“Now that I’m one of the experts, I think I’ll need pepper spray, Mace and a stun gun to avoid any more mishaps like this.” Val took a sip of her beer and leaned forward. She had thought Gavin was a handsome man the first time she saw him. Here tonight, that opinion was reinforced.

“You might need a better weapon. Like something with bullets.”

“I don’t know how to shoot a gun. Is it hard to learn?” Val suddenly realized she was flirting and caught herself. This wasn’t a date. It was a professional meeting with a detective, on a high-profile murder case. Her behavior was wrong on several levels. Apart from the professional issue, luck with men wasn’t something Val could claim. She often made poor choices leading to doomed relationships that seemed to drag on longer than necessary. It was a cycle she couldn’t seem to break. Her accident had closed the dating chapter of her life. Val hadn’t gone out with anyone in over a year. Getting involved now, with this man in particular, was not an option.

Gavin smiled. “Not at all. I could teach you to shoot in a few afternoons.” He was still smiling when the waitress interrupted their discussion, telling them the table was ready.

The two sat with menus and chatted comfortably about the food. It wasn’t until the meal was ordered that they focused on the case. Though Val reassured herself that the more professional tone was for the best, she had to admit that she was also enjoying her evening with Detective Gavin on the personal level that she needed to avoid.

“What’s your opinion of that skull? It seemed like you were looking at something last night,” Gavin asked.

“There were several perfect rectangular shaped breaks around the sockets, like someone had used a set of pliers to get the teeth out.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“None of the sockets had broken teeth in them. Getting a tooth out isn’t easy and from the level of interseptal bone, that’s the bone between the teeth, I would guess they were in pretty firmly. If you just grabbed them with pliers, chances are the crown of the tooth would snap off, leaving the roots in the socket.”

“Is there any possibility of getting the teeth out without breaking them as you described?”

“Maybe. A good portion of the front part of the bone was gone where the pliers were placed, so I know the killer put the tool on the tooth and pulled forward. The bone was ripped out with it, so this could have helped to loosen it, making it come out intact. But this isn’t the correct way to do an extraction so fracturing it still would have been an issue.”