‘Could it be maybe some kind of defense injury?’ Marino suggested. ‘You know, if someone was coming at her with a knife. They struggle and her face gets cut?’
‘Certainly that’s possible,’ Vessey said as he continued to process every millimeter of bone. ‘But I find it curious that this incision is so fine and exact. And it appears to be the same depth from one end to the other, which would be unusual if one is swinging a knife at someone. Generally, the cut to bone would be deeper where the blade struck first, and then more shallow as the blade traveled down.’
He demonstrated, an imaginary knife cutting straight down through air.
‘We also have to remember that a lot depends on the assailant’s position in relation to the victim when she was cut,’ I commented. ‘Was the victim standing or lying down? Was the assailant in front or behind or to one side of her or on top of her?’
‘Very true,’ said Vessey.
He went to a dark oak cabinet with glass doors and lifted an old brown skull from a shelf. He carried it over to us and handed it to me, pointing to an obvious coarse cut in the left parietal and occipital area, or on the left side, high above the ear.
‘You asked about scalpings,’ he said to me. ‘An eight- or nine-year-old, scalped, then burned. Can’t tell the gender, but I know the poor kid had a foot infection. So he or she couldn’t run. Cuts and nicks like this are fairly typical in scalpings.’
I held the skull and for a moment imagined what Vessey had just said. I envisioned a cowering crippled child, and blood running to the earth as his screaming people were massacred and the camp went up in flames.
‘Shit,’ Marino muttered angrily. ‘How do you do something like that to a kid?’
‘How do you do something like that at all?’ I said. Then to Vessey, I added, ‘The cut on this’ — I pointed at the skull I had brought in — ‘would be unusual for a scalping.’
Vessey took a deep breath and slowly blew out.
‘You know, Kay,’ he said, ‘it’s never exact. It’s whatever happened at the time. There were many ways that Indians scalped the enemy. Usually, the skin was incised in a circle over the skull down to the galea and periosteum so it could be easily removed from the cranial vault. Some scalpings were simple, others involved ears, eyes, the face, the neck. In some instances multiple scalps were taken from the same victim, or maybe just the scalplock, or small area of the crown of the head, was removed. Finally, and this is what you usually see in old westerns, the victim was violently grabbed by his hair, the skin sliced away with a knife or saber.’
‘Trophies,’ Marino said.
‘That and the ultimate macho symbol of skill and bravery,’ said Vessey. ‘Of course, there were cultural, religious, and even medicinal motives, as well. In your case,’ he added to me, ‘we know she wasn’t successfully scalped because she still had her hair, and I can tell you the injury to bone strikes me as having been inflicted carefully with a very sharp instrument. A very sharp knife. Maybe a razor blade or box cutter, or even something like a scalpel. It was inflicted while the victim was alive and it was not the cause of death.’
‘No, her neck injury is what killed her,’ I agreed.
‘I can find no other cuts, except possibly here.’
He moved the lens closer to an area of the left zygomatic arch, or bone of the cheek. ‘Something very faint,’ he muttered. ‘Too faint to be sure. See it?’
I leaned close to him to look.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Almost like the thread of a spider web.’
‘Exactly. It’s that faint. And it may be nothing, but interestingly enough, it’s positioned at very much the same angle as the other cut. Vertical versus horizontal or slanted.’
‘This is getting sick,’ Marino said ominously. ‘I mean, let’s cut to the chase, no pun intended. What are we saying here? That some squirrel cut this lady’s throat and then mutilated her face? And then torched the house?’