LITMIR.BIZ

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Detective.”

      McCall bobbed his head, smiling as if he’d won the lottery. “No problem. I’ll call the lab, tell ’em you’ll be over. Anything you can do is great. We—uh—can’t pay you, though. You know that, right?”

      Now she looked back at David, grinning at him, returning the smugness he’d hit her with earlier. “Detective, it’s your lucky day because Mr. Hennings has agreed to pay my fee. So, as soon as you arrange for me to see that skull, I’ll get to work and hopefully, we’ll find out where this woman belongs.”

      * * *

      WANTING TO BE done with the entire situation, Amanda had agreed to go right over to the lab. Like Pamela Hennings, the detective was on a mission. Which meant David had had to drive her home to pick up her tools.

      She’d offered to make the trip to the lab herself, but he’d claimed the least he could do was take her and then pick her up again when she’d completed her work.

      Considering her nerves and angst over seeing the skull, Amanda didn’t argue. Getting behind a wheel while distracted would do her no good.

      And here they were. The forensic anthropologist, Paul something—she’d missed his last name thanks to the ringing in her ears—from the county’s forensic lab set the skull with its vacant eyes staring straight up at her on the cork ring. She clasped her fingers together, squeezing hard enough that her knuckles protested, and snapped her mind back to her task rather than her nerves.

      Dull beige walls and glaring overhead lights added to the sterile, stark atmosphere of the lab and sent a fierce chill snaking from her feet right up into her torso.

      She forced her thoughts to the gloved hands positioning the skull inside the ring. Paul tilted it up another half inch so it would rest against the back of the ring, his hands gentle—reverent even—as he completed his task. This person, whose only remains were the skull in front of them, belonged somewhere.

      Give her a name. Whether Amanda could complete that task would be determined, and she’d resist pressuring herself. For now, she’d be an artist, studying a subject, keeping her emotional distance, but doing her best to re-create a drawing that might help identify the victim.

      Amanda squeezed the pencil in her hand, then relaxed her grip before she broke the thing. “Tell me about her.”

      “She’s in remarkably good shape considering the elements. Based on the teeth and shape of the head, we’re estimating her age at early twenties. Maybe late teens. We made a cast of the skull in case of reconstruction, but there’s never been one done. Budgeting issues.”

      “So the cast is already made?”

      Ugh. Amanda closed her eyes, thought of her mother and let out a frustrated laugh. It would be so like her mom to throw this project in her path, urging her to press on because, yes, they had a cast already made and she could take possession of it. To at least try the reconstruction. Nice, Mom.

      “Yes,” Paul said. “It’s been sitting here waiting for someone to work on her.”

      Amanda brought her attention back to the skull on the table. Detective McCall had told her the anthropologist had determined the victim was a white female, and the flatness of the face and the long, thin nasal openings appeared to represent that.

      “She’s a Caucasoid,” Amanda said.

      “Yes.” He pointed to an area at the back of the skull. “In terms of injuries, there’s a small, depressed spot here. Looks like she was hit with something small, but it was a forceful impact. From the shape of the wound, it could have been a hammer. It fractured her skull.”

      “Poor thing.”

      “Whoever buried her didn’t dig far enough. That’s why the dog dug up the skull. We never found the rest of the bones. Animals may have gotten to them and dragged them to another spot. That field is too big to dig up the entire thing looking for her.” He held his hand out. “This is what we have.”

      Amanda’s stomach twisted. “If they’d buried her deeper, she might never have been found.”

      “Probably not.”

      “I’ll do another sketch. See if it’s any different than the last one. I brought everything I need.” She pointed her pencil at the table. “Can I work here?”

      “That’s fine. Holler if you need me.”

      “I will. Thanks.”

      Paul wandered off to a lab table with a giant microscope on the far side of the room. From the looks of all the equipment stacked on shelves and the shiny tables, he had plenty to do.

      She dug her iPod from her purse, shoved the earbuds in place and scrolled her music library. For this, she knew exactly what she needed. A nice classical mix. She poked at the desired playlist, aptly named DESPERATE, and got down to business.

      From her briefcase, she pulled a small stack of tracing paper, pencils and her copy of the tissue-depth table for Caucasoids. In the file Paul had left her, she located the life-size frontal and lateral photographs of the skull, set them side by side on her drawing boards and taped the corners. Over the frontal photograph, she placed tracing paper and began outlining the face while Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 softly streamed through her earbuds.

      Song after song played as she carefully outlined, corrected and outlined again, taking her time, double-checking each element until it was time to call Paul over to help with tissue-depth markers. Then she’d begin filling in the face, adding the contours of the jaw and cheeks and then the eyebrows and hairline. The tiny details she could add later, but for now she focused on a blueprint to work with. Little by little, each element brought some new aspect to the face, giving it lifelike qualities.

      The hair. Detective McCall had told her they’d found a few long, dark hairs with the body. How long, she wasn’t sure, but she’d try shoulder length. After outlining the overall shape of the hair and filling in the length based on the hair found at the scene, she added subshapes—loose waves in the front—and then blended dark and light tones for contrast.

      Chopin shifted to Beethoven again. Could that be? More than two hours’ worth of a playlist? And she still had to fill in the details on the frontal eye–nose area. She stopped shading and glanced around. Paul had moved to a desk in the corner of the lab, clearly unconcerned about the approaching end of the workday.

      Amanda sat back and stretched her shoulders as a beautiful young woman with sharp cheekbones and a small button nose stared back at her.

      A woman with a hole in the back of her skull.

      Stomach knotted, Amanda closed her eyes, forcing herself to detach. To not get sucked into the mind-ravaging warfare this case would create. Her mother had done this work on a regular basis, felt this pull of longing and heartbreak. Amanda supposed a person eventually got used to it. After all, the cause was noble, if not emotionally eviscerating.

      She opened her eyes to someone whose family had yet to know her fate. Amanda thought back to those first brutal days without her mom, to the shock and anger and bone-shattering ache that came with sudden and tragic loss.

      To this day, she didn’t fully understand—probably never would—how her mom had thought suicide was the only option. Obviously, the emotional place her mother had reached was too dark, too painful to find her way free. Her work as a forensic artist probably hadn’t helped, but Amanda would never truly know why her mom had done what she did.

      At least Amanda had a place to visit. A place to sit and talk and grieve.

      A proper grave site.

      She ran her fingertips over the edge of the paper she’d sketched on. This woman’s family had no answers. Maybe they assumed she was dead. Maybe not. Maybe down deep they held on to hope that she’d walk back into their lives.

      And that tore into Amanda like a rusty chain saw. At least she knew her mother was gone.

      “I’ll

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