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called ‘periapicals’ and these are called ‘bite-wings’—the kind of X rays you normally have taken by the dentist. They give much better detail than the orthopantogram. Judging from the maturation of her molars, I’d put Jane Doe One at about fifteen or sixteen.”
    She placed another celluloid on the screen. “This is the panoramic of Doe Two. Her third molars hadn’t erupted either, but that’s because they were impacted. Eventually, they would have had to be extracted. But you can see for yourself how much more differentiation there is in the tooth crown; root development had already taken place. This girl was around twenty, twenty-one at the time of her death.”
    She clicked off the light and looked at Decker.
    “I’ll tell you something else about the two girls, Pete. They may have died on the pyre together, but they didn’t come from the same neighborhood.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    Hennon walked over to the Formica table and picked up several pink plaster casts of teeth and gums.
    “This is a cast of Jane Doe One’s teeth. Let’s call her Jean. Jean has had orthodonture; her teeth are beautifully aligned, although I betcha she hadn’t been wearing her retainer as much as she should have. We’ve got a little lippage here. But be that as it may, her occlusion is A-1 and she’s had serial extraction.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A standard procedure. In a small mouth with an otherwise normal bite, you extract specific teeth to make room in the jaw for the incoming canines or molars. It prevents overcrowding. Her first premolars have been extracted. Somebody spent money on her teeth, Pete. Orthodonture isn’t cheap. And her general dental work was done by someone with integrity. The few silver fillings she does have were carved neatly. There’s a tiny sliver of an overhang on number three but it happens to the best of us. Little Jean took good care of her teeth and had excellent dental care—middle class or above.
    “Now take a look at the second Jane Doe. Let’s call her Jan.”
    Decker winced and the dentist noticed it.
    “Did I hit a nerve?” She grimaced. “Sorry—bad choice of words for a dentist.”
    “Jan’s my ex-wife’s name. I don’t carry the torch for her, but let’s call the bones Joan instead.”
    “Joan, it is. Poor Joanie. She never had a chance. Look at these teeth.”
    Decker picked up the pink casts. The first thing he noticed were the odd-looking front teeth.
    “They look like pegs,” he said.
    “Right. Pegs notched up the center. And her first lower molars are odd-looking also. The occlusal table or biting surface is a mushy pile of oatmeal, suggesting to me Hutchinson’s incisors and mulberry molars—congenital syphilis. Dollars to doughnuts Joan was born with VD. Furthermore, Mom didn’t do much to help her daughter’s mouth, postpartum. The teeth left on the jaws are full of caries—decay. Several are broken off at the root, suggesting severe decay. And the little dental work she’d had done in her lifetime was strictly temporary. Trying to hold back a cracked dam with Scotch tape. You’re looking at a girl who didn’t have the finer things in life.”
    “Unfortunately,” he said, “they both ended up in the same spot.”
    She shook her head, clearly bothered, and Decker liked that. Most of the people he worked with, himself included, had hardened their attitude so they could get the job done. You couldn’t let it get to you. But once in a while he liked to be reminded that murder was something to feel badly about.
    “So what do we have?” he thought out loud. “A middle-class sixteen-year-old female Caucasian about five four with a petite built, and a lower-class female Caucasian about twenty, five eight, with a big frame. Both were killed about three months ago, burned, and shot with the same .38 caliber.”
    “Amazing what a bag of bones will tell you. Where do you go from here, Pete?”
    “Shuffle papers. I’ll run a line on