Val had to remove the upper and lower jaws so she could perform the dental ID properly. On the table next to her sat an open textbook depicting the necessary steps on how to do this. She had no choice but to use the book. Hell, she never had to remove a set of jaws before. Howie’s help was rare these days. In fact, she hardly saw much of him at all. Dr. Blythe was continually assigning duties for him that never coincided with her schedule. Without Howie, she was at a disadvantage. How was she supposed to keep pace with Gwen Carmondy without his help and guidance? The simple fact was that she couldn’t.

After Gwen’s arrival, only a few days ago, Val had been pretty much confined to the morgue to identify people by their teeth when no other means were available. Her job consisted of everything smelly, rotting, and labor intensive. As Howie predicted, she’d grown mostly accustomed to the odor and sights of decomposition and was now unaffected by even the worst decaying corpses. The maggots though, were still hard to handle. Luckily, this victim was pretty fresh and there was no need to worry about bugs. Today Val wore scrubs only, seeing no need for a Tyvek suit. She did have to work in the decomp room though, because this is where the dental equipment was kept.

Periodically, Val glanced up at the door, hoping no one would come in and see her referring to a book. That’s all she needed right now, to look inexperienced and grossly incompetent, to the point of performing her duties on a learn as you go basis with a step-by-step guide in a textbook for a forensic dental procedure. According to her lie, Oliver Solaris recommend her for this job. Now, more than ever, she needed to be Gwen Carmondy’s equal, not some second-rate idiot.

Val picked up a scalpel and made an incision from the corner of the dead man’s mouth towards his ear. She repeated this on the other side. The victim had been dead for about 18 hours and was in full rigor. She couldn’t even open his mouth enough to separate his upper and lower teeth, let alone get X-ray film in there. His face might as well have been made out of concrete for all of the movement she was able to get out of the jaws. Removing them from the body was the only way to get the X-rays.

Now that the slices were made, she placed her scalpel in the vestibule, the area inside the mouth between the gum tissue and the lip. She cut across, separating the bone from the lips and cheek. Val took another look at the open textbook. So far so good, her progress corresponded to the diagram.