by Bill Doyle
And I’d be the first one to say: That’s no small thing. Spending time in the orphanage didn’t exactly help me learn to trust people. But it made me extremely independent. I think that self-reliance helps make me such a strong detective.
“Hello!” I called, dumping my bag in the front hall. Once again, there was no response. “Dad, your welcome is less than overwhelming!”
Sometimes when Dad gets involved in writing, even an earthquake couldn’t bring him out of his imaginary world. And I knew he was really into his latest project, some script about world explorers.
I made my way to the snug little kitchen, which Dad and I had painted bright red together. There had been plenty of food on the plane, but I’m always hungry. I had just constructed the world’s most perfect roast-beef sandwich, when — DING-DONG!
“Door!” I shouted. When there was no answer from Dad, I reluctantly left my beautiful sandwich and headed back to the front door.
UNCLE BENNY
Must be Uncle Benny, I thought. Benny was the producer of Dad’s first movie and they’ve worked together on other films since then. They became such close friends that my dad made him my godfather. He’s always showing up at the house right around this time of day, saying that he’s got “business” to discuss. But I think it’s just to see what we’ve got grilling in the backward.
Benny is a good-looking blonde guy, the tall, lanky type who looks like he’d be a great tennis player. His fast-talking style makes lots of people crazy. It’s like trying to chat with a hyper Chihuahua that’s had way too much coffee. But I know he means well.
KID EVERYONE NEEDS A GODFATHER SO I SHOWED UP A LITTLE LATE IN YOUR LIFE. THAT MEANS I’VE GOT A LOT OF MAKING UP TO DO, THAT’S ALL - Benny
When I opened the door, my godfather wasn’t standing there. Instead, there was a dark-haired man who wore a thick, brown coat made of scratchy-looking material. He had a fur-lined hat on top of his head and a birthmark under his right eye. Just from the way he stood, I could tell he wasn’t more than twenty years old. But the golden skin on his face looked like he’d spent a lot of time outdoors.
“Can I help —? ” I started to say.
“Wonefas nepo!” he shouted in a deep, scratchy voice.
Whoa. I took a step back into the hall. This is why they warn you to look through the peephole before opening the door.
“Wonefas nepo!” the man repeated.
THE MYSTERIOUS DARK-HAIRED MAN
I took Chinese and German in school, but this wasn’t like any language I had heard before.
I looked to see if my neighbors were around, in case I needed help. The street was empty. “What?” I said to the man. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”
“Wonefas nepo!” he shouted again. This time he emphasized his strange words by tossing something white with a rounded top at me.
Instinctively my hands flew up and caught it before it could smash on the tile of the hall. My mouth opened in shock as I looked down at the smooth object I now held.
It was a human skull!
Before I could utter another sound, the strange man suddenly turned and rushed off the porch.
I heard a tearing sound as his jacket snagged a large splinter on one of the wooden pillars. He raced across the lawn and disappeared down the sidewalk.
HE THREW A SKULL AT ME AND RAN!
Finally my shock had subsided enough for my mouth to work again. Holding up the skull like he had just dropped off a housewarming present, I called after him, “Thanks!”
I figured he must be one of Dad’s kooky Hollywood friends pulling some kind of prank. But then again …
Automatically, I went to the kitchen and pulled out a clean plastic bag from the drawer. Returning to the porch, I carefully removed the fabric, put it in the baggie, and sealed it tight. Once back inside with the door dosed, I put the bag safely into my jacket pocket.
As I did this, I caught sight of myself in the foyer mirror. I realized this was probably a strange reaction to someone ripping his coat. But I guess it’s what happens when you grow up in a family of detectives.
Tec tip
FROM ESME HUNTER’S DETECTING HANDBOOK
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW?
WHEN COLLECTING HAIR AND FIBERS
(LIKE PIECES OF CLOTHING) AT A CRIME SCENE, JUST REMEMBER HAIR:
Hunt thoroughly around the scene—this evidence can be tiny and hard to find!
Acquire the sample careful1y—don’t, mix up your own hair with the evidence
Isolate the hair or fiber in a sealed envelope or plastic bag
Retain the sample in a safe place until you’re ready to examine it
Lugging a skull around the house might also sound strange to most people. But for me, it wasn’t all that weird. Last year, Aunt Tonia pulled some strings. She’s a medical examiner and got UCLA to let me sit in on several courses on facial reconstruction. Even if I hadn’t aced the classes, I’d have known this wasn’t a real skull anyway. It was just a very good plaster replica.
I walked down the hallway that leads away from the kitchen and stopped outside the office I share with my dad. I held the skull through the door. “Hello? I’m looking for any BODY,” I called in a creepy voice, like it was the skull talking.
But when I didn’t hear Dad’s usual chuckle, I walked in and found the room empty.
I put the replica of the skull carefully on my work stand, a 2-foot-long pole with a sturdy base and a clamp at the top. I gently turned the screw to tighten the clamp around the back of the cranium — exactly the way I do every time I’m working on a skull.
I looked around the office to see if Dad had left me a note. The room was the largest one in the house. It used to be a two-car garage before my dad and I put down some green carpet and turned it into our office. He writes and works on his cases on one side, and I have my desk on the other. We’d blown up pictures of us from our trips around the world — like to Rome and Easter Island — and they hung on the walls between the bookshelves.
My dad hadn’t written me a note, but he’d sure left a huge mess behind. Papers, books, a stapler, his goldfish bowl full of quarters — things were scattered everywhere.
Grabbing my digital camera, I stood on a chair and snapped a shot of the chaos. I could use this “evidence” if he ever accused me of being the only slob in the family.
I was climbing down when I spotted something unsettling. We had left the three long, rectangular-shaped windows in the garage door that served as one wall of the office. The light streaming through these windows was creating a dull glimmer on the small MP3 placer on Dad’s desk.
This glimmer of light didn’t look quite right …
THERE WAS BLOOD ON THE MP3 PLAYER!
I walked closer and leaned in toward the MP3 player. On one corner was a large drop of blood, about the size of penny.
My own blood ran cold.
WHAT WAS GOING ON?
I picked up a pen from Dad’s desk and pressed the MP3 play button with it — not wanting to disturb any fingerprints. (Another detective’s habit!)
The room filled with singing. Well, some people might consider it singing — but I’d put it right up there with the sound of fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.
It was my dad. And he was belting out strange words in his out-of-tune voice. The refrain of the song went like this:
I shutter to think when life envelops
All that my clicking bug could develop.
Even with all this really weird stuff happening, I felt my face flush. It’s embarrassing, but Dad calls me “Bug” sometimes as a nickname.
He sang the same lines over and over, and then the song ended.
What the heck was going on? If the lyrics were some kind of clue, they weren’t making any sense to me.
I turned my attention back to the drop of blood. Maybe this would give me more answers than that strange song. The first thing I needed to do was figure out who the blood belonged to.
My
dad’s detective work meant that we had lots of cool gizmos and high-tech investigation equipment around. One of those pieces of equipment was a minilab for DNA matching.
We had practiced using the minilab in one of my college classes a few months ago. Each of us plucked a hair from our head — making sure to get as much of the root as possible. Then we’d used the minilab to create a DNA readout.
Returning to the office, I found Dad’s evidence-collecting kit in a dark briefcase in the corner. I took out a pair of plastic gloves and put them on. Then, after removing a clean slide from the kit, I walked over to the MP3 player. By pressing the top of the slide against the drop of blood, I was able to get a small sample to stick to the glass surface.
Dear Dr. DNA:
Q: I just heard that experts used DNA to solve a thirty-year-old mystery Tell me about the case.
A: You have to be more specific! Solving old cases using DNA is happening more and more often. The FBI has collected about 120,000 DNA samples from crime scenes. A computer compares those to a database of 2,700,000 DNA samples from known criminals. If a sample from the scene matches one from a criminal—the FBI knows they’ve got their crook!
Blood never makes me squeamish, but the thought that I could be handling a drop of my dad’s blood — and that he might have been hurt somehow — made my hands shake.
The slide fumbled from my fingers —
“No!” I gasped.
— and went flying across the room.
The glass slide narrowly missed the hard surface of the desk and skittered across the floor. Most of the Hood splattered into tiny droplets and soaked into the dark carpet.
I stood horror-struck for a moment. Had I just blown the case? How would I ever match the blood now?
I rushed over and carefully picked up the slide. A very tiny droplet clung to the glass. Things might still work out okay, I thought.
A few years ago, this tiny amount of blood wouldn’t be enough to run a DNA analysis. But with recent advances, all that has changed.
BURGLARS BEWAREI
In New York City, only Twenty percent of stolen property cases were being solved. But that may soon change, thanks to new DNA testing methods. In the past, experts needed 150 cells’ a worth of DNA to make a match. Often, burglars don’t leave behind that much DNA. Today, only about six cells’ worth of DNA are needed for testing, and that small an amount can be found in a smudge of blood or even in a fingerprint.
New York City Bulletin, Spring 2006
Luckily I was able to get a DNA profile from the remaining droplet of blood. And when I compared it to my dad’s profile that we’d made a few months ago, I knew; that I had a match.
Now I was certain about two things. The drop of blood had come from my dad. And this was definitely not a game.
Dad could be in serious danger. He might have struggled when kidnappers took him out of this room. But if he was kidnapped, where was the ransom note?
Nothing made sense!
It was time to call for help.
I went to my dad’s desk and hit the speed dial on the videophone. After three rings, Judge’s face filled the screen. I could see a wall of her office in the background.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Judge, I’m so glad I caught you.”
“I’m just leaving now,” she said. Seeing my worried look, her eyes narrowed. “Nick, what’s wrong? Is your father there?”
“No,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling. I think Dad might be missing.”
Judge looked startled for a moment but then snapped into heir all-business mode. “Tell me everything.”
I quickly filled her in on the strange man with the skull, the drop of blood, the song — everything that had happened since I arrived home. Judge nodded and asked me questions as I told her.
By the time I finished, Judge already had a plan. “Maura’s one of the most sensible people I know. I’m going to call her now and ask her to join you,” she said. “This is more than likely just a big misunderstanding, but better safe than sorry.”
I asked, “What about the police?”
Judge took a breath. “Normally I would tell you to call them immediately. But the Notabe case I’m wrapping up involves some pretty powerful people in law enforcement, and some of them have taken bribes from her. Maura is the nearest person to you I can trust. She’ll be able to help you with everything. In the meantime, use what I taught you here and do what you do best. Put together the pieces of the puzzle.”
I heard a voice call out to Judge. It sounded like Mr. Bulldog telling her that they were running late. Judge’s eyes never left mine. “Nick, look for Maura,” she instructed. “But be careful whom you trust. At least for now. All right?”
“Okay, Judge.”
“I’m sure this will all work out, and you’ll see your dad soon. I’ll be back in touch the second I finish with the Notabe case.”
We said our good-byes, and the screen went dark.
I looked around the office. I felt better after talking with Judge, but was still pretty much at a loss. What could I do to help track down my dad?
“Put together the pieces of the puzzle,” Judge Pinkerton had told me on the phone.
But how could I do that if I couldn’t even find the pieces? I felt as empty-headed as the skull.
The piece of cloth from the strange man’s coat! The skull! They must be clues. I followed my instincts. First, the cloth. It would be faster. When I pulled it out of the baggie, I saw that there were several hairs stuck to it.
I did a quick hair/fiber analysis. The hairs didn’t match any of the human samples on my database. But then I was struck by a thought. What if the hair hadn’t come from a person — but from an animal?
Tec Tip
FROM ESME HUNTER’S DETECTION HANDBOOK
HAIR AND FIBER ANALYSIS
Under a microscope, it can be determined whether or not a hair or fiber is from a human. Once the determination has been made that it’s not human, there are four choices of what it can be: minerals, vegetable, animal, or synthetic. Once the hair or fiber has been narrowed down to one of these four groups, it can be compared with other known samples, and a match can be determined.
I tapped into the Museum of Natural History’s computer and discovered that the hair had come from a yak. And what was more interesting was that the follicle was still attached.
This fact meant that the hair came directly from a yak and had not been processed into a shirt or something. One of the only ways this hair could have gotten on the strange man would be if he had recently been at a yak farm — or, I thought dryly, a petting zoo with yaks.
Now for the skull. Tearing a page from my forensic anthropology textbook, I got to work.
USING CLAY IN FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION
STEP 1: Try to determine the sex of the person and age at time of death. For age, examine teeth. For gender, look at three points: bone at lower back of skull, ridge above eyes, bone below ear—these areas are larger in males.
STEP 2: Attach 20 to 35 pegs to show the thickness of flesh the average person has in those spots.
STEP 3: Insert plastic balls for eyes. Using pegs as guides, place clay “flesh” on the skull to form facial muscles.
STEP 4: Shape the nose. There are no bones to guide you, so use your best judgment. Fill in the rest of the face with clay until the tops of the pegs are covered.
STEP 5: If you know the age of the person at death, add appropriate signs of aging and hairstyle.
CHECK THIS OUT! IT’S FROM MY FORENSICS CLASS.
Pictures of the final work in our example ran in a newspaper in 1989. Someone recognized the once-unknown face as Karen Price — and later, two men were charged with her murder.
LOOK IN THE MIRROR TO SEE IF THIS INFO IS TRUE ABOUT YOU!
TIPS FOR SHAPING THE FACE
•The inner borders of the iris in a person’s eyes are directly over the corners of the mouth.
•The distance between the inner corners of
the eyes is about the same as the width of the nose.
•The nose and ears are about the same in length (but older people have longer ears).
Trying io rebuild a face from just a skull can be like reconstructing a piece of fruit from an apple core. It’s part art, part science, and part guesswork. Hopefully, when you’re done, the face will look enough like the living person that an identification can be made.
I reconstruct faces with clay. To do this, I’ve had to learn tons about human anatomy. Like the depth of flesh on the average face — and the way the muscles, wrinkles, and fat can change someone’s appearance. The trickiest parts are soft tissue areas like the eyes, nose, and mouth, where there aren’t any bones to help guide you.
As I worked, I thanked my lucky stars that this skull was a replica. I wouldn’t have to use maggots to clean the flesh from the skull before starting work (like one of my professors made us do!). These bugs chow down the remaining tissue on a skull and leave it sparkling clean — but a maggot is the one thing that can gross me out!
Some people I know use computer tomography (CT) scans instead of clay to build a face. The computer does lots of the work for you by laying down different faces over a picture of the skull until it come across one that looks right. It’s not as messy and won’t damage a skull. But the programmer still has to guess which faces to use and how to form soft tissue areas, so I stick with clay —
WITH THE PEGS IN PLACE, I COULD START LAYING ON CLAY.
Click!
I froze at the sound. This “click” was something I had heard thousands of times since I moved into this house. It was the sound of the front door closing. But very softly. As if someone were trying to stay undetected.
I realized with a jolt that I had forgotten to relock the front door. Anyone could have walked in—including the strange guy who shouted gibberish and threw the human skull at me.
