“Very unlikely. When exposed to extreme heat, fluids in the brain expand, causing the skull to explode. Then the fragments burn. That’s what happened here.”

“Did anyone go missing at the time of the fire?”

Good question, Nurse Courtney.

“You two good here if I leave to check on that?” King asked.

Courtney and I nodded.

“It’s all so black and gray and crumbly.” Courtney was staring at the partial skeleton. “How can you be sure the bones are sorted right?”

Nurse Courtney nails another one. Because of a preconceived mind-set, I’d made the amateur mistake of assuming the remains represented a single individual.

I turned on the lights and studied one jaw fragment under magnification. It was toast. I studied the other.

And felt a little flip in my gut.

“Hot diggety.”

“Zippy whiz bang?”

I looked up. We both smiled.

“This fragment retains about two centimeters of the posterior end of the dental arcade, including two molar sockets. I may see root fragments down in them.”

“Shazam!”

“Nurse Courtney, you’re on for X-ray.”

She did everything but snap a salute.

I got the tray, transferred the jaw fragments, and instructed her on the angles I needed. “While you do that, I’ll reexamine every bone. Then you can shoot films of both individuals.”

The skull fragments were mostly parietal and occipital. All edges and surfaces were fried. Not a single ectocranial or endocranial detail remained. Only DNA would sort them out. I doubted any had survived the fire.

Based on size, I was able to separate what remained of the midshaft portions of the long bones. A femur, tibia, and ulna stayed with Daryl. A femur and tibia transferred to the smaller man. A humerus went with the unassigned cranial fragments.

I was recording observations in my notebook when Courtney returned, pushing a portable light box. The jaw fragments sat atop small brown envelopes on the lower shelf.

“I think you were right.” Electric with excitement. “And I think the older guy had dental work.”

I slid the films free, clamped the first onto the box, and thumbed the switch. The fragments lit up in shades of gray. The one on the right showed nothing but amorphous trabecular bone. Courtney pointed to it. “That’s Daryl. The younger guy.”

The older man’s fragment had more of the dental arch, including the sockets I’d spotted. They appeared as dark indentations in the spongy gray. Deep in each was a tiny white cone, a root fragment. Running vertically up the center of each cone was a brilliant white filament.

“Those are root canals, right? That could get him identified?”

She was correct. On both points.

That wasn’t what stopped the breath in my throat.

Chapter 32

THE FRAGMENT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS EXPERIENCING A BLIZzard. A cloud of white dots stippled the lower mandibular border. Outliers spread across the angle and up the ascending ramus.

“What is it?” Courtney asked.