Tim Larabee resembles a wrangler who’s spent far too much time in the desert. A marathon junkie, daily training has grizzled his body, fried his skin, and hollowed his already lean cheeks.

Larabee’s eyes were apologetic. Eyes set way too deep. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

“My fault. I was leading with my ass.”

“Let me help you.”

As we maneuvered the gurney out of the cooler and into the autopsy room, I told him about the cellar.

“Voodoo?”

I shrugged. Who knows?

“Guess you won’t be X-raying the fill.” Larabee slapped one iron cauldron.

“Flying blind,” I agreed, pulling on gloves. “But I’ll have Joe shoot the skulls as soon as he gets here.”

Larabee indicated the box. “Quick look-see?”

I opened the flaps. Each skull was as I’d left it, encased in a labeled ziplock. No need to check the bag. The stench told me it still contained the chicken.

While the ME gloved, I removed the human skull and centered it on a cork ring balancer on the autopsy table.

“Mandible?”

I shook my head no.

Larabee ran a fingertip over the forehead and crown. “Looks like wax,” he said.

I nodded in agreement.

Larabee touched the stain haloing the borders of the overlying goo. “Blood?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Human?”

“I’ll take a sample for testing.”

Larabee gestured with an upturned palm. I knew what he wanted.

“This is only preliminary,” I warned.

“Understood.”

I took the cranium in my hands, palate and foramen magnum pointing up.

“I’ll wait for the X-rays, of course, but it looks like the third molars were just erupting, and there’s minimal wear on the others. The basilar suture has recently fused.” I referred to the junction between the sphenoid and occipital bones at the skull base. “That configuration suggests an age in the mid to late teens.”

I rotated the skull.

“The back of the head is smooth, with no bump for the attachment of neck muscles.” I pointed to a triangular lump projecting downward below the right ear opening. “The mastoids are small. And see how this raised ridge dies out at the end of the cheekbone?”

“Doesn’t continue backward above the auditory meatus.”

I nodded. “Those features all suggest female.”

“The brow ridges aren’t much to write home about.”

“No. But at this age that’s not definitive.”

“What about race?”

“Tough one. The nasal opening isn’t all that wide, but the nasal bones meet low on the bridge, like a Quonset hut. The inferior nasal border and spine are damaged, so it’s hard to evaluate shape in that region.” I turned the skull sideways. “The lower face projects forward.” I looked down onto the crown. “Cranial shape is long but not excessively narrow.”

I replaced the skull on its ring.

“I’ll run measurements through Fordisc 3.0, but my gut feeling is Negroid.”

“African-American.”

“Or African. Caribbean. South American. Central-”

“A black teenaged girl.”

“That’s only preliminary.”

“Yeah, yeah. PMI?”

“That’ll take some work.”

“A hundred years? Fifty? Ten? One?”

“Yes,” I said. “I FedEx’ed the bugs yesterday.”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“It was in and out early,” I said.

“Now what?” Larabee asked.

“Now I sift through two cauldrons of dirt.”

The door opened and Joe Hawkins stuck his head through the gap.

“You see what I left in the coffee room yesterday?”

Larabee and I shook our heads no.

“I was at the university all day,” I said.

“I was in Chapel Hill,” Larabee said.

“Just as well. You ain’t gonna like it.”

WE FOLLOWED HAWKINS DOWN A SHORT CORRIDOR TO A SMALL staff lounge. The left side was a mini-kitchen, with cabinets, sink, stove, and refrigerator. A phone and a small TV sat at one end of the counter. A coffeemaker and a basket holding sugar and dried cream packets sat at the other. A round table and four chairs took up most of the right side of the room.

Joe Hawkins has been hauling stiffs since the Eisenhower years, and is living proof that we’re molded by what we do. Cadaver thin, with dark-circled eyes, bushy brows, and dyed black hair slicked back from his face, he is the archetypical B-movie death investigator.

Unsmiling, Hawkins crossed to the table and jabbed a finger at an open copy of Tuesday’s Charlotte Observer.

“Yesterday’s paper.”

Larabee and I leaned in to read.

Local section. Page five. Three column inches. One photo.

Demons or Dump?

Police were baffled Monday night when a 911 call sent them to a house on Greenleaf. While renovating, a plumber had stumbled onto more than rusty pipes. Within hours, skulls, cauldrons, and an assortment of strange items were removed from the home’s basement and transported to the MCME morgue and the CMPD crime lab.

Directing the recovery operation were forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan and homicide detective Erskine Slidell. Though queried, police refused to comment on whether any remains were human.

The plumber, Arlo Welton, recounted knocking through a wall into a mysterious subterranean cellar. Welton described an altar and satanic paraphernalia that, in his opinion, clearly indicated demonic ritual.

Devil worship? Or underground Dumpster? The investigation is ongoing.

The photo was grainy, taken from too great a distance with too little light. It showed Slidell and me standing beside the crooked porch swing. My hair was cascading from a topknot. I was wearing the jumpsuit. Skinny was picking something from his ear. Neither of us looked ready to appear on The View. Photo credit was given to Allison Stallings.

“Sugar,” Larabee said.

“Shit,” I said.

“Nice ’do.”

My finger told Larabee what I thought of his humor.

As though on cue, the phone rang. While Hawkins picked up, I reread the article, feeling the usual irritation. While I’m an avid consumer of news, both print and electronic, I detest having journalists in my lab or at my field recoveries. In my view, cameras and mikes don’t go with corpses. In their opinion, neither the lab nor the crime scene are mine and the public has a right to know. We coexist in a state of forced accommodation, yielding only as necessary.

Allison Stallings. The name wasn’t familiar. Perhaps a new hire at the paper? I thought I knew everyone covering the police beat in town.

“Mrs. Flowers has been flooded with calls from the press.” Hawkins was holding the receiver to his chest. “Been saying ‘no comment.’ Now that you’re here, she wants direction.”

“Tell them to drop dead,” I said.

“‘No comment’ is good,” Larabee overruled.

Hawkins transmitted the message. Listened. Again, pressed the phone to his shirtfront.

“She says they’re insistent.”

“Mysterious? Satanic?” My voice oozed disdain. “They’re probably hoping for a boiled baby for the five o’clock news.”

“No comment,” Larabee repeated.

I spent the rest of the day with the Greenleaf materials.

After photographing the human skull, I began a detailed analysis, starting with the teeth.

Unfortunately, only ten of the original sixteen uppers remained. Nothing sinister. Dentition fronting the arcade is single-rooted. When the gums adios, the incisors and canines aren’t far behind.

Dental Aging 101. Choppers don’t arrive fait accompli. No scoop there. Everyone knows mammal teeth come in two sets, baby and adult. And that each set makes its entrance as a specialty troupe. Incisors, premolars, canines, molars. But dental development is more complex than simply a play in two acts. And much of the action takes place offstage.