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“Business,” he said.
“Interested in a little pleasure?” she asked, lowering two inches of lash.
“I’m married,” Decker lied.
“So am I,” she responded. “I’m on number three and he’s unappreciative.” She puffed out her chest and gave him a full view. “He never notices my smile. And I do hate to drink alone.”
“I’m happily married,” he said.
“Yeah, aren’t all you guys with the roving eyes.” She signed the credit slip, threw the card into her purse, and snapped it shut. “Suit yourself,” she said, icily.
The receptionist slid open the glass panel.
“Dr. Hennon will see you now, Sergeant.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Sergeant?” the toothy woman said. “You’re a military man?”
“Cop.”
“You don’t look like a cop.”
“No?”
“No. I would have said you were an architect or a producer.”
Decker looked down at his outdated suit and white shirt. His striped tie was loosened and his shoes were scuffed. Nothing about his appearance suggested money or sophistication.
“Then again,” the woman continued, “my second husband, Lionel, always said I was a good judge of lovers, but a lousy judge of character.”
Decker agreed with Lionel on both counts.
Dr. Hennon’s office was small but cheerful. Bright yellow walls full of posters with bold swatches of color. The room contained a cluttered desk, a corkboard full of notes and dental articles, and a Formica bridge table that held casts of teeth and jaws. Above the desk was a large, wall-mounted X-ray viewing box on which hung radiographs of teeth clipped to metal hangers.
To the left of the viewing box was a waist-up frame photograph of a man and a woman at sunset. A striking shot streaked with brilliant oranges and lavenders, the sun highlighting, almost bleaching out, the woman’s face. She appeared to be in her thirties, with milky green eyes, and a head full of metallic auburn waves. Her features were sharp and her face was long, ending in a strong, dimpled chin.
Decker took out a manila folder, opened it and began to scan for forensic reports on the two Jane Does. A moment later, the woman in the photo came in and offered him a delicate, manicured hand. He stood up and held out his own.
“Annie Hennon,” she said shaking his big, freckled hand.
“Pete Decker.”
“Thanks for coming down to my office, Pete.”
“No problem.”
“I appreciate it. Most cops don’t know that forensic odontology isn’t a full-time job. I look at skulls maybe a dozen times a year—unless there’s a disaster. We haven’t had too many of those lately, thank God. If I have to take a day off from the office to meet you at the morgue, I lose a great deal of income.”
“It’s a pleasure to be on the good side of town for a change,” he said. “That’s a nice picture of you.”
“Better than the real thing, huh?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
She laughed. “I’m just terrible. Thanks. It is a nice picture. That’s my brother and me. Mom took the picture. Mom’s an okay photographer.”
She pulled up a chair, and they both sat down.
“Actually, my brother is the one who got me interested in forensic odontology,” she said. “Him and Heinz.”
“Heinz?”
“Heinz Buchholz. A little white-haired gnome of a man who made his mark in history by identifying Hitler’s jaw. When I went to dental school, he was sixty-five, maybe seventy, and he used to roam the labs asking us students if his denture set-up would pass the state licensing examination. Can you imagine that? An important man like him decked with honors, a pioneer in forensic dentistry, and he was reduced to worrying about passing the state board.”
She shook her head and turned to Decker.
“You made quite an impression on Babs Terkel,” she said, dryly.
“Pardon?”
“My last patient. The bleached blond with the big boobs. She came back to my office girl and started pumping her about you.”
“I thought she had a nice smile.”
Hennon kissed her fingertips and spread them outward.
“My six-to-eleven porcelain fused to gold. Didn’t I do a great job?”
“I’ll say. She has a great set of teeth.”
“Now she does,” the dentist said emphatically. “You should have seen her when she walked through my door. Bucky Beaver.” She waved her hand in the air. “Babs is all right—narcissistic as hell, but she’s reliable. Keeps her appointments and pays her bills. I wish I had a thousand of those.”
She walked out of the room and came back carrying two cups of black coffee.
“You want some sugar? I’m all out of cream.”
“Black’s fine,” he said.
She noticed the forensic report.
“Been to the morgue, huh? The county one, that is, not the one out there.” She jerked her head toward the waiting room. “My partner’s wife and her decorator spent six months and ten thousand dollars redoing it to achieve the look of death. No accounting for taste. Anyway, what does the anthropologist say?”
“The report came in this morning. Doesn’t tell me too much, although I realize there’s not a hell of a lot to go on.”
“What did he come up with?” she asked, sipping her coffee.
“From the bone structure, he surmises that they were both female, young—in their late teens or early twenties at most—and Caucasian. Jane Doe One looked to be about five-four, five-five and small-boned. She had reached ninety-five percent of her postpuberty growth. Number Two was taller, maybe five eight, and had a large frame. She’d stopped growing according to the bone plates. The bodies weren’t lying in the mountains as long as I would have thought. From the skin fragments he said they probably were dumped about three months ago. They were burnt either alive or shortly after they were shot, because their fists had curled from muscle contraction due to the heat, which would only happen if there was still some muscle tone prior to rigor mortis. He also found a few partial fingerprints lodged in the inner folds of the finger joints, but that doesn’t help unless the girls had been printed. So far, I’ve struck out with that. There’s no record of their prints in our computer. They were shot with the same .38 caliber weapon—the bone rills match—and his guess is that the firearm was a Colt.”
Decker slapped down the report.
“He said you may have a thing or two to add.”
“Burnt alive?”
“Probably.”
“That’s revolting,” Hennon said, sticking out her tongue.
Decker threw up his hands. “Lots of perverts out there. I’ve got a teenage daughter of my own. I’m constantly restraining the urge to call her and ask if she’s okay.”
“And they ask me how can I stand looking in mouths all day. Hey, I’d rather look at tooth decay than deal with sicko deviates who burn people alive.”
She sighed and flicked on the light of the X-ray screen. Decker pulled out a notepad.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve got it all written down for you.”
“I like to take notes.”
“You’re trying to quit smoking,” she said matter-of-factly. “It gives you something to do with your hands.”
“You missed your calling as a detective.”
“Your teeth—smoker’s stain. Probably also coffee stain,” she said, staring at his mouth. “Sorry. It’s an occupational hazard. Make an appointment with Kelly and I’ll do a really nice polish job, gratis.”
“I’ll do that just as soon as I find a spare minute.”
“I’ve heard that excuse before.” She smiled impishly and covered the screen with a four-by-ten radiograph.
“This X ray is a panoramic view of Doe One’s mouth. It covers all the bony structures of the mandible and maxilla from ear to ear, thereby giving us a good overall look at jawbones and teeth. It’s not great for detail, but you can see her third molars hadn’t erupted. Here they are, just tooth buds in her jaw.”
She pointed to four spots on the radiograph. Inside the jawbone next to well-defined teeth were small white disks that looked like cotton balls delineated by a white circle.
“What’s the circle?” he asked.
“The lining of the tooth follicle. Normal radiographic feature. You can see her third molars—the wisdom teeth—much more clearly on these radiographs.” She placed several small X rays on the screen. “These are 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 sixteen-year-olds reported missing for at least up to six months ago. A middle-class girl like Jean should have been reported missing, although as often as not, they’re runaways. The second one will be trickier because she’s older. May have been on the streets for years. I’ll go with Jean first. After I get the files, I’ll call the family and contact the family dentist. Then I’ll send all the Missing Persons X rays to you, and with a little bit of luck, you’ll get a match.”
“Long shot,” Annie said.
“Yep. But sometimes long shots pan out.”
“Well, let me throw this out at you—and this isn’t in my report because it’s not an official observation. Children with congenital syphilis are often born deaf or with hearing problems. That might narrow your search for Joanie.”
“Very helpful,” he said, rising. He stuck the pen in his notebook, flipped over the cover, and stuffed the notebook in his coat pocket. “Dr. Hennon—”
“Annie,” she quickly said.
“Annie, thank you for your time.”
He held out his hand and their eyes met.
“I’ve got an hour or so to kill before I meet a friend for dinner,” she said. “Want to grab a drink or two?”
Jesus, Decker thought, two in one hour. He must be coming across lean and hungry. She was a fine looking woman with a very likeable disposition. If he’d met her six months ago, he would have jumped at the opportunity, but now there was Rina. Still he ruminated, there was no harm in one drink; sit and shoot the breeze. But what would be the point? Suppose he liked her and wanted to see her again as a friend. And suppose it led to something more, like casual sex. And suppose he began to enjoy the casual sex. Then he’d have to deal with two women. He knew he was a poor juggler, which meant they’d both inevitably find out and he’d lose everything—Rina and the sex. He’d pledged from the outset to give himself a year with Rina to figure out what was going on. And it had only been four months. Most important, he loved her and she loved him even if they couldn’t show it physically. It was absurd to think of other women when his heart belonged to Rina, but sexual deprivation was beginning to muddle his sensibilities.
He realized he had been silent for an awfully long time.
