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The skull reconstruction—hand-delivered from Cam and Kyra personally—had given her a place to start. The woman had been near Bailey’s own age at the time of her death. Her cheekbones were sharp, her eyes most likely light colored—a guess from the forensic artist—and her chin pointed. The artist had given her light-blond hair, cut in a style popular thirty years ago. The clothing they’d found had been popular before Bailey was born.
Bailey had a hunch, but the possibility was strong that the body had been in the ground at least that long, plus or minus five years.
Fashions weren’t exactly as fluid as some people thought. Some people adopted early—other held on far too long.
It was one reason Bailey preferred the simple—jeans and T-shirts all the way.
She had helped log the woman’s clothing herself. Haldyn had promised to handle processing it herself.
The forensics supervisor was more intrigued by the plastic wrap and the possibility of what it had preserved.
And there was always the ME’s report.
Bailey was going to stop by the ME’s office and get the preliminary report after her next therapy session at W4HAV.
She had sixteen missing persons cases involving women that spanned twenty-to-forty years ago. Her target range was a two-hundred-mile radius around the county.
She studied the family-provided photos of the missing women.
Two were possible. She blew the photos up and pinned them to her board with the reconstruction between them. It would probably be quicker to do what she was about to do on the computer, but she needed the pen-and-paper aspect.
She understood how facial reconstruction worked. It was all about math, in a lot of ways.
What she was going to do wouldn’t be admissible in court, nor would it be completely reliable, but she needed a place to start.
With a second set of copies, with all three heads blown up to the exact same size and width, she took out a red pencil and a ruler and began making small marks around the photos, where the eyes and nose bridge would be. Where the width of the nasal bridge might be beneath the skin.
And then she drew lines.
One face measured up a bit better than the other.
A seventeen-year-old woman from Garrity, Texas. A town more than four hours away. She’d been missing twenty-seven years. A distant cousin had reported her missing weeks after she’d stopped going to work at the nearby hospital, where she’d worked as an intern.
She’d had a bright future, from what the reports said, but not many personal connections.
Her last known whereabouts had been with a slightly older intern, named Glendale Lincoln.
He’d left Texas decades ago, married, and died in a car accident the same year Bailey had turned two.
Other than a single sheet of paper in the file, they had nothing else.
They needed DNA to conclusively connect their body to the missing girl, named Delores Grisholm.
She checked her watch. It was at least a three-hour drive between Barratt County and Garrity County. By the time she even arrived, it would be almost five.
She’d need to hit the road, and soon. It was going to be a late night.