“Male’s on the left, female on the right.” Daljeet went to the sink to wash the dirt from his hands and yanked out a paper towel. “So there you have it, John and Jane Doe.”
Rizzoli picked up the printout of names that NCIC had emailed to Daljeet that morning. “Jesus. There are dozens of entries here. So many people missing.”
“And that’s only for the New England region. Caucasians between the ages of twenty and forty-five.”
“All these reports are from the 1950s and ’60s.”
“That’s the time frame Maura specified.” Daljeet crossed to his laptop computer. “Okay, let’s take a look at some of the X-rays they sent.” He opened the file that had been emailed to him from NCIC. A row of icons appeared, each labeled with a case number. He clicked on the first icon, and an X-ray filled the screen. A crooked line of teeth, like tumbling white dominoes.
“Well, this certainly isn’t one of ours,” he said. “Look at the teeth on this one! It’s an orthodontist’s nightmare.”
“Or an orthodontist’s gold mine,” said Rizzoli.
Daljeet closed that image, and clicked on the next icon. Another X-ray, this one with a gaping space between incisors. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Maura’s attention drifted back to the table. To the bones of the unnamed woman. She stared down at the skull with its gracile brow line and delicate zygomatic arch. A face of gentle proportions.
“Well, hello,” she heard Daljeet say. “I think I recognize these teeth.”
She turned to look at the computer screen. Saw an X-ray of lower molars and the bright glow of dental fillings.
Daljeet rose from his chair and crossed to the table where the male skeleton was laid out. He picked up the mandible and carried it back to the computer to compare.
“Amalgam filling numbers eighteen and nineteen,” he noted. “Yes. Yes, that matches…”
“What’s the name on that X-ray?” Rizzoli asked.
“Robert Sadler.”
“Sadler… Sadler…” Rizzoli flipped through the pages of computer printouts. “Okay, I found the entry. Sadler, Robert. Caucasian male, age twenty-nine. Five foot eleven, brown hair, brown eyes.” She looked at Daljeet, who nodded.
“That’s compatible with our remains.”
Rizzoli continued reading. “He was a building contractor. Last seen in his hometown of Kennebunkport, Maine. Reported missing July third, 1960, along with his…” She paused. Turned to look at the table where the female’s bones had been laid out. “Along with his wife.”
“What was her name?” asked Maura.
“Karen. Karen Sadler. I have the case number for you.”
“Give it to me,” said Daljeet, turning back to the computer. “Let’s see if her X-rays are here.” Maura stood close behind him, staring over his shoulder as he clicked on the correct icon, and an image appeared on the screen. It was an X-ray taken when Karen Sadler was alive and sitting in her dentist’s chair. Anxious, perhaps, about the prospect of a cavity and the inevitable drilling that would result. She could not have imagined, as she’d clamped down on the cardboard wing to hold the unexposed film in place, that this same image her dentist captured that day would be glowing, years later, on a pathologist’s computer screen.
Maura saw a row of molars, and the bright metallic glow of a crown. She crossed to the X-ray light box, where Daljeet had clipped up the panograph he’d taken of the unidentified woman’s teeth. She said, softly, “It’s her. These bones are Karen Sadler’s.”
“So we have a double match,” said Daljeet. “Both husband and wife.”
Behind them, Rizzoli flipped through the printouts, looking for Karen Sadler’s missing persons report. “Okay, here she is. Caucasian female, age twenty-five. Blond hair, blue eyes…” She suddenly stopped. “There’s something wrong here. You’d better check those X-rays again.”
“Why?” said Maura.
“Just check them again.”
Maura studied the panograph, then turned to look at the computer screen. “They are a match, Jane. What’s the problem?”
“You’re missing another set of bones.”
“Whose bones?”
“A fetus.” Rizzoli looked at her, a stunned expression on her face. “Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant.”
There was a long silence.
“We found no other remains,” Daljeet said.
“You could have missed them,” said Rizzoli.
“We sifted the soil. Thoroughly excavated that grave site.”
“Scavengers might have dragged them away.”
“Yes, that’s always possible. But this is Karen Sadler.”
Maura went to the table and stared down at the woman’s pelvis, thinking about another woman’s bones, glowing on an X-ray light box. Nikki Wells was pregnant, too.
She swung the magnifying lens over the table and switched on the light. Focused the lens over the pubic ramus. Reddish dirt had crusted over the symphysis, where the two rami met, joined by leathery cartilage. “Daljeet, could I have a wet Q-tip or gauze? Something to wipe this dirt away.”
He filled a basin of water and tore open a packet of Q-tips. He set them on the tray beside her. “What are you looking for?”
She didn’t answer him. Her attention was focused on dabbing away that coating of dirt, on revealing what lay beneath. As the crust melted, her pulse quickened. The last fleck of dirt suddenly fell away. She stared at what was now revealed beneath the magnifier. Straightening, she looked at Daljeet.
“What is it?” he said.
“Take a look. It’s right at the edge, where the bones articulate.”
He bent to look through the lens. “You mean that little nick? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty subtle.”
“But it’s there.” She took a deep breath. “I brought an X-ray. It’s in my car. I think you should look at it.”
Rain battered her umbrella as she walked out to the parking lot. As she pressed the UNLOCK button on her key ring, she couldn’t avoid glancing at the scratches on her passenger door. A claw mark meant to scare her. All it did is make me angry. Ready to fight back. She took the envelope out of the backseat and sheltered it under her coat as she carried it into the building.
Daljeet looked bewildered as he watched her clip Nikki Wells’s films onto the light box. “What is this case you’re showing me?”
“A five-year-old homicide in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The victim’s skull was crushed and her body later burned.”
Daljeet frowned at the X-ray. “Pregnant female. The fetus looks close to term.”
“But this is what caught my eye.” She pointed to the bright sliver embedded in Nikki Wells’s pubic symphysis. “I think it’s the broken edge of a knife blade.”
“But Nikki Wells was killed with a tire iron,” said Rizzoli. “Her skull was smashed in.”
“That’s right,” said Maura.
“Then why use a knife as well?”
Maura pointed to the X-ray. To the fetal bones curled over Nikki Wells’s pelvis. “That’s why. That’s what the killer really wanted.”
For a moment Daljeet didn’t speak. But she knew, without his saying a word, that he understood what she was thinking. He turned back to the remains of Karen Sadler. He picked up the pelvis. “A midline incision, straight down the abdomen,” he said. “The blade would hit bone, right where this nick is…”
Maura thought of Amalthea’s knife, slicing down a young woman’s abdomen with a stroke so decisive the blade stops only when it collides with bone. She thought of her own profession, where knives played such a large part, and of the days she spent in the autopsy lab, slicing skin and organs. We are both cutters, my mother and I. But I cut dead flesh, and she cut the living.
“That’s why you didn’t find fetal bones in Karen Sadler’s grave,” said Maura.
“But your other case-” He gestured toward the X-ray of Nikki Wells. “That fetus wasn’t taken. It was burned with the mother. Why make an incision to extract it, and then kill it anyway?”