts? Is this important?”
“It is, indeed. It tells us that during warm weather when these creatures are up and about, the bone was bare and open for them to take up residence.”
“Died during the warm months, then?”
“Perhaps.”
“How long ago? Can you tell?”
Diane rubbed the tips of her fingers along the shaft of the bone. She was relieved that it was not from the adopted daughter of Frank’s friends. “I’d say this bone hasn’t seen flesh for several years. How long have the girl and her boyfriend been missing?”
“A couple of months.”
“Does anyone know where the boyfriend is?”
Frank shrugged.
“Do you see the roughening of the bone here and here?” Diane touched two areas on the bone.
“Yes.”
“Those are where the neck and shoulder muscles were attached.”
