Flash and Bones - Kathy Reichs [18]
“Any hit on the prints?”
“No. The landfill guy’s not in any system.”
I told Larabee about my conversations with Wayne Gamble and Skinny Slidell. “I suppose the John Doe could be Cale Lovette.” I didn’t really believe it.
“Your age estimate looks pretty solid. At least dentally, the landfill guy looks older than twenty-four. How about you get Lovette’s profile, maybe a photo, then check the John Doe’s skeletal markers, try to narrow the range?”
“Today?”
“Galimore phoned twice this morning. The folks at the Speedway are pissing their shorts for resolution on this.”
My eyes met Birdie’s. The cat was giving me an accusatory look. I think.
“Is Joe working this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there shortly.” Resisting the impulse to sigh theatrically.
“You’re a trouper.”
I checked my list of incoming calls, scrolled down, hit dial. I’d been on the phone so long, the handset was now the same temperature as my liver.
Wayne Gamble answered after two rings. Background noise told me he was still at the track.
“Can you describe Cale Lovette?” I asked.
“Dirtbag.”
“His physical appearance.”
“Brown hair, brown eyes, wiry, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds.”
“How tall?”
“Five-six or -seven. Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I just need descriptors.”
“I saw the little snake who’s been tailing me. First at the hauler, then by Sandy’s trailer. Whenever I spot him, he cuts into the crowd.”
“Mr. Gamble, I—”
“Next time I’ll twist his balls until he tells me what the hell’s going on.”
“Thank you for the information.”
Driving to the MCME, I pondered Larabee’s closing “attagirl.” Wondered. Was “trouper” a promotion or demotion from “champ”?
When I arrived, Larabee had left a photocopied picture on my desk. The name Ted Raines was written at the bottom.
Raines wasn’t exactly a looker. His weak chin and prominent nose made me think of a bottlenose dolphin.
Hawkins had already rolled the John Doe to the stinky room and plugged in the Stryker saw. With his help, I removed the collarbones and the pubic symphyses, the little projections that meet at the midline on the belly side of the pelvis.
While Joe stripped flesh from the harvested bones, I retracted the scalp to observe the cranial surface.
The adult skull is composed of twenty-two bones separated by twenty-four sutures that appear as squiggly lines. Throughout adulthood, these gaps fill in and disappear. Though progress varies from person to person, the state of suture closure can provide a very general sense of age.
The John Doe’s squiggles suggested he was a middle-aged adult.
The pubic symphyseal faces also undergo change throughout adulthood. Those of the John Doe were smooth and had raised edges rimming their perimeters, suggesting an age range centering on thirty-five.
The epiphysis, or little cap at the breastbone end of each clavicle, fuses to the shaft somewhere between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Both the John Doe’s caps were solidly attached.
Bottom line. My first estimate was dead-on. In all probability, the John Doe was in his fourth decade when he died.
A bit old for Cale Lovette, but not impossible.
“So,” I said, stripping off and tossing my gloves. “It’s probably not Lovette.”
“Who’s Lovette?”
Hawkins was at the sink, untying his apron. I told him about the MPs from 1998.
“Don’t remember hearing talk of ’em.” His tone was brusque.
“Apparently no one does. Anyway, Galimore will be happy.”
Hawkins winged his wadded apron toward the biohazard receptacle. It bounced off the edge and landed on the floor. He made no move to retrieve it.
“You have issues with Galimore?” I asked.
“Damn right I have issues with Galimore.”
“You want to tell me?”
“The man can’t be trusted.” Hawkins’s mouth was crimped as though he’d tasted something bitter.
“Are you referring to his alcohol problem?”
“Suppose that’s as good a starting place as any.”
Hawkins crossed to the pail, pounded the pedal with his heel, snatched up and tossed the apron