WE FOLLOWED HAWKINS DOWN A SHORT CORRIDOR TO A SMALL staff lounge. The left side was a mini-kitchen, with cabinets, sink, stove, and refrigerator. A phone and a small TV sat at one end of the counter. A coffeemaker and a basket holding sugar and dried cream packets sat at the other. A round table and four chairs took up most of the right side of the room.

Joe Hawkins has been hauling stiffs since the Eisenhower years, and is living proof that we’re molded by what we do. Cadaver thin, with dark-circled eyes, bushy brows, and dyed black hair slicked back from his face, he is the archetypical B-movie death investigator.

Unsmiling, Hawkins crossed to the table and jabbed a finger at an open copy of Tuesday’s Charlotte Observer.

“Yesterday’s paper.”

Larabee and I leaned in to read.

Local section. Page five. Three column inches. One photo.

Demons or Dump?

Police were baffled Monday night when a 911 call sent them to a house on Greenleaf. While renovating, a plumber had stumbled onto more than rusty pipes. Within hours, skulls, cauldrons, and an assortment of strange items were removed from the home’s basement and transported to the MCME morgue and the CMPD crime lab.

Directing the recovery operation were forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan and homicide detective Erskine Slidell. Though queried, police refused to comment on whether any remains were human.

The plumber, Arlo Welton, recounted knocking through a wall into a mysterious subterranean cellar. Welton described an altar and satanic paraphernalia that, in his opinion, clearly indicated demonic ritual.

Devil worship? Or underground Dumpster? The investigation is ongoing.

The photo was grainy, taken from too great a distance with too little light. It showed Slidell and me standing beside the crooked porch swing. My hair was cascading from a topknot. I was wearing the jumpsuit. Skinny was picking something from his ear. Neither of us looked ready to appear on The View. Photo credit was given to Allison Stallings.

“Sugar,” Larabee said.

“Shit,” I said.

“Nice ’do.”

My finger told Larabee what I thought of his humor.

As though on cue, the phone rang. While Hawkins picked up, I reread the article, feeling the usual irritation. While I’m an avid consumer of news, both print and electronic, I detest having journalists in my lab or at my field recoveries. In my view, cameras and mikes don’t go with corpses. In their opinion, neither the lab nor the crime scene are mine and the public has a right to know. We coexist in a state of forced accommodation, yielding only as necessary.

Allison Stallings. The name wasn’t familiar. Perhaps a new hire at the paper? I thought I knew everyone covering the police beat in town.

“Mrs. Flowers has been flooded with calls from the press.” Hawkins was holding the receiver to his chest. “Been saying ‘no comment.’ Now that you’re here, she wants direction.”

“Tell them to drop dead,” I said.

“‘No comment’ is good,” Larabee overruled.

Hawkins transmitted the message. Listened. Again, pressed the phone to his shirtfront.

“She says they’re insistent.”

“Mysterious? Satanic?” My voice oozed disdain. “They’re probably hoping for a boiled baby for the five o’clock news.”

“No comment,” Larabee repeated.

I spent the rest of the day with the Greenleaf materials.

After photographing the human skull, I began a detailed analysis, starting with the teeth.

Unfortunately, only ten of the original sixteen uppers remained. Nothing sinister. Dentition fronting the arcade is single-rooted. When the gums adios, the incisors and canines aren’t far behind.

Dental Aging 101. Choppers don’t arrive fait accompli. No scoop there. Everyone knows mammal teeth come in two sets, baby and adult. And that each set makes its entrance as a specialty troupe. Incisors, premolars, canines, molars. But dental development is more complex than simply a play in two acts. And much of the action takes place offstage.

Here’s the script. First, a crown bud appears deep in the jaw. Enamel is laid onto that bud as a root begins growing downward or upward into the socket. The crown emerges. The root elongates, eventually forming a tip. In other words, following eruption, formation continues until the root is complete. Simultaneously, other teeth play out their scenes according to their own entrance cues.

Cranial X-rays showed partial eruption of the third maxillary molars, and partial completion of the second molar roots. That combination, along with recent basilar suture closure, suggested an age of fourteen to seventeen. My gut instinct favored the upper end of that range.

A reassessment of cranial traits did not change my initial impressions of gender and ancestry. Nevertheless, as a cross-check, I took measurements and entered them into my laptop.

Fordisc 3.0 is an anthropometric program that employs a statistical procedure called discriminant function analysis, or DFA. DFA’s rely on comparison to reference groups composed of known membership, in this case skulls of individuals whose race and sex have been documented, and whose measurements have been entered into the database. “Unknowns,” such as the Greenleaf skull, are compared to the “knowns” in the reference groups, and evaluated as to similarity and difference.

For sex determination there are a number of reference groups, each composed of known males and known females of specific racial or ethnic backgrounds. Since tight-fitting cheekbones and a relatively long skull ruled out Asian and Native American ancestry in this case, I ran comparisons using Caucasoids and Negroids.

No surprise. No matter black or white, the Greenleaf skull classified with the girls.

Evaluation of race is a bit more complicated. Just as they are for sex determination, the potential reference groups are composed of both sexes of known blacks, whites, American Indians, and Japanese, as well as Guatemalan, Hispanic, Chinese, and Vietnamese males. That’s what the Fordisc database holds.

I ran a two-way comparison between black and white females.

My unknown classified with the former. Barely.

I checked the interpretive stats.

A posterior probability, or PP, gives the probability of group membership for an unknown based on its relative proximity to all groups. Major assumptions are that variation is roughly the same within groups; that means and values differ between groups; and that the unknown actually belongs to one of the reference groups you’re using. That last isn’t necessarily true. A DFA will classify any set of measurements, even if your unknown is a chimp or hyena.

A typicality probability, or TP, is a better indicator of actual group membership. TP’s suggest the likelihood of an unknown belonging to a particular group based on the average variability of all the groups in the analysis. TP’s evaluate absolute distances, not relative distances, as with PP’s.

Think of it this way. If you have to fit your unknown into one of the program’s reference groups, a PP tells you which is the best choice. A TP tells you if that choice is realistic.

The PP on my screen said that for my unknown, black ancestry was a greater likelihood than white. The TP suggested her head wasn’t put together like those of the black ladies in the data bank.

I remeasured and recalculated.

Same result.

Numbers go one way, overall deductive judgment goes another? Not uncommon. I stick with experience. And, since genes pay no heed to stats, I knew there was the possibility of mixed ancestry.

Flipping to the cover sheet, I filled in boxes on my case form.

Sex: Female.

Ancestry: Negroid. (Possible Caucasoid admixture.)

Age: Fourteen to seventeen years.

Sweet Jesus. Just a kid.

Staring into the empty orbits, I tried to visualize who this young woman had been. Felt sad at the loss. My mind could conjure up rough images of her appearance based on the black girls I saw around me. Katy’s friends. My students. The kids who hung out in the park across College Street. I could envision dark hair and eyes, chocolate skin. But what had she felt? Thought? What expression had molded her features as she fell asleep each night, woke each morning?

Fourteen to seventeen. Half woman, half child. Had she liked to read? Ride a bike? A Harley? Hang out at the mall? Did she have a steady boyfriend? Who was missing her?

Had malls existed in her world? When did she die? Where?

Do what you do, Brennan. Learn who she was. What happened to her.

Setting sentimental musing aside, I refocused on the science.

The next boxes on the form asked for PMI and MOD. Postmortem interval. Manner of death.

With dry bone, leached of flesh and organic components, time since death can be even tougher to nail than race.

Gently, I hefted the skull in one palm, testing its weight. The bone looked and felt solid, not porous or degraded like old cemetery remains or archaeological materials. All visible surfaces were stained a uniform tea brown.

I looked for cultural alterations, such as tooth filing, cranial binding, occipital flattening, or surgical boring. Zip.

I checked for indications of coffin burial. The skull retained no funerary artifacts such as morticians’ molding wax, trocars, or eye caps. No threads or fabric shreds. There was no embalmed tissue. No flaking of the cortical bone. No head or facial hair.

I shined a small flashlight through the foramen magnum, the large hole through which the spinal cord enters the brain. Except for adherent dirt, the vault interior was empty.

Using a dental pick, I scraped at the endocranial soil. A small cone formed on the gurney. Though slightly shinier, the soil looked similar to that in the cauldron. It yielded one pill bug, one puparial case, and no plant inclusions.

Still using the pick, I tipped the skull and probed the nasal and auditory openings. More dirt trickled onto the cone.

Scooping the cranial soil, the bug, and the casing into a ziplock, I wrote the MCME ID number, date, and my name on the outside of the plastic. The sample might never be processed, but better to err on the side of caution.

Using a scalpel, I chipped flakes from the candle wax coating the outer surface of the crown and sealed them into a second ziplock. Scrapings of the “blood” stain went into a third.

Then I turned back to the X-rays. Slowly, I worked through the frontal, lateral, posterior, superior, and basal views Hawkins had provided.

The skull showed no signs of trauma or disease. No metallic trace that would indicate gunshot wounding. No fractures, bullet entrance or exit holes, or sharp instrument gashes. No lesions, defects, or congenital anomalies. No restorations, implants, or indicators of cosmetic or corrective surgery. Not a clue as to the girl’s dental or medical history. Not a hint concerning the reason for her death.

Frustrated, I reexamined both the skull and the X-rays under magnification.

Nope. The cranium was remarkably unremarkable.

Discouraged, I ran through a mental checklist of methods for PMI estimation with dry bone. Ultraviolet fluorescence, staining for indophenol and Nile blue, supersonic conductivity, histological or radiographic structure analysis, nitrogen or amino acid content evaluation, Bomb C14 testing, calculation of fat transgression, carbonate, or serological protein levels, benzidine or anti–human serum reaction.

Though I’d forward the pill bug and casing to the entomologist, I doubted either would be of much use. They could have come from the fill, drifting into the skull years after the girl had died.

The Bomb C14 was a possibility. Testing might show whether death occurred, roughly, before or after 1963, the end date for atmospheric testing of thermonuclear devices. But based on bone quality, I doubted PMI could be greater than fifty years. Besides, given budgetary restraints, Larabee would never cough up the funds for C14.

Revving up a Stryker saw, I removed a small square of bone from the right parietal and sealed it into a ziplock. Then I extracted and added a right second molar. Even if we couldn’t afford C14 testing, we might need the specimens for DNA sequencing.

Samples bagged, I finished entering my observations onto my case form.

PMI: Five to fifty years.

MOD: Unknown.

I could picture Slidell’s expression when I reported that. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.

Discouraged, I turned to the nonhumans.

Yep. Goat and chicken.

Both skulls retained remnants of desiccated flesh. I found a few larvae and puparial cases inside the vault and auditory canals of the goat.

I’d already sampled from the chicken on Tuesday, and knew it had held the motherlode. Adult flies. Larvae. The body had even yielded a few beetles and a number of very large roaches. I’d await word from the entomologist, but I had no doubt Chicken Little had gone to her reward in the past few months.

I turned my attention to the large cauldron.

First I took photos. Then I placed a stainless steel tub in the sink, settled a screen over it, masked, and began troweling. The dirt shished softly as it fell through the mesh. An earthy smell rose around me.

One scoop. Three. Five. A few pebbles, snail shells, and bug parts collected in the screen.

Twelve scoops in, I sensed resistance. Abandoning the trowel, I dug by hand. In seconds, I’d freed a shriveled mass measuring approximately two inches in diameter.

Laying my find on the gurney, I gingerly explored with my fingers.

The mass was shrunken, yet spongy.

Apprehension began to tap at my brain. What I was handling was organic.

As I teased away dirt, detail emerged. Gyri. Sulci.

Recognition.

I was poking at a hunk of mummified gray matter.

My own neurons fired up a name.

Mark Kilroy.

I pushed it back down.

The human brain measures in at approximately 1,400 cubic centimeters. This thing could claim but a fraction of that.

Goat? Chicken?

A sudden grisly thought. One lobe of a human cerebrum?

That was a question for Larabee.

After bagging and tagging my find I continued with the fill.

And made my next chilling discovery.