“Look at that,” he said.
It was a photograph of the midsection from just below the sternum to just above the pubic area. Reacher saw the outlines of ghostly gray bones, ribs, spine, pelvis, with a forearm and a hand lying across them at an angle. And another shape, dense and so bright it shone pure white. Metal. Slim and pointed, about as long as the hand.
“A tool of some sort,” Stavely said.
“The others didn’t have anything like that,” Poulton said.
“Doc, we need to see it right away,” Blake said. “It’s important.”
Stavely shook his head. “It’s underneath her body right now, because she’s upside down. We’ll get there, but it won’t be real soon.”
“How long?”
“Long as it takes,” Stavely said. “This is going to be messy as hell.”
He clipped the gray photographs in sequence on the light box. Then he walked the length of the ghostly display and studied them.
“Her skeleton is relatively undamaged,” he said. He pointed to the second panel. “Left wrist was cracked and healed, probably ten years ago.”
“She was into sports,” Reacher said. “Her sister told us.”
Stavely nodded. “So we’ll check the collarbone.”
He moved left and studied the first panel. It showed the skull and the neck and the shoulders. The collarbones gleamed and swooped down toward the sternum.
“Small crack,” Stavely said, pointing. “It’s what I’d expect. An athlete with a cracked wrist will usually have a cracked collarbone too. They fall off their bike or their Rollerblades or whatever, throw out their arm to break their fall, end up breaking their bones instead.”
fu/lMM