Gwen held the skull in place and Jack pointed out where to cut. Val placed the handles close together, wrapped the blades around the bone and in a quick push of the handle, a small section of the skull was free.

“Here.” Jack handed her a paper towel. “Wrap it in this.”

“I need to get a piece of Jeanne and Francine’s too,” Val said. The sequence was repeated and a small section of bone was removed. She grabbed a specimen bag and labeled each. After they were done, Jack was eager to get back to inspecting and comparing the skulls. So was Val, but the skulls weren’t the only things in the room that caught her attention. The teeth did too.

Eyeing them, she opened the containers and took them out with a set of tweezers. She examined each tooth and root surface. Quite a few had portions of the jaw bone still attached, making it hard to view the entire tooth. But for the most part they were in good condition, especially given they had been ripped out of the victim’s mouth. Surprisingly, none of the roots were broken.

Val picked Francine’s skull back up and placed one of her teeth back in the appropriate socket. She continued with the rest, one by one. They all fitted neatly back into place. She smiled. This was something she had wanted to do from the beginning and now she had her chance.

“Can I have that for a second?” Jack asked Val. “I want to see something.”

“Sure.” She pulled out the teeth and handed him the skull.

Val picked up Jeanne’s skull, repeating the same process by placing Jeanne’s teeth into the sockets. No matter how she tried to get them in, none of them fitted. That’s odd. For the hell of it, she picked up the unknown skull and tried to slip Jeanne’s teeth in, only because some of the shapes appeared to be the right size.

After she placed the first one in, she tried another and then another. She thought for a long moment, trying to absorb what she was seeing and then stated, staring at the skull in her hands, “I have something to tell the two of you.”

“What?” The statement obtained little interest.

“Jeanne Coleman’s teeth fit into the sockets of the unknown skull. I don’t care what the DNA or post-mortem interval results say. This skull, the skull from Devil’s Hole, belongs to Jeanne Coleman.” Val pointed at her find, her hands shaking with excitement.

Both Jack and Gwen snapped their heads in Val’s direction.

“If that skull belonged to Jeanne, then it was detached from her body more than one year ago. How on earth could she have left an insurance policy to Lorelei Sebastian? That policy was written only six months ago,” Jack said.

“Let alone apply for a passport recently,” Gwen added.