The Bone Chamber Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, never mind she’d want to be here.”
    “Like I said, we had to make other arrangements. Time is of the essence, so how soon can you have a drawing done?”
    “Hard to say until I know what I have to work with.” She looked over Tasha’s notations, the measurements of skin and flesh thickness, based on height, weight, race and approximate age of the victim, all things that a forensic anthropologist would relay to Sydney through the examination of the skeleton or remains, helping her to proceed in re-creating the victim’s face. It was a complicated process, certainly not an exact science, but a science nonetheless. She flipped through the few pages, curious as to why Tasha, a perfectionist if there ever was one, would allow her rough draft report to be turned over. “Crime scene photos?”
    “In another file.”
    “This is highly irregular.”
    And Special Agent Griffin said, “For a reason.”
    She glanced over at him, and for all his calm exterior, there was something about him that made her think he was worried, harried, not so unruffled after all. Interesting. “Clothing? Hair? I need a photo of the body as it was found. Blow it up, eliminate whatever you don’t want me to see, just get it to me if you want me to do my job. If you can’t release that, a frontal shot of her, pre-autopsy, before the skull was cleaned, will suffice. Again, the same. It will help me finalize the drawing, make sure it’s accurate.”
    He nodded, unlocked and opened his briefcase, and pulled a single photo from a manila folder. “Crime scene only. I can get you the other tomorrow. This I’ll need back.” He handed it to her, then started pacing the room.
    Apparently this was a case that wasn’t to be discussed, wasn’t to leave this room. Maybe that’s why Tasha had agreed to pass on her notes as rough as they were. Even so, had Special Agent Griffin just presented the damned photo with the skull, then let Sydney do her drawing at a normal hour, she wouldn’t have given any of it a second thought—probably wouldn’t even remember it as anything significant. At least that was her train of thought up until she viewed the crime scene photograph. It wasn’t as if anyone could view such a photo with hopes the image would fade. One look made it easy to understand why it was necessary to boil the skull. The victim’s face—along with her fingertips—had literally been removed. Peeled away. And it was more than someone simply not wanting the victim ID’d. There was something clearly ritualistic about the way the face had been removed, the shape of the wound. A triangle with its point at the top of the forehead, its base at her chin.
    Damned hard to make that pattern on a skull, but there was no doubt about the shape, and she forced herself to look beyond it to what she needed for her work. The woman had dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair. Her shirt had been ripped open, exposing well-developed breasts, which put her past the age of puberty. The condoms trailing from her front jeans pocket gave her the appearance of being at least near the age of consent, and Sydney glanced at Tasha’s report and found that the victim was probably in her mid-to-late twenties.
    She took out a pad of lined paper, started writing her own notes, when Griffin stopped his pacing, looked at her. “What are you doing?”
    “Taking notations for my drawing. From there I intend to do a rough sketch of the victim’s hair length, noting the color, details about it, as well as the clothing. If that’s okay?”
    He stepped back, didn’t ask any more questions, and she told herself that it wasn’t her place to decide how the drawing was done, or why the drawing was done. She was here to follow orders—something she used to be good at.
    Three hours and five cups of coffee later, leading to several escorted trips to the restroom, she decided there wasn’t enough caffeine in the world that was going to allow her to concentrate on the developing