After half an hour of this, my eyes were playing tricks on me. I didn’t think the fragments matched the X-ray, but then again, I didn’t want them to match. I wanted this to be the skull of Garland Hamilton, not some down-on-his-luck derelict. In any other forensic case, I’d have been able to compare the sinuses with scientific rigor and objectivity—I wouldn’t have anything personal invested in whether the comparison yielded a positive identification, a positive exclusion, or insufficient information to support either conclusion. Go with the facts, speak the truth, and let the chips fall where they may—that had always been one of my guiding principles. But never before had the chips come solely from the pockets of my own life. What’s more, the facts here were proving mighty hard to pin down.
Still holding both skull fragments, I reached up to rub my eyes with the back of one hand. That’s when I saw it: a sliver of light glinting through one of the seams where Miranda had pieced together the larger of the two fragments. I angled the piece this way and that, studying the slight gap. Then I laid down the other piece so I could examine this one more closely. Swiveling around to the lab table behind me, I switched on the magnifying lamp and held the piece under the lens. The bone practically glowed beneath the built-in fluorescent light that encircled the lens. Magnified five times, the glue joints appeared wavy and jagged, almost like the sutures that form naturally in the skull as its individual plates knit together during childhood. The innermost of the skull’s three layers of bone, the diploe, had peeled away, exposing the boundary where the sinus cavity stopped and the spongy inner layer of bone began. If not for the peeling, Miranda and I would be forced to X-ray the reconstructed pieces to see the sinus boundary, rather than being able to see the cavity take shape as we worked.
Even under the magnifying glass, it was difficult to find the gap where I’d seen the light shining through. Twice I had to twist the head of the lamp upside down, shining it up toward my face, in order to send light through the tiny opening again; the second time I did this, I took a pencil and drew faint arrows on both the inner and outer surfaces of the bone so I could find the spot again easily. Having marked the location, I held the bone beneath the magnifier once more and leaned in for a close look. From the outside, the fit looked fine: From one piece to the next, the edges of bone transitioned almost perfectly across the glue joint. But from the inside—a spot that would have lain just beneath the left eyebrow—something didn’t exactly match up.
Rebuilding a shattered skull is a lot like rebuilding a Ming dynasty vase you’ve hurled into the fireplace in a fit of rage. The first few pieces fit together perfectly, zigs and zags and undulations mating exactly—partly because you’ve started with the biggest, easiest pieces, but also because it’s too soon for imperfection and distortion to rear their cumulative, misshapen heads. Gradually, though, minor imperfections start to compound, and the jig is up. Even if you tell yourself you can live with the cracks showing—they add a certain character and drama to the vase, after all, like tattoos and scars on skin—you know that the cemented shards will never again possess those elegant Ming lines. A missing crumb here or there distorts the fit by a thousandth of a degree; the china glue, though it be thin as water and only a few molecules thick, enlarges a reconstructed triangle just enough to keep it from nestling into its triangular niche. The edges and angles gradually cease to mate, forcing you into approximations and compromises—just as in the rest of life.