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“Hmm,” I said doubtfully.
Angie’s eyes swiveled up to mine. “Hmm? What do you mean, ‘hmm’?”
“Well,” I hedged, “on the one hand, we’ve got two young victims, who were found near one another.”
“On the other hand?” asked Vickery.
“I don’t know a lot about serial killers,” I began, “but don’t they often choose similar-looking victims? Take Ted Bundy, for instance. Didn’t he target women who looked like his ex-girlfriend?”
“Bundy said the cops had made too much of that,” Vickery answered, “but then again, Bundy was a monster and a liar, so how much stock can you put in what he said? I actually thought all his victims did resemble one another.” He studied me. “Are you saying these two kids didn’t look similar? How can you tell?”
All eyes were on me. “Well, ‘similar’ is in the eye of the beholder, right? But if you asked me to pick out two similar-looking boys from a crowd, I probably wouldn’t pick a young white boy and an older black boy.”
“This one’s black?” Pettis was the one who asked. “How can you tell that?”
“Couple ways,” I said. “First, look at the teeth again.” I turned the skull upside down again. “See how bumpy the tops of these teeth are?” I pointed to the numerous, irregular cusps of the molars. “We call teeth like that ‘crenulated,’ and they’re a distinctive feature of Negroid skulls. If you run your tongue over the surfaces of your molars, you’ll find that they’re smoother than that.” I paused to give them a chance to do the experiment, and through the flesh of their cheeks, I saw their tongues probing their teeth.
I turned the skull, cupping the damaged back of the head in my left palm, pointing the broken incisors skyward. “The jaw structure here is classically Negroid. See how the jaw juts forward? It’d be easier to see if the incisors weren’t broken, but the teeth angle also. And the lower jaw, if we had it, would jut forward, too. It’s called ‘prognathism.’ Our white faces are flatter — the shape’s called ‘orthognathous’—and the jaws don’t slant forward like this. There’s an easy test you can do with a pencil. Or a cigar. Stu, can you demonstrate for us? Take your cigar and hold it straight up and down, and lay it across your mouth and chin.” He did. “See how it touches the teeth, the chin, and the base of the nose?” Heads nodded. “If Stu were black, it wouldn’t lay flat like that. It would angle out from the nose, or from the chin, because of the way the teeth and jaws slope. Another thing”—I felt myself warming to my mini-lecture—“is the nasal opening. See how wide it is? And see these grooves in the bone underneath it? They’re called nasal gutters. They help funnel air into the nostrils. Caucasians don’t have nasal guttering; we’ve got a nasal sill that limits how fast air can flow. That’s because Caucasians evolved in colder climates, breathing colder air. In Africa, on the other hand—”
Suddenly Stu smacked his forehead with his left hand, causing all of us to jump. “Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
“Think of what?” asked Angie.
“We’ve got two dead boys, right?”
“We know this one’s a boy,” I said. “Hard to be sure about the first one.”
“There used to be a boys’ school — a reform school — somewhere in this neck of the woods. A long time ago. Maybe not in Apalachee County, though. Over in Miccosukee County? Or maybe Bremerton.” He looked at the deputy. “Any idea how far we are from the county lines?”
“Probably not more’n a couple miles from either one,” said Sutton. “We’re kind of in a corner here.” He pointed to the northwest. “Moccasin Creek’s the boundary with Miccosukee. Bremerton’s close, too; due west, maybe. But I never heard of a reform school anywhere around here.”
“Hell, it probably closed ten years before you were born,” Vickery told him. “Burned down sometime in the sixties or seventies, I forget when. Terrible fire. A bunch of the boys died. They never rebuilt the school. Just sent the survivors to other places.” He looked at the skull again. “Doc, any chance these two kids died in the fire?”
I studied it again. “Maybe. Smoke inhalation, possibly, but there’s no way to tell that without soft tissue, and the soft tissue’s long gone. But these skulls both had fractures.”
Vickery frowned. “But don’t skulls fracture in a fire?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Not like this. When a body burns, the skull breaks into small pieces, about the size of a quarter.”
“How about if a wall or a roof collapsed,” he persisted, “and hit the kids on the head?”
“It’s possible,” I acknowledged. “But if the bodies weren’t burned beyond recognition, seems like they’d have been sent home to be buried.”
“If they had homes,” Angie observed.
“Good point,” I conceded. “Probably be worth finding out more about the fire — pictures, news accounts, official reports. Be interesting to take a look at the site, too.”
“I’d be up for that,” seconded Angie. “Any idea who owns the property now?”
“No,” Vickery said, “but it shouldn’t be hard to find out. If it’s still owned by the state or the county, we might not even need a search warrant.”
Pettis cleared his throat. “Not to cause trouble, but does that mean you-all needed a warrant to search my property?”
Vickery laughed. “We’d be in trouble at this point if we did, huh? But nah, we’re like vampires — if you invite us in, you’re stuck with us. If you don’t invite us in, we have to stay out.”
“Well,” interjected the deputy, “unless there’s an active crime scene. For instance, if a human skull turns up, we can do at least an initial search even if you don’t want to cooperate.”
Pettis frowned. “But I called you. If I didn’t want to cooperate, why would I call you?” I smiled; the man had a point.
“And we sure do appreciate your cooperation,” Angie threw in quickly.
Pettis’s frown turned into a smile. “Well hell, I’m glad to help. Seems like the right thing to do. Couple kids dead; be good to figure out who they were and how they died. Besides, truth is, me and Jasper kinda like the excitement. It’s pretty quiet out here most of the time. Ain’t it, Jasper? Huh, Jasper? Jasper, what do you say?” The dog, hearing his name three times in quick succession — the pitch rising each time — capered and spun, and gave a yodeling version of a bark.
“Speaking of Jasper,” I said, “did you happen to see what direction he came from when he brought either skull home?”
“Nope. Wish I had. Like I told Miss Angie here, way it happened was, I was sleeping in the bed. It was right about daybreak.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “was that the first time, or this time?”
“It was both times. Jasper, he’s kind of a night owl. Likes to roam around while I’m asleep. So there I am, sleeping like a baby, and Jasper jumps up in the bed with me. He mostly just does that if there’s a thunderstorm, ’cause he’s scared of thunder. But sometimes he does it if he’s real pleased with himself. So anyhow, there I am, dreaming about something or other, and I feel Jasper curl up beside me, and he’s slurping and gnawing on something that keeps bumping me in the leg. First time it happened, I ’bout jumped out of my skin when I saw what it was. Second time, I just said, ‘dammit, dog’—’scuse my language, ma’am—‘you have got to quit doing this.’ ”
* * *
Where should we begin? What were we searching for, and how hard should we search? Did the two skulls come from the grounds of the school? If so, were they victims of the fire that destroyed the place in the 1960s? Or was there another, darker story?
Those and a hundred other questions spun through my mind as the black Suburban hummed northwest toward Bremerton County, taking Angie, Vickery, and me toward what had once been the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory.
U.S. 90 almost, but not quite, managed to dodge Bremerton County altogether. As it was, the highway cut through such a small corner o
