The Detective [Part VIII]

PART VIII - 24 HOURS

24 hours, 1400 minutes, 86400 seconds and he’d just wasted 7 minutes smoking a cigarette. 1393 minutes left. The Detective lit another cigarette. He still had time. Back in the squad room he wrote a letter of inquiry and gave it to the receptionist. Then he had her pull up a list of all the registered Dentists in the city. She was going to be here late. He had her send it to every one of them with an e-mail address. Then she had to watch to see if any of them replied. If they did, he wanted to know, no matter what time it was. While she got started he went in to the break area and started her a pot of coffee.

The letter was simple, written with as much official aplomb as he could muster; he even threw in the Police department logo. The probability was that few of them would answer. Police don’t use e-mail. It couldn’t be trusted to be official. Yet, somehow people believed phone calls. The ignorance that surrounded and penetrated society made him angry sometimes. It wasn’t because people believed everything they were told, it was because what they did believe was rarely something they came to on their own. It was worth a try though.

After that he flipped back through the four lab reports. The DNA didn’t match, nor did the amount of work down on the teeth. One appeared pristine, two had small fillings and the third had a whopper of a filling on the crown. Then it hit him. There wasn’t a single X-ray of the teeth. Everything that had been surmised had been done on the exterior. It was worth a shot. He called the morgue then headed over. He needed to get a look inside.

On the drive over he called the antiques dealer who was helping them identify the cups and saucers. He picked up on the fourth ring and sounded like he’d already had a couple of cups of tea himself, Irish tea.

The call didn’t last very long but he did find out a few things. The cups were 18th century bone chine and painted by hand. Each set was worth around a $1000.00, but the dealer seemed to forget where they came from and started complaining about how they could have been split from their original sets. He’d narrowed it down to two British porcelain makers but was waiting for word back from overseas before he said which ones. The Detective thanked him and hung up while the dealer was mid sentence on proper care techniques.

The X-ray was a great idea, only problem was that they’d tried four separate times and each time the X-ray came out fogged; a fog that completely obliterated the image of each tooth. When he enquired what could have caused this kind of fogging, the tech didn’t hesitate.

“Only thing that could cause that would be radiation exposing the film.”

"X-Rays are radiation."

"Another radiation source."

"In the tooth?"

"In the tooth."

[This is an experiment. I don’t know where it is going. I write it and post it with only a questionable reread. It’s about the process of hitting the keys in the most reflexive of styles. It probably will go nowhere, but we’ll find out. I have no plan. I have no outline. I have no reason. It’s still © 2007 Greg Bunch, even if it sucks.]