The pathologist shook his head irascibly and pushed his round, wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose. They were the kind of glasses a five-year-old might draw on a cartoon face, Lau thought. All in all, Dr. Arthur Fenster looked a lot like a child’s drawing: a rabbit wearing little round glasses. An irritated rabbit.

"How can you tell anything from this junk?" Fenster said. "A few vertebrae, a scapula…" He flicked the pieces disgustedly with the backs of his fingers. "It could be Eckert, could be the Hartman one. It’s been buried for five years at least. Looks like a male, maybe in his twenties, maybe older. But I’m not even sure it all belongs to one person." He folded his arms and leaned stiffly back in his chair. "This garbage is next to worthless. A waste of my time." He looked at the FBI agent with a mixture of annoyance and disapproval.

John Lau’s big, flat, Asian face remained impassive. "Well, it’s all we have, sir," he said. "Isn’t there anything else you can tell us?"

Fenster picked up one of the vertebrae and thrust it toward Lau. "See that growth on the ventral surface?"

Lau nodded. He didn’t know the ventral surface from whatever the others were, but he could see that the ugly, rough excrescence wasn’t a normal part of the bone.

"I’m not sure exactly what it is," Fenster said. "Some kind of oddball exostosis-a tumor, or a weird variation of osteomyelitis. Maybe even bone syphilis, although that usually doesn’t show up in vertebrae. Anyway, it’s a lead. Have a look at Eckert’s and Hartman’s medical records. If one of them had a bone disease in a highly advanced state, then there’s a good chance this is him."

"Okay, that’s helpful," Lau said, trying to look grateful. "You don’t suppose a physical anthropologist would be able to tell us anything more? I heard Gideon Oliver was working on a dig up near Dungeness. That’s only a few hours from Quinault."