No one ventured an opinion.
Snatching up a pen, McGee pointed to the tubular bones that had once formed fingers. “Look at the first four sets of phalanges.”
Everyone did.
McGee rotated another photo, this one showing the bones of a single digit.
“These are the bones of the left fifth finger after removal of the soft tissue. Again, look at the phalanges.”
“The fingertip is present,” said Olsen.
“Yes. This was the digit that yielded the one partial print. What else?”
“These bones seem skinnier and smoother than the ones in the other fingers. And they flare out more at the ends,” said Justine.
“Head of the class, little lady.”
Normally, Olegard would have bristled at the “little lady” endearment. Given McGee’s stature, she let it slide.
“What does it mean?” Olsen asked, eyes glued to the photos.
McGee ignored him and produced a magnifying lens from the briefcase. He handed it to Justine, along with the first autopsy shot of digits one through four.
“Note there are tiny slashes at the ends of each of the first four middle phalanges.”
Leaning forward, McGee reached out and shifted his pen from thumb, to pointer, to middle, to ring man. Justine followed its progress with the lens.
“The horizontal lines?” she asked.
“Yes. Those are cut marks created by a nonserrated blade. The marks are absent on the middle phalange of the pinkie but present on its proximal phalange, the one at the near end. Cut marks are also present on the fifth metacarpal, adjacent to where the finger articulates with the hand.”
“So the left pinkie was the only digit to retain its tip and to have no cut marks at that end?” Justine said. She addressed no one in particular, as though sifting data in her mind. “The left pinkie was also the only digit to have cut marks at the end where the finger joined the hand.”
“Again, the little lady nailed it.”
The little lady handed the photo and lens to Olsen.
“May I hypothesize?” Justine asked, encouraged by McGee’s smile in her direction.
McGee dipped his chin.
Justine took it as assent. “The fingertips were removed from every digit but the left pinkie. That finger was severed intact.”
“Bravo.”
Meyer performed an eye roll directed at Nunn. Are you believing this lunatic? “You’re saying the killer hacked off nine of Thomas’s fingertips but cut off his left pinkie and left it intact?”
“No,” McGee said. “I am not.”
Meyer’s brows reached for his hairline.
“Moving on. Muntz based his positive ID on three things.” McGee raised a hand and moved a stumpy thumb from finger to finger. “First, the presence of a belt buckle belonging to Christopher Thomas. Second, a match to a partial print taken from a left fifth finger. Third, consistency between the skeletal profile obtained from the remains and Christopher Thomas’s known age, sex, race, and height.”
McGee replaced the hand-bone shots with views of the skull. As before, he pen-pointed at features in the photo.
“Short, globular head shape. Wide face, flaring cheekbones. Broad palate and nasal opening. Complicated zigzag suture pattern. Accessory bone at the back of the skull. To me that configuration screams Mongoloid.”
Blank looks.
“Those traits indicate Asian or Native American ancestry.” Slowly, teacher to dull pupils.
“You saying Thomas was Asian?” Tony Olsen made no effort to mask his skepticism.
McGee ignored the interruption. “Muntz made another error. In calculating stature he relied on only one bone, the femur. He then chose an inappropriate formula for performing a regression equation and misinterpreted the statistical significance of the estimate that equation generated. I remeasured leg-bone lengths, using the scale provided in the photographs, and recalculated stature applying statistics appropriate to Asians. My height estimate for the decedent is 162 to 168 centimeters. Christopher Thomas measured 183 centimeters.”
“What about the print?” Tiny vessels had blossomed in Tony Olsen’s cheeks. “Fingerprints don’t lie.”
“I have to admit that bothered me too. ‘Iggy,’ I said to myself, ‘it doesn’t add up. Or does it? What’s the pattern? You got a boatload of dots, now link them together.’”
Again, a stumpy thumb worked stumpy fingers, ticking off points.
“Dot: the vic is supposed to be a tall white guy, but his skull says he’s Asian and his leg bones say he’s too short.
“Dot: the left-fifth-finger bones look different from all the other finger bones, smoother and more gracile in the shafts and broader at the ends.
“Dot: every fingertip was removed but the one on the left fifth finger.
“Dot: nine digits were reduced to bone, but the left fifth finger retained its soft tissue.”
McGee did his best at crossing his arms on his chest. It didn’t go well.
“Then I remembered. The glycerin.”
Mystified looks all around.
McGee scanned the text, then read aloud from Muntz’s autopsy report: “‘One digit was deeply embedded in the femoroacetabular junction.’”
Not a single Aha! expression.
Scooching forward with an alternating cheek-to-cheek maneuver, McGee teased a photo from the assortment cascading over the desktop, grabbed the lens, and gestured everyone close.
“The bone in this shot forms the left half of the pelvis. That deep, round hole below the blade is where the head of the thighbone sits. The joint is called the femoroacetabular junction. That socket is protected by very thick muscle. Soft tissue is often preserved there long after the rest of the flesh sloughs. You with me?”
Nods all around.
Satisfied, McGee positioned the lens over the pelvic photo.
“What do you see circling the hip socket?”
“Cut marks,” said Olsen.
“Exactly.”
McGee laid down the lens. Justine picked it up and drew her nose and the glass to within inches of the print. The others assumed listening postures.
“Here’s my take. Bruno Muntz screwed up the ID. The man in the iron maiden was not Christopher Thomas. The victim was an Asian male of roughly Thomas’s age and size but slightly shorter in stature. The man’s teeth were destroyed to prevent dental identification. His fingertips were removed to eliminate prints. His left fifth finger was replaced by that of someone else. Incisions were made into the gluteal mass of the Asian victim, rather clumsy ones, I might add. Thomas’s finger was coated with glycerin and fat to retard decomposition, then jammed through the muscle deep into the dead man’s hip socket.”
“And Muntz blew this whole phalange-bone thing?” Tony Olsen flapped a hand at the photos. “The missing fingertips?”
“Distal phalanges are tiny, often missed in recovery. If he noticed their absence, which I doubt, the good doctor probably thought they’d gotten lost. Perhaps he didn’t bother to sift through all the sludge in the maiden. Thomas’s belt, with recognizable buckle, was placed on the victim. The body, sans fingertips but cum Thomas’s pinkie, was sealed inside the iron maiden. The apparatus was crated and shipped. The rest is history.”
“The mismatched bones? The cut marks?” Tony Olsen’s cheeks were now the color of raspberry sherbet.
“Muntz was a pathologist, not an anthropologist. The man overstepped his abilities.”
“But-” Justine sat forward. “One of Christopher Thomas’s teeth was found inside the iron maiden, wasn’t it? And that was proved.”
“Right again, little lady.” McGee gave her an odd, lopsided smile. “It was Christopher Thomas’s tooth. And it surely did not come out of the Asian man’s mouth.
Silence.
Olsen was the first to break it. “If you’re right, someone took brutal measures to ensure that the victim would be misidentified as Christopher Thomas.”