Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(38)

Mason grimaced. “Tissue? There was still flesh left?”

“A bit. A simple soaking in a few different solutions takes care of it.”

Mason knew she’d purposefully left out details. In the past, he’d stepped into the room when bones had been simmering to remove the flesh. It’d smelled like a restaurant. He swallowed hard.

“How’d you get them separated? How do you know you have the right bones grouped together?” he asked.

“Very carefully.” Dr. Peres spoke. “I’m glad I was there for the unearthing. That’s where the first mistakes are always made. Luckily, he’d buried them one at a time. There was a small layer of dirt between each skeleton, enough to help us keep each separate.”

“Layers of dirt? How long apart between each burial?”

Dr. Peres bit her lip, and Mason knew she was frustrated that she didn’t have a perfect answer for him.

“I can’t tell. We can have each dirt sample analyzed, but I’m comfortable saying all five were buried within a ten-year period.”

Mason nodded. Once they had identified the bodies, he had a hunch each one would have been reported missing around the same set of years. He needed to get them identified first.

“What else can you tell me?” He pulled out his notebook and pen.

Dr. Peres’s face shifted into lecture mode. “This is number three. He’s a Caucasian male, approximately eighteen to twenty-five. Six feet tall with a well-healed fracture of his tibia.” Dr. Peres pointed at a bone in the lower leg. Mason bent closer and saw the thickened, slightly lumpy area along the sleek bone. “It can take three to five years for a break to look this good. It’s an old one…compared to this one.” Dr. Peres moved to a different table and indicated the smaller lower arm bone.

The bone had a jagged break that ran across the bone. “This happened pretty close to death. And this particular break on the ulna usually indicates a defensive wound.” She lifted her arms and crossed them in front of her face as if protecting her head. “Imagine defending yourself against a swing from a baseball bat. Where is the impact going to be?”

Mason nodded. Her visual worked very well for him. “But how do you know it didn’t happen while transporting the bones? Old bones have got to be brittle. I wouldn’t think it’d take much to accidentally break one.”

Dr. Peres smiled and picked up the thin arm bone. “Every break tells me a story. See here?” She ran a gloved finger along the break. “See the darkness? It’s a stain from the bleeding because of the break. The broken ends would be a lighter color than the outer bone if it happened during the recovery or transport because there would be nothing to seep in and stain the break. And see how notched the broken surface is? When fresh bone breaks, the ends are jagged and angled. When a bone breaks long after death, the break is almost flat, because the bone is brittle…like a dry stick snapping. Ever try to break a green tree branch? It’s a jumbled mess. A fresh stick will never break cleanly. Same with bone.”

Mason blinked, remembering his attempts to break some small tree branches to roast marshmallows with while camping. It’d been a disaster. He’d used an ax to finish the job. “So someone took a bat or mallet to him, and he tried to protect himself?”

Nodding, Dr. Peres gently laid the bone back in its place. “He was hit with something hard. And his skull shows three blows that are perimortem…close to time of death. I can’t tell you what the weapon was other than it was large and blunt. The imprints on the skull are too large to be a hammer.” She lifted the skull, showing Mason three impact sites with radiating fractures.

“Were those enough to kill him?”

“Easily.”

Had the man been beaten to death?

“But I don’t think that’s what killed him.” She rotated the skull and showed him a small circle at the back of the skull. “This is probably your cause of death.”

“Christ,” muttered Mason. “Entry or exit wound?”

“Entry,” stated Dr. Peres. “See how there’s no beveling of the bone around the wound? Entry bullet holes are flat around the holes. The bevel is inside. I didn’t find an exit wound or the bullet. It either exited through the eye or never exited at all.” She frowned. “Though I would have found the bullet if it had stayed inside.”

Mason made a few notes. “Do the others have gunshot wounds?”

“Three of the skulls do,” answered Dr. Campbell.

“Do you have ages for the rest of them?”

“They’re all in the same age range,” said Dr. Peres. “Three are white, two African American.”

Mason looked up from the notes he was scribbling. “Oh? An equal-opportunity killer?”

Dr. Campbell’s eyes narrowed. “Does the race matter?”

“Usually killers will stick to one race. Not always but more often than not.”

“I prefer the word ancestry over race,” added Dr. Peres.

Mason held up his hands. “I just want to find who did this. Sorry I’m not the most PC person in the world. Frankly, I can’t keep up with what’s okay to say and what’s not. But yes, a pattern in the type of victims does help direct us to the killer.” He met both women’s gazes. “Now. Tell me how you can tell someone is black…African American…whatever. He’s been killed, and I want to find the murderer.”