Once the skull's surface was relatively clean, I took a closer look at its grayish-brown contours. Years of work with Dr. Hughston and then in grad school had taught me to rely on my sense of touch, so I gently ran my fingers over the bones as if I were caressing the victim's face. I find this process totally mesmerizing, and I often catch myself slipping into a kind of trancelike state, in which I seem more open than usual to subtle impressions and unexpected insight.
To avoid becoming too absorbed, I make sure to keep up a running commentary, another thing I've learned the hard way. Once I had to examine a particularly large femur whose healed fracture up near the hip joint immediately caught my attention. As I wrapped my fingers gently around the bone and ran my hand up and down the shaft, the men around me all stopped what they were doing and gave me their full attention. I was oblivious of my audience until one of the detectives gently tapped me on the shoulder and asked in a stage whisper if I wanted to be alone. I laughed loudly with the others but I was mortified!
So now, I touched and talked at the same time, less concerned with whether the other investigators were listening than with identifying my own impressions. “Clearly, he was a man,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual so I wouldn't sound too much like some fairground fortune-teller. “Big, robust face, very distinctive. Look at these heavy muscle markings-large facial features, for sure. He's got a big, prominent brow ridge, too. See this thick area of bone right above his eyes? When I first saw how big his skull was, I was pretty sure he was a male, but I know it now. Look at these big mastoid processes, the bones behind each ear. These were attached to the muscles that support and move the head; men usually have larger, stronger muscles than women.”
I guess my audience was indeed listening, because a couple of them gave out a few good-natured cheers. I grinned at the interruption and went on to explain that since men's muscles are larger, all the places where their muscles are attached to bone tend to be larger, too. It's quite noticeable in the trunk, arms, and legs, but you can also see signs of maleness behind the ears and across the back of the skull.
As I reached the man's mid-face, my focus switched to our victim's racial heritage. His nose was long and narrow, with a fairly distinct sharp edge along the bottom, while the ridge of bone connecting the bottom of the nose to the upper teeth was almost vertical. At the top, both sides of the nose came together to form a narrow peak like a little tent, right between the skull's eye sockets. I could tell that this man's eyes had been set relatively close together, and that feature, plus his narrow nose, told me he'd probably had a significant amount of Caucasian ancestry. With the dirt and sand still stuck to the bone, it was difficult to form a specific opinion on his age, but judging by the overall maturity of his bones and teeth, he was clearly an adult.
When I took a closer look at our victim's teeth, I felt a surge of hope. There was still a heavy veneer of dirt, but I could see that many teeth had been filled and covered with gold. Now we knew we were dealing with the homicide of an adult White male who could once afford the very best dental care available. After only two hours on the scene, this was progress.
Now, what about that bullet?
When you've got an entrance wound and no exit wound, the bullet is obviously going to lodge in the brain. In a fresh body, that's good news, because all you have to do is dissect it out either whole or in pieces if it's shattered inside the brain. As a body decomposes, however, the brain liquefies, and there's nothing to hold the bullet or its fragments in place. So it might easily slip out through one of the many large holes that once made room for the spinal cord, nerves, and arteries.
In this case, the cranial vault, or braincase, was packed full of silt. If we were lucky, this silt and sand had gradually filtered into the skull as the brain liquefied, trapping the bullet inside.
Mark had been watching closely as the other investigators gradually drifted back toward the perimeter of the crime scene, drinking their coffee and speculating further about who the dead guy might be. When I told him that we might still have the fatal bullet, his eyes lit up. “You know,” he offered, “I've got an x-ray machine back at the office.” Besides being the local coroner, Mark was a licensed chiropractor with an active practice in Fort Thomas. It could save us an awful lot of sifting and screening through the dirt.
“Sure,” I agreed. “I'm done with the skull for now. Why don't you just pack it up and take it over to your office? We've got plenty to do till you get back.”
Mark reached for the skull, but I couldn't help hesitating a bit before handing it over. I felt sure that he would indeed find the bullet, and to be honest, I was a little jealous. I couldn't decide whether to reassure myself that I might make an even bigger discovery than Mark, or to remind myself that after all, the end result was all that mattered. This question of who gets the credit had plagued me since my early days as a medical illustrator. I loved being part of a team, but I didn't like sitting anonymously on the bench. Well, I told myself, today I was not only part of the team, I was the star player, the captain, and the coach. The least I could do was let Mark score a point.
So, a little too much like a spoiled child giving up her favorite toy, I held out the skull, and eagerly Mark took it. Holding it upside-down in one hand, he climbed awkwardly back up the riverbank, where he meticulously wrapped the skull in a plastic bag. If the bullet was there, it wouldn't get far. And if it wasn't… I glanced at the choppy waters of the Ohio River and repressed a shudder. If the bullet that had killed this man had fallen out of his skull, we'd probably never see it again, though I was fully prepared to spend several hours sifting through the dirt to find it. “Leave those flags in place,” I told my colleagues, pointing to the markers I'd put around the skull's original location. “And let's stay away from here for now.” If we did have to dig for a bullet, I wanted to start with a relatively pristine section of soil.
Most of the man's bones had been partially freed from their clandestine grave by erosion, though they still lay half-buried under the sandy earth. Others perched precariously on chunks of sand that appeared ready to break off and slide into the river. I wondered how many days of floodwaters eating into the soil had finally freed these bones, and I marveled at the coincidence that had brought those two boys out here, after the bones had appeared but before they'd washed away for good.
Al interrupted my thoughts with a sharp tug on the safety rope. He had seen me maneuvering closer to the riverbank's crumbling brink, and he was taking no chances. I breathed a sigh of relief and waved up at him before kneeling once again beside the bones. I slowly repeated the careful, exacting procedure I had begun with the skull, gently brushing away loose dirt with a soft paintbrush, feeling for each bone's contours underground and then cautiously and patiently freeing it. Detective Lambers and I worked our way slowly but surely down to what should have been the victim's shoulders, brushing the silt and sand into plastic boxes, sealing the bones into labeled evidence bags, and passing our treasures up the riverbank, where other members of our team carefully catalogued each one.