Hunter was up just after seven thirty, and by eight he was shaved, showered and dressed. He collected two cups and a pot of coffee on a tray from the motel restaurant, and pushed open the door to the adjoining room at eight ten. Christy-Lee was awake, but still in bed, so Hunter put the tray on the bedside table and sat beside her.
‘Good morning, again,’ he said. ‘Any bright ideas?’
Kaufmann sat up and shook her head, her blonde hair tumbling in an unkempt swathe across her face. She brushed it away with her hand and reached for the coffee. Hunter kissed her on the cheek.
‘Not,’ Christy-Lee said, with a sleepy smile, ‘during the working day, please. Save it for tonight.’
She and Hunter had been sleeping together at Helena for nearly six months, in direct contravention of FBI standing orders, which forbid liaisons of any sort between agents. Hunter contended that, as he wasn’t actually an FBI agent, the rules didn’t apply to him. Kaufmann said that didn’t make any difference, but she slept with him anyway.
They each had their own apartment, were scrupulous in never spending an entire night together in Helena, and at work they had developed a kind of professional coolness towards each other which had fooled everyone – even Gloria Gray, who had a nose for scandal that would have made a National Enquirer reporter envious. Almost everybody thought they simply didn’t get on with each other.
‘The FBI’s working day,’ Hunter said, ‘begins at eight thirty. That gives us –’ he glanced at his watch ‘– another eighteen minutes. People like us can do a lot in eighteen minutes.’
Christy-Lee smiled at him, but shook her head. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I have to shower and do all my other stuff. Wait until tonight, and then –’
The knock at the door of Hunter’s room was loud and abrupt. He slid off the bed, walked back into his own room and pulled back the corner of the curtain.
‘It’s Sheriff Reilly,’ he said, and closed the connecting door.
‘Good morning,’ Reilly said, walking into the room as Hunter opened the door. ‘You and the lady sleep well?’
Reilly sat down uninvited in the living room chair. He was carrying a round object in a black garbage bag, which he placed carefully on the floor beside the chair.
‘Good morning to you, sheriff. Thank you, I think we slept well enough. What’s in the bag?’
Reilly smiled up at him. ‘Another little puzzle for you,’ he said. ‘You two seem to be the official custodians of the weird around these parts, so I came to you. Agent Kaufmann not here?’
Hunter gestured to the connecting door. ‘She’s not dressed yet,’ he said. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’
Reilly shook his head, and Hunter realized for the first time that the sheriff was actually enjoying having the FBI around. Having somebody he could dump his problems on made for an easier life.
‘It’ll keep,’ Reilly said, ‘until Agent Kaufmann can join us. Say, you wanna get some breakfast? I’m hungry and I’m buying.’
Hunter nodded, opened the connecting door and called out to Christy-Lee that they would be in the motel restaurant, and then the two men left together.
On the way across the parking lot to the restaurant, Reilly opened the passenger door of his Cherokee Jeep and placed the black bag carefully inside on the floor. Then he locked the vehicle.
‘Definitely don’t want to be carrying that into a place where there’s people eating,’ Reilly said, with a grin that he probably thought was enigmatic, but which just made Hunter want to punch him in the mouth.
They were half way through their hash browns, ham and eggs when Christy-Lee joined them. She declined food, and just asked for orange juice and fresh coffee.
‘So, what’ve you got for us this time, sheriff?’ she asked, when the waitress had moved out of earshot.
Reilly finished his mouthful of ham and leaned forward. ‘What we got this time,’ he said, ‘is a human skull half-way up a tree.’
Hunter put down his fork. ‘Are you putting us on?’ he asked, his voice low and dangerous. He’d already picked up quite a lot of American expressions.
Reilly shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Got in it the Cherokee right outside.’
‘You brought it here?’ Christy-Lee asked, incredulously. ‘That won’t exactly help the forensic pathologist, will it? You should have left it and let him examine it in situ.’
Reilly put the last forkful of hash browns in his mouth and chewed in silence for a minute or so. ‘You trying to tell me I don’t know my job, Agent Kaufmann?’ he asked, finally. ‘I’ve been in law enforcement a long time. I know what should be done, but there’s times when you can’t do it, and this was one of them.’
He took a drink of coffee.
‘Happened yesterday,’ he said. ‘A kid over at Williamsburg – that’s about five, six miles southwest o’ here – was out shootin’ squirrels in the woods. He saw this round thing way up in a tree, and so he took a shot at it. He hit it a coupla times with his twenty-two, and the third time it fell out. When he saw what it was, he put it in the bag he’d got his sandwiches in and took it back to his father, and he brought it to me first thing this morning.’
‘Did you get –’ Hunter started to say.
‘Yup,’ Reilly said, nodding. ‘I took a statement from the kid and his father. The kid doesn’t think he could locate the tree again, but he says it was a Douglas fir, and the skull was stuck about twenty feet off the ground. He didn’t think anyone could climb up that high, not without special gear, anyway.’
Reilly paused, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then belched and pushed his empty plate away from him.
‘I’m not a doctor,’ he said, ‘but I looked at the skull. Know what struck me as odd about it?’
Hunter shook his head. ‘No, sheriff. Go ahead, surprise us.’
Reilly leaned forward again. ‘It was fresh,’ he said. ‘Like the bone you get in a joint of meat. It hadn’t been there long. And you know the other thing?’
Hunter shook his head again.
‘I reckon the brain’s still inside,’ Reilly said, with relish.
Christy-Lee Kaufmann shuddered slightly.
‘Anyways,’ Reilly finished. ‘I brought it along so’s you and your tame doc can take a look at it. Probably not related to the Billy Dole thing, but you never know.’
William McGrath knocked on the Director’s door a little after eleven, and walked into the office when he heard a muffled call. George Donahue was sitting behind his desk, working on a bulky blue file, but when he saw McGrath he closed it with a snap.
‘Yes, Bill?’ he asked.
‘We’ve just heard from Helena. Kaufmann used her laptop to email an initial investigation report to the Field Office this morning. Her report confirms the Beaver Creek sheriff’s statement. Do you want the details, sir?’
Donahue nodded.
‘Kaufmann and Hunter visited the crime scene and inspected the body. The sheriff had done a good job, keeping everybody away from the corpse and taking plenty of photographs of the scene. Kaufmann’s report substantiates all the details we received last night – the way the victim was killed, the lack of footprints and so on. Kaufmann requested a forensic pathologist from Helena last night, and he’s at Beaver Creek now, doing an autopsy.’
McGrath paused and turned the page of his notes. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ Donahue asked. ‘What?’
‘This is a little strange,’ McGrath began. ‘The sheriff arrived at Kaufmann’s motel early this morning carrying a human skull in a garbage bag. Some teenager out shooting had found it in the woods yesterday, and he and his father delivered it to the sheriff this morning.’
Donahue looked keenly at McGrath. ‘Was it a fresh skull?’
McGrath nodded. ‘According to Kaufmann, yes. Hunter and the sheriff seem to think that the brain is still inside it, but we won’t know that for sure until the pathologist’s had a chance to see it. He’s going to examine it as soon as he’s completed the autopsy of Billy Dole – that’s the name of the murder victim.’
McGrath looked up then and noticed that Donahue’s expression had changed. A look almost of resignation had settled on his heavy features, and his voice when he spoke was dull and low. ‘Where was the skull found?’ he asked.
McGrath again glanced at his notes. ‘In woods in the vicinity of Williamsburg – that’s a few miles to the southwest of Beaver Creek.’
Donahue shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I meant where did this teenager find the skull – on the ground, half-buried in the earth, or what?’
‘That’s the oddest thing of all, Director,’ McGrath replied. ‘According to the statement of the boy who found it, the skull was lodged about twenty feet up in the air, in the boughs of a Douglas fir. If he hadn’t been out shooting squirrels, and looking up into the trees, he’d never have seen it.’
Donahue nodded, almost as if that was the answer he had been expecting. ‘OK, Bill,’ he said. ‘Leave everything you’ve got with me, and let me have the file you opened. Then forget all about this.’
McGrath was surprised, and said so. ‘Forget it, Director? That’s not so easy. What about this Omega business?’
Donahue shook his head. ‘That’s why you have to forget it, Bill. What you’ve told me is a confirmation of what I feared. This matter is now officially an Omega Incident, which means I’m the only one at the Bureau cleared to handle it. You just forget everything about it and leave me to take the necessary action.’
McGrath nodded, put his notes on Donahue’s desk and left without saying another word.
As soon as the door had closed behind McGrath, Donahue walked across to his wall safe, spun the combination wheel and opened the door. He took out the sealed Omega Procedures file, walked back to his desk and sat down. Then he took a desk knife, sliced through the binding tapes, opened the file and began to read.
After twenty minutes he closed the file and leaned back in his chair. Then he pulled on his suit jacket, picked up the file and left his office. Ten minutes later he was in a sound-proof booth in the Communication Centre, talking on a secure and scrambled telephone line to a man on an unlisted number in Nevada.
‘Subject is a well-nourished male, age about sixty-five. Height six feet three inches, weight two hundred and twenty pounds. Dead approximately three to four days. External examination shows extensive damage to the surface tissues of the face, head and neck, and lesser damage to the hands, apparently caused by vermin. The top of the skull has been shattered, and protruding from it is what appears to be a human femur.’
Even as he said the words, Alan Parker was aware of how bizarre they would sound in any court of law. He stopped talking and moved back from the dissecting table so that the photographer could use his camera.
‘Several of the skull, please,’ he said, ‘and the bone.’
When the photographer had finished, Parker moved back to the body and looked carefully at the femur. He reached out and touched the shaft of the bone gingerly, then stroked the tip of his forefinger along its length.
‘Odd,’ he muttered, and looked at the shaft more closely.
He placed his left hand on the corpse’s forehead, gripped the shaft of the femur firmly and attempted without success to move the bone. He spoke again into the over-table microphone.
‘The femur appears genuine, but requires separate investigation, and the distal end is wedged firmly into the base of the skull. My initial assumption is that the knee joint of the femur has jammed itself into the mouth and lower jaw of the skull. The bone of the femur is visible through the mouth of the deceased, which is locked slightly open.’
Parker turned to the technician. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Take the x-rays as we discussed, then I’ll start cutting.’
The longest runway in the world is also the world’s least known. It’s six miles in length and is located virtually in the centre of the Groom Lake Air Force Base, which itself lies near the middle of Nellis Air Force Range and Nuclear Test Site, a chunk of the Nevada desert the size of Switzerland. The popular name ‘Area 51’ is derived from the numbering system used on US military maps of the area.
The complex was established in 1955, funded in part by the CIA, specifically to facilitate flight-testing of the top secret U-2 spy plane, which had been designed and built by the Lockheed ‘Skunk Works’ black project design team. The CIA’s willingness to contribute financially to a United States Air Force facility was entirely due to the fact that the U-2 was to fly CIA-directed missions over or close to hostile territory for almost its entire working life.
After the development and eventual deployment of the U-2, Area 51 was used for the covert flight-testing of a number of other secret high-technology aircraft, including the A-12, forerunner of the SR-71A Blackbird; the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter; the B2 stealth bomber and the Aurora sub-orbital spy plane – all so-called black projects.
In 1984, immediately before a period of expansion and enlargement that was to last more than two years, the American Government decided that the area was so secret and sensitive that it was to be omitted from all maps, and its existence was officially denied until 1992. The ostensible reason for this was that black project development, by its very nature, required the ultimate in secrecy and security.
This was the truth, but not the whole truth, because Groom Lake also housed a number of other classified projects. The one most likely to cause international embarrassment to the United States was the existence of the so-called ‘Red Hat’ squadrons. These were squadrons of US Air Force pilots who flew only Soviet-Bloc aircraft that had been obtained intact, usually by the CIA, from air forces around the world. Having access to an enemy’s principal weaponry bestows a huge advantage upon any fighting force, and the US Government was determined that this aspect of Groom Lake’s operations would remain as secret as possible.
Embarrassing though disclosure of ‘Red Hat’ would have been, Groom Lake also concealed, and still conceals, another secret – the last and greatest secret that has ever been withheld from the American people. The magnitude and nature of this secret are so great that if it had ever become public knowledge, no government of America, whether Democrat or Republican, would have survived its disclosure.
Even after the admission of its existence in 1992, no official statements about operations carried out at Groom Lake were made by the American Government or any other body, and the area is subject to a cloak of secrecy and extreme security regarding access even today. This security is reinforced by constant patrols of its perimeter by armed guards who have instructions to shoot to kill if trespassers get too close to Groom Lake. Red-lettered notices warn that the ‘use of deadly force’ is authorized.
Predictably enough, this secrecy has attracted its fair share of UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists and the usual lunatic fringe, who between them believe that the base houses everything from the Ark of the Covenant to a dozen or so crashed flying saucers from alien planets. As is so often the case, the truth is actually more sensational and more frightening.
At the southern end of the Groom Lake Base, on the west side of the main runway, is a high-security compound, containing a large two-storey hanger-like structure within an electrified fence. Only a handful of people who work at Groom Lake have access to it, and nobody else there has any idea what goes on in the compound. Written on the building above the main door is the name ‘Rolver Systems’. The name is a contraction of the two proper names ‘Roland’ and ‘Oliver’ and is, to anyone familiar with Rolver Systems’ function, a cruel joke.
Four or five times a week, a specially-modified United States Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft arrives at Groom Lake. Unlike most aircraft, which taxi off the runway and park on one of the hardstandings to the north and south of the Flight Operations Centre building, this aircraft leaves the runway almost directly opposite Hangar 18. Then it takes the taxiway which runs down to the southwest, close to the Rolver Systems’ compound, and parks at the back of the building, where there are wide steel gates set into the boundary fence.
Once in position, the flight crew leave the aircraft and are driven away in a USAF van to the Flight Operations Centre. Only then is the Hercules rear cargo door opened and unloading started. Rolver Systems’ personnel carry out the unloading operation alone.
The cargo is always the same: between thirty and fifty oblong aluminium caskets about eight feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep. At one end of each casket is an advanced monitoring system, which constantly checks its internal temperature, gas concentrations and pressure, and other parameters. During the flight, all the caskets are connected to a central monitoring system in the sealed hold of the Hercules.
The caskets are placed carefully and individually on small forklifts and driven into the Rolver Systems’ building. When the last casket has been delivered, and the aircraft has been loaded with the now-empty caskets delivered by the previous flight, the gates and the doors to the building are locked. The flight crew return to the aircraft an hour or so later, and the Hercules climbs back into the air.
The same routine has been followed at Groom Lake, with only fairly minor changes, since late in 1957.
Removing the femur proved more difficult than Alan Parker had expected. Even with the top of the skull – or rather what was left of it – removed, and the brain cavity emptied of all remaining tissue, the femur still wouldn’t budge. Eventually, Parker had to sever and remove the entire lower jaw. Only then could the femur be moved laterally, rotated, and gently eased out.
The technician took the bone from Parker’s gloved hands – it was lighter than he had expected – and placed it on a stainless steel tray on a side table. Parker would examine it in some detail once he had finished the autopsy because it was, after all, evidence of a second death. Next to it, the newly-discovered skull sat in a steel dish, awaiting its turn.
Parker glanced across at the bone and skull, and then continued his examination of the mortal remains of Billy Dole.
The telephone almost never rang in the Rolver Systems’ building, not least because none of the numbers were listed in any directory, confidential or otherwise. In fact, the only people who had access to the numbers were the dozen or so men outside Rolver Systems whose positions required them to be given Omega One clearance and indoctrinated into Project Roland Oliver. These included the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the head of the United States Air Force Military Airlift Command, which operated the Hercules, and the Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
So when the telephone rang in the top-floor office that morning, Roger Ketch answered it almost immediately.
In 1957, when Rolver Systems began operations, the officer in charge had remained in the post for almost six years, a record unbeaten until Roger Ketch had taken over. Most had applied for transfer a year or two after their appointment, and in some cases within a matter of months, weeks or even days.
Ketch was the exception. He had headed Rolver Systems for nearly eight years, after a less than illustrious career in the FBI, and had no intention of requesting a transfer to other duties. He was also exceptional in that he actually enjoyed the work or rather, to be absolutely accurate, the power that his position conferred on him.
Ten minutes after completing the call, Ketch was briefing a former SEAL officer in Texas on another secure and scrambled line. Thirty minutes after that, the SEAL officer had assembled his three Alert Team members. Three-quarters of an hour later, they were all en route to the airport at Fort Worth where a government jet was waiting to take them to Helena, Montana.
In accordance with the FBI Director’s Omega Procedures file, Procedure One had been initiated.
Alan Parker didn’t get to the motel restaurant until nearly half past one, because of the extra time he had taken over the femur and the skull. Hunter and Kaufmann were sitting at a back table over a pot of coffee, waiting for him, when he arrived. After they’d ordered lunch, Hunter asked him what he’d found.
‘OK,’ Parker said. ‘Let’s keep it simple and start at the beginning. First, Billy Dole. He died instantly from the blow to his head.’
‘No surprise there,’ Hunter muttered.
Parker nodded. ‘Quite. I did a full autopsy, as you requested, and apart from a duodenal ulcer in its early stages, Dole was in very good shape for a man of his age. There was no evidence of any organic disease, although there was some hardening and thickening of the artery walls near the heart. But that’s pretty normal, and certainly wasn’t life-threatening. If somebody hadn’t crowned him with a femur, Billy Dole could have looked forward to a long and healthy retirement.’
‘And his skull?’ Hunter asked.
Parker took a sip of water before he answered. ‘I did some impact tests on the unbroken fragments,’ he said, ‘and the results show that Dole’s skull wasn’t weak – if anything, it was unusually strong. Dole was a big man with a heavy skeletal structure.’
‘Then that’s one theory out of the window,’ Kaufmann said.
Hunter nodded. ‘What about the force needed to drive that femur into his head? And I assume it was a real femur?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Parker replied. ‘It was a normal femur, in most respects. It hadn’t been sharpened or anything like that. Getting it out,’ he went on, ‘was quite a struggle. The distal end – that’s the knee joint – had lodged in Dole’s lower jaw, and I had to take the jaw off completely to release it.’
He paused for a moment.
‘Trying to estimate the force needed to drive it right through the skull, the brain cavity, the sinuses, and then down into the mouth is difficult, maybe even impossible. At least, without replicating the impact with another skull. What I can say is that I’m quite certain no human being could have done it in the circumstances you described. And there’s something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Billy Dole was standing on one leg when the femur hit him.’
‘What?’
Parker smiled, pleased with the effect of his remark. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true. What I found were compression fractures at the ends of the bones of Dole’s left leg, and some evidence of damage to the vertebrae as well. There was also a fracture of the head of his left femur. All the sort of injuries that you find in bodies that have suffered a severe fall. Or, in this case, a massive blow to the head.
‘In short,’ Parker finished, ‘Billy Dole was walking when the femur hit him, so he had no warning at all.’
There was a silence at the table as Hunter and Kaufmann digested that. The waitress appeared with their starters, but none of them touched the food or even looked at their plates.
‘That isn’t very helpful, doctor,’ Hunter said.
Parker shook his head. ‘You asked the question. The answer I’ve given you is my professional opinion.’
Hunter looked at Kaufmann.
‘I was right,’ she said. ‘No answers, just a bunch more questions.’
Hunter grinned at her, briefly. ‘If a human being couldn’t have done it, how the hell did the femur get driven into Billy Dole’s skull?’ he demanded.
Parker shrugged. ‘I have no idea. You’re the investigators, not me. I’m just a simple pathologist. And,’ he said, ‘just to rain on your parade some more, there were no fingerprints of any sort on the femur, and no indication of any trauma to the other end of it – the hip joint.’
‘Which means?’ Hunter prompted.
‘Which means that nobody, for example, held the femur against the top of Billy Dole’s head while somebody else drove it home with a sledge hammer.’
‘So,’ Hunter said, ‘we’re back to the solution according to Sheriff Dick Reilly – it was a murder that couldn’t have happened.’
‘Except that it did,’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann said quietly.
Parker picked up his spoon and took a mouthful of his soup.
‘Anything else, doctor?’ Hunter asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Parker said, smiling. ‘I was saving the best bits for last.’
‘And what are the best bits?’
‘I examined the femur, and the skull that Sheriff Reilly brought along. First, the femur. I said that it was normal in most respects, which it was. It hadn’t been out of the body for long – probably no more than three or four days – and when I touched it I noticed something odd about the surface texture, even through the surgical gloves.’
Kaufmann had picked up her fork, but put it down again.
‘So I looked at the bone under a microscope, and I saw something I’ve never seen before, or not on a human bone, anyway.’ He paused and looked across the table at Hunter and Kaufmann. ‘The flesh,’ he said, ‘had been flayed off it.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Hunter growled.
‘It means that every single scrap of flesh – muscle, tendon and connective tissue – had been stripped off the bone using some sort of equipment. Whatever had been used had left tiny indentations in the bone that were quite unmistakable.’
‘Isn’t that what they do to animal bones?’ Christy-Lee asked. ‘You know, to cattle and pig bones?’
Parker nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They call the product “re-constituted meat” or something like that, and then make it into sausages and burgers, or sometimes dog and cat food. It’s normally done with a kind of high-pressure wash, but this wasn’t. Whatever was used was a mechanical device of some sort.’
‘Why,’ Hunter asked, leaning across the table, and mentally losing all interest in the double cheeseburger he’d ordered as his main course, ‘would anyone want to remove all the flesh from a human thigh-bone?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Parker replied.
Kaufmann leaned back in her chair and pushed her untouched plate away from her. ‘I’ve kind of lost my appetite,’ she said. ‘Anything else about the femur?’
Parker had almost finished his soup, and put his spoon down before replying. ‘Well, there wasn’t too much to go on,’ he began. ‘You can’t,’ he said with a smile, ‘expect much of a photofit from a thigh-bone, but there are a few things I can tell you.’
Hunter and Kaufmann looked at the pathologist expectantly.
‘The victim was a young woman,’ Parker said. ‘My estimate is that she was at least twenty years old, but less than thirty, and the bone shows no signs of any illness or disease. Of course,’ he went on, ‘that’s not to say she wasn’t riddled with soft-tissue cancer or some other disease that wouldn’t leave any evidence on a long bone.’
He paused for a moment. ‘Apart from the absence of flesh, the femur appeared normal in every way, at least at first sight.’
‘Yes?’ Hunter said.
‘There was a small hole, around six millimetres in diameter – that’s about a quarter of an inch – drilled at each end of the shaft of the femur. And what do you think I found inside?’
Hunter was getting tired of guessing games. ‘Suppose you tell us, doctor,’ he said.
Parker smiled again. ‘Nothing at all,’ he replied.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann asked.
‘The shaft of the femur was empty. No bone marrow. That means somebody sucked the marrow out through the holes.
‘Look,’ Parker said, leaning forward. ‘I really don’t know what we’re dealing with here, but that bone appeared to have been processed. You know, like you’d do with a beef bone at a slaughterhouse. The flesh stripped off, the marrow sucked out, and then the bone discarded. Whoever did it has access to some quite sophisticated equipment, and I don’t like to even think about why he’s doing it.’
The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Parker finished his soup – as a pathologist, it took a lot to make him lose his appetite. Hunter toyed with his starter, but Kaufmann simply couldn’t eat.
‘OK, doctor,’ Hunter said finally. ‘What about the skull?’
‘As you and the sheriff thought,’ Parker replied, ‘the brain was still inside. Like the femur, there was no sign of any disease or obvious cause of death. There was one bullet hole and evidence of a second bullet which had hit the side of the skull but failed to penetrate, but these were presumably caused by the teenager who found the artifact. The lower jaw was missing. The neck had been severed directly below the base of the skull, probably by a very sharp knife, but I have no idea if that was the cause of death or occurred post-mortem.’
‘But the neck was severed, so we’re dealing with a probable murder?’ Hunter asked.
‘I can’t say that for certain,’ Parker replied, ‘but obviously that’s the most likely scenario. The other point of interest is that the scalp, facial muscles, and all other external tissue had been removed.’
The question was obvious, and Kaufmann asked it. ‘How was it removed?’
‘Just like the femur,’ Parker replied, nodding. ‘The same kind of mechanical device was used. I found indentations in the skull that were identical to those on the femur.’
Kaufmann leaned across the table. ‘Would I be jumping the gun to suggest that the skull belonged to a young woman, aged twenty to thirty?’ she asked.
Again Parker nodded. ‘Exactly right,’ he said. ‘And to save you asking the next question, yes, I do think these two specimens came from the same victim. I’m taking both the skull and the femur back to Helena. Once I get a DNA test carried out, I hope I’ll be able to confirm that.’