Sometimes the bones I look at are not recent victims but rather are ancient or historic bones that turn up during construction projects or archaeological digs. I try to refer those cases to one of Kentucky 's many expert archaeologists or physical anthropologists, people whose academic training suits them to that type of analysis. I stick to bones that tell the stories of more recent crimes, though I occasionally consult with the academics to take advantage of their expertise.

One such expert is Nancy Ross-Stallings, a bespectacled self-avowed science nerd who works out of the tiny community of Harrodsburg as a contract archaeologist. She first came to my aid in the winter of 1995, after I had spent two days in the woods of McCreary County, down in the Daniel Boone National Forest near the Tennessee line.

Bill Conley (not his real name) had disappeared in the summer of 1994. About six months later, his boyfriend admitted to Lexington police detectives that he had killed Bill and hidden his body in the woods near Whitley City, another small town in southeastern Kentucky. State police troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Lexington city detectives searched diligently for Conley for more than a year, until finally, late one December afternoon in 1995, I got a call from the McCreary County Sheriff's Department. Conley's body was long gone, of course. But they thought they'd found his skull.

It was just before dark that I met Deputy David Morrow at the Blue Heron Café on Highway 27S. I followed his cruiser up a winding gravel road, where we stopped beside a pea-green 4x4 Jeep Cherokee belonging to the U.S. Forest Service. Through bitter experience, I'd learned to keep all of my key field gear in a sturdy backpack-in Kentucky's rough rural terrain, it's a rare occasion when I can actually drive my full-size van right up to a crime scene-so it didn't take long to transfer my camera, pack, and shovel into the Jeep.

A few minutes later, we had driven up the rocky, washed-out side road to a place where two trees had been marked with fluorescent orange spray paint, showing where one of the deputies had already blazed a path to the scene. I'd earned the nickname “Boondock Bone Doc” from all the hours I'd logged at crime scenes just like this one, on the side of a mountain or way out in the woods, searching for skeletal remains. And no matter where I went, no matter how isolated the scene, the first thing I always saw was a cluster of cops standing around smoking cigarettes, waiting patiently for my arrival.

“I hope this really is Conley's skull,” I said under my breath to the deputy, and he nodded. During the past year, people searching for this very victim had located the skeletal remains of three other people in the woods within a thirty-mile radius of where we were right now. I couldn't help being a little skeptical.

“So how do you know it's his?” I went on.

David was just now getting his long legs untangled from the Jeep's backseat. He handed me my pack and smiled. “You see that scraggly lookin' guy by that tree?”

I nodded.

“He's says he's the one who killed him.”

“You're kidding!”

“Yeah, he's been telling every cop who would listen that he killed his lover in Lexington, then brought the body down here to hide it. Unfortunately, he hid it so well that even he couldn't find it again, even after he decided to confess.”

“Why did he confess?” I asked. “If the victim was so well hidden, no one would ever have been the wiser.”

David laughed and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “The guy has AIDS now, and I guess he figured if he could get arrested and put in jail, then at least he'd have medical care for the rest of his life.”

“Oh, great. And here I thought maybe he just felt guilty and wanted to do the right thing.”

“Well, he did do the right thing, for whatever reason. We just need the body before we can put him away. Luckily, the detective in Lexington finally had him talk to one of the Forest Service guys who knows this area, and the killer's description of the terrain gave him just enough clues that he was able to find this skull. There's a side story to this too, that will make your hair stand on end-”

McCreary County Coroner Milford Creekmore joined us, interrupting the “side story” as he and his team piled out of their ancient ambulance, deluging us with friendly greetings. I stared at his old vehicle, hardly able to believe he'd gotten up into this rough terrain, but I should have known that where Milford was concerned, ordinary rules don't apply. We'd already worked together on a few cases-he's a great guy and, until his defeat in a close election a few years ago, he was one of Kentucky 's most colorful coroners. Mountain born and bred, Milford was about as round as he was tall, and by age forty he'd lost all but a few of his natural teeth. He scrounged the junkyard for cheap vehicles and then equipped them with the most outlandish, jury-rigged set of lights and sirens you could imagine. However, tonight he had managed to get his vehicle up that terrible road, urging it on like a recalcitrant mule, and when he and his clan piled out I knew that not one of them would hang back from the work ahead, not Milford-or his two sons-or his ex-wife-or his daughter, who had brought along her baby. They all wanted to see the skull and help with the investigation, but Milford made it clear that he and no one else was going to be my right-hand man.

Walking single file through a steady cold drizzle, we all headed for the site, which was about twenty feet down the side of the embankment away from the road. A bright-orange surveyor's plastic flag marked the spot, and I was surprised that I couldn't see the skull-until Gus Skinner, the Forest Service law enforcement investigator, got down on his knees and folded back some droopy clumps of grass to reveal something resembling a groundhog's burrow. There, about two feet below the surface, I could see the back of a human skull, resting face down in a pool of crystal-clear water.

To reach into the hole-the origin of a little artesian spring-I'd have to lie down flat on my belly and stick one arm and shoulder into the burrow, with my cheek rubbing into the very soil where the victim's body had probably decomposed. Maybe I was getting used to human decay-but I wasn't yet ready to do that.

As soon as he saw the problem, Milford voluntarily removed his ample raincoat and laid it on the ground with a flourish that would have made Sir Walter Raleigh proud. I lay down on it, took a few pictures, and finally reached down to grab the skull. I sat up as quickly as I could, turning the skull over in my hands to do a brief analysis in the flashing light of the detectives' cameras.

First off, I could tell this skull had belonged to an adult White male-the same biological profile as the putative victim. I could see the empty tooth sockets with their sharply defined edges-clear signs that the man's teeth had fallen out after he died. I suspected that the teeth were still down there in the hole. I could also see one tooth socket that was already filling in with bone as the edges began to smooth over. That tooth had been lost well before death, so long ago, in fact, that it had begun to heal. The dental information would come in handy when we had to make our ID.

I didn't see any fresh fractures in the skull that would have indicated any sort of head injuries. That, too, was useful, because it told us that we wouldn't have to look for a bullet or a baseball bat.

I put the skull into my evidence bag for future reference and turned my attention to the teeth and some small neck bones I could now see at the bottom of the spring. Even when I lay on Milford 's raincoat, they remained just out of my reach. The guys dug out a little around the hole's edge, which seemed like a good idea until I actually put my head, shoulders, and both arms into the enlarged hole. Then, thanks to Milford 's plastic coat, I started to slide in, headfirst. Chivalry is not dead in Kentucky, though, and at least three pairs of hands instantly grabbed hold of my belt, ankles, and parts in between, saving me from a chilly, stinky shampoo.