Hidden Faces - 04 - Web of Lies by Brandilyn Collins

Author:Brandilyn Collins [Collins, Brandilyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Suspense, fiction, Christian, Religious, Alternative History
ISBN: 9780310251064
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2005-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Okay, God, here we go. Please help me.

Upon my table, the skull sat in a stabilizing ring of cork. As I touched it, felt the contours of bone, my other worries faded to background. Here, now, I felt a connection to this unknown person. John Doe deserved his identity; he deserved justice for his untimely death. That responsibility sat heavily on my shoulders.

My first task was to glue the skull’s mandible to the cranium so the jaw would not move as I worked on it. In a live person the jaw is relaxed, the teeth not clenched. To simulate that positioning, I first layered in a small “spacer” of clay between the condyle and fossa bones — the hinge of the jaw — to replicate the cartilage that had once been present. Next I glued a small cutting from a round toothpick to the surface of the molars, creating a spacing between the teeth. Then I turned the skull upside down on the cork ring and glued the mandible in place.

So far, so good. I was now ready to tackle the challenge of meticulously cutting the small cylindrical eraser strips into tissue depth indicators.

In my facial reconstruction classes, the tissue depth tables had fascinated me from the beginning. The data, developed in the 1980s by Dr. Stanley Rhine and his colleagues at the University of New Mexico, simulate the thickness of muscle and other tissues, plus the skin, at twenty-one locations on the face. The mathematical tables vary according to race, gender, and build. Based upon the anthropologist’s information on John Doe, I would follow the table for a Caucasian male of average weight.

Carefully measuring in millimeters, I used an exacto knife to cut the vinyl erasers to the required lengths. As I cut each length, I turned the piece on its end and used a ballpoint pen to label its number. Locations one through ten, indicating the center of the face from forehead to chin, required one marker each. Locations eleven through twenty-one, marking the sides of the face, required two apiece. With each cutting, I measured and remeasured, holding my breath as I pushed the exacto knife straight down through the eraser material. Mistakes at this crucial point would skew the final results.

Markers cut, I was ready to glue them onto the skull. From there I would position the skull exactly in what’s called the Frankfort Horizontal Plane for photographing from the front and side views. Facial reconstruction is tricky at every step, including the photography. If the skull was positioned wrong, if I aimed the camera incorrectly, I would distort the picture, making the skull look narrower or wider than in reality. The photos had to be precise, because from them I would begin to draw the face.

I took a moment to lean back and flex my shoulders and neck. Pulling in a deep breath, I studied the two boards I’d set up earlier that day — one for the frontal drawing and one for the lateral, or side.

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