by Hadena James
“Well, they were alive when they were extracted.” Xavier said, walking into my room with all the teeth in an evidence bag.
“That tells us what, exactly?” I asked.
“It tells us that they aren’t from any of our previous victims. Also, the teeth are old, older than our current victims. Older than anyone born this century. I’m taking them to the museum to have them carbon dated. Wherever they came from, they aren’t new victims from another serial killer. One of them had a filling in it that tested positive for mercury and lead. There isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that the filling was created this century. It probably wasn’t even created during the last century.”
“Mercury in a filling?” I frowned.
“It isn’t unheard of, just rare.” Xavier informed me.
“Yes, I know. Fillings themselves are rare in old teeth. Are we sure it was a filling?”
“Well, it was a hunk of metal shoved in a tooth,” Xavier shrugged.
“You know the stories about radium right?”
“What are you going on about?” Xavier frowned.
“Ok when radium was first discovered…”
“Yes, girls who worked with it would paint their teeth to make them glow in the dark. It was used to cure everything from tooth aches to cancer, which is ironic in its own right. So?”
“So, it is unlikely to be a professional filling. I’m not an expert on the subject, but if your tooth broke and you couldn’t pull it, but you had access to mercury…” I shrugged back.
“You think it was a do it yourself job?” Xavier frowned harder.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of something that weird. Several professions worked with both mercury and lead, hatters being the prime example.”
“Why would someone do their own fillings?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t see why not, most so called dentists before the 1900’s pulled teeth, they didn’t save them. Hence the scavenging of battlegrounds for teeth.”
“I don’t understand what you mean when you say that.” Lucas informed me.
“After any major battle, the governments would pay people to clean it up. Mostly it was a matter of burying or burning the dead. But there were others there too and cleaning up a battlefield doesn’t exactly pay well. Let’s take Waterloo for example; roughly 40,000 soldiers died during the battle. That’s a lot of dead to bury. It’s also a lot of teeth to harvest. They would extract the teeth of the dead or dying and put them into barrels to be shipped somewhere. Barrels, not small boxes or containers, but actual barrels. The teeth would arrive at their destination. Dentists would then have patients come in that were either missing some or all of their teeth. If teeth could be found to fit the holes left by the missing teeth, they’d do that. What was left would be used to make dentures for patients.”
“That was common practice?” Lucas raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. You had dentures made of wood, ivory, some even of metal, but quite a few were made from human teeth.”
“You mean we have old teeth that have nothing to do with our actual serial killer?” Xavier shook his head.
“Most likely, yes. Battlefield dentures wouldn’t hold in today’s world. Twenty canines tell me they were taken from TB patients or for some other unknown reason. While they are old, they don’t fit with our pattern. Taking out teeth is painful and torturous in its own way, but it isn’t the same as torturing someone and none of our victims are missing teeth. Not to mention the age of the teeth.”
“Another dead end.” Xavier said.
“Seems so,” I answered.
“What now?” Lucas asked.
“Hopefully, Alejandro and Michael will have more luck with the coffins,” Xavier sat the teeth down on the dresser. We all stared at them.
“Just because they aren’t from our serial killer, doesn’t mean they aren’t from a serial killer,” I suddenly said. “If my serial killer sent them, it is probably because they mean something. He would know I was here and working on this case. I imagine the teeth have some meaning.”
“You said that about the maidens,” Xavier reminded me.
“And they do have meaning, finding the context is a whole different story.” I told him.
“The Book of Torture, the Iron Maidens, the sexual assaults, now the teeth, does everything in your world have symbolism connected to it?” Lucas asked.
“No, but in this case, I think they are all somehow related, I just can’t grasp the relationship. It is worse when I have to include myself in the equation. It is much easier to be objective when you aren’t personally involved. That dagger makes me personally involved.”
“Maybe we need to look at it like a puzzle. We have the extreme planning that went into the capturing and torture of the victims as well as the selection of the victims. We have an obscure book that some of it has been recreated from. We have a dagger with your finger prints on it, but no memory of where you touched it. And now a bag full of teeth.” Lucas offered.
“That didn’t help me much,” I said after a very long silence between the three of us.
“Maybe the pieces are still too big.” Lucas offered.
“Then we have a serial killer with knowledge of the medieval era. We have Hanging Coffins, Iron Maidens, Scavenger’s Daughters, impaling spikes and horses. We have a bag of canines that may or may not have anything to do with the case, but were definitely not sent by our killer. A replica military dagger…” I stopped.
“What?” Xavier asked.
“The dagger you recovered with my fingerprints. It’s carbon steel, indicating that it was a military grade replica. I don’t know the significance because I don’t know what knife it represents. The circle at the top is meaningless without the insignia that should have been on it. We can rule it out as something common, like a K-Bar, they weren’t that decorative.”
“No, the US military doesn’t use a lot of decoration on any of their daggers or knives,” Lucas told me.
“Sort of figured that, but I don’t have the military expertise to figure it out. Besides, it is way outside my timeframe. It would be a 20th century dagger. I don’t know the significance or the origin or anything about it other than it’s a 20th century dagger. If we consider the options for it…”
“That would be staggering,” Xavier answered. “The Swiss Guard, KGB, The British Royal Guard, The Scots Guard, Beefeaters, they all have their own special marks and insignias and symbols. That’s just touching a few of the highlights from the 20th century.”
“Exactly and I imagine we missed quite a few. Officers and servicemen with distinction get ceremonial daggers that are practical as well as symbolic of their station. It’s been that way for years. The Knights Templar had their own sword smiths who specialized in making the broadswords that we associate with the sect. Even secret societies have them; there are records from the late Middle Ages of daggers specifically designed for Masons with their own unique symbols. It could belong to any country of the last century or so.” I shrugged at him.
Chapter 35
