scalloped gouges. The ratty fissures appeared in random groupings.
“What could’ve done this?” Her voice had sunk to a whisper.
“I think I may know. Do you see traces of metal deposit?”
“Yes. Is this something that happened postmortem? It almost looks like some kind of animal was chewing on them.”
“I’d have to say no,” Bersei told her. “You’ll notice those marks only appear on the anterior fascia. Teeth would’ve left marks on both sides, not to mention that most scavengers would have run off with the bone before gnawing on it and wouldn’t have left us a complete skeleton.”
“So what do you think did this?” Charlotte straightened.
“Let me put it this way.” He peered over the flip-down telescoping lenses. “If the bones look this bad, the muscle and skin that covered them must have looked far worse.... Probably shredded.” Holding her gaze, he drew a breath then said, “Looks to me like this man was flayed.”
“You mean whipped?”
He nodded slowly. “That’s right. Those markings are from a barbed whip.”
“Poor guy.” The thought of such violence hit her in the gut.
“Let’s keep going.” Bersei bent down and began working on the upper segments of lumbar vertebrae.
Charlotte leaned over and started rotating the lower vertebrae of the spine while scrutinizing every bone and cushion of disc material. “Everything looks good here.”
“Agreed.” Bersei glanced at the compact structure of the pelvic bones that provided definitive clues relating to gender. “And you were right about the gender. Definitely male.” He ran his fingers along the contours of bone where the genitalia would be. “The sciatic notch is narrow, the preauricular area’s got no indentations and flattens.”
“No babies coming out through there. No infants left motherless, at least.”
So far Giovanni Bersei was pleased. Determining gender from skeletal remains was never easy as the most obvious gender-specific traits occurred in the soft tissues, not the bones. Depending on a variety of factors, from diet and lifestyle, to the physical stress of the subject’s occupation, the female human skeleton could easily morph its soft tissue in ways that conditioned the skeletal frame to appear almost identical to its male counterpart. Increased muscle mass would be an obvious equalizer, demanding thicker bones to support them, especially in areas where ligaments would attach. But the pelvis’s birthing canal was fairly discernable in most female skeletons.
“So—arms or legs?” he inquired.
“Arms first.”
They shifted along the skeleton, resuming a minute analysis of the long bones, starting with the humerus and working down to the paired set of each arm’s lower half—the ulna and radius.
Something caught her eye and she moved even closer to sharpen the lenses’ resolution. There was significant damage to the inner surfaces of the bones joining above the wrist. “What’s this? Looks like they went through a grinder.”
“It’s on this side too. The damage is contained to just above the wrist,” Bersei confirmed. “Do you see oxidation, like long streaks?”
“Yeah, could be metallic residue. Maybe hematite.” She saw something else. “Hang on.” She repositioned the lens. “Fibers have been lodged in the bone. Your side?”
“Yes. Get a sample of that. Looks like wood.”
Charlotte went into the tool drawer, removed a pair of tweezers and a small plastic vial, and proceeded to pluck away the fibers from the bone.
Meanwhile, Bersei was already moving down near the skeleton’s feet. He bent over to get a better look at something there.
“What do you see?” she asked, standing and setting down the vial and tweezers.
He waved her closer. “Come take a look.”
Training her lenses on the area just below the shin, the paired set of fibula and tibia looked healthy. But nestled in the upper notches of each foot were deep, gritty patches scooped into the bones. Two bones in the left foot had been fractured.
“Look at the damage between the second and third metatarsals,” Bersei noted. “It’s similar to the arms.”
“Same rust-colored streaking,” Hennesey added. “Definitely came from some kind of impaled metal.”
“Judging from the fractures in the second metatarsal on the left foot, it was a nail. Do you see where the point hit the bone and split it?”
Hennesey saw a diamond-shaped indentation stamped in the fissure’s midpoint and detected more wood splinters. “Unbelievable. Looks like the nail missed the first time.” Thinking that one human could inflict this kind of damage on another nauseated her. What kind of animal could be capable of such cruelty?
“Most likely because the feet were nailed on top of one another,” Dr. Bersei stated flatly. He noticed another oddity in the area of the knees and positioned himself for a better view.
“What do you see?”
“Look at this.”
When Charlotte focused on the knee joint, the damage was immediately apparent. Just when she thought it couldn’t get worse. “Oh, God.”
