Carnosaur Crimes by Christine Gentry

conditioning and Chloe’s unexpected presence, Dorbandt was feeling better about this trip. He’d anticipated a hasty and dreary delivery job without any perks, not even time to visit close friends or relatives in the city. Instead he’d stumbled into a bonanza of opportunities to re-connect with a woman he’d almost married years before.
    He watched Chloe’s long legs stride beneath her ankle-length, corduroy skirt with appreciation as they entered the single room workshop. Chloe was tall and slender, what his mother had once described as willowy when he’d brought her home to meet his parents. He’d always liked that - dating a woman as tall as himself, plus athletic. Her white, V-necked blouse and tan, block-heeled leather boots complimented her curvy, agile physique quite nicely.
    â€œLet me put this someplace cool,” Chloe said, pointing at the box in his hands.
    â€œGood idea. Here’s the paperwork you requested; crime scene report with photos and drawings, clothing inventory--what there was of them--the postmortem photos, and the autopsy results. We weren’t on the case very long before the FBI took over so the forensics are nil.”
    â€œThat’s what Sheriff Combs told me.” She took the box with folder into her smooth, long-fingered hands. “If I work fast, maybe I can give you a face to go with the remains.”
    Chloe headed toward a large refrigerator next to a stainless steel gas oven, short counter top, and a row of overhead cabinets – a functional mini-kitchen not meant for preparing foodstuffs but rather human body parts. There was even a long block table with stacks of old newspapers, surgical instruments, rubber gloves, and large plastic bags.
    Dorbandt looked away and took in the rest of the workshop which smelled heavily of artist’s paints, cleaning solvents, rubber, and clay. Several small tables with stools before them filled the room, each with a single wooden block with a vertical dowel upon which a human head was attached. All were in varying states of completion.
    Some busts had human skulls stuck with protruding rubber pins. Others were covered with pins and clay, half-completed faces, and craniums reminiscent of heads caught in the process of re-generating their skins and features all over again. Still more heads, fully completed, dotted the room on wall shelving, larger tables, and the floor. The studio reminded him of Ansel’s hangar where she created her dinosaur drawings or other paleosculptures. But there were differences.
    Ansel kept a neat and orderly workshop. Here everything was randomly dispersed. Surfaces were stippled with the rainbow hues of dripped paint or dust from colored clays and cluttered with duplicate sculpting tools strewn next to busts in progress. Unframed sketches of dead human faces of all genders, ages, and races were hastily tacked to the walls while Ansel preferred to keep stacks of preliminary sketches under tight control and her artistic milestones lovingly framed and displayed.
    The women definitely had different personalities, Dorbandt assessed. Though both were artistic and surrounded themselves with the bones of the dead - animal and human - he had to admit that Chloe’s chosen profession was more disquieting. A hundred human eyes stared back at him, giving the uncomfortable feel of being watched from every angle in an abattoir of the dead. He wondered what Ansel would think about Chloe.
    As he surreptitiously searched the room for personal mementos or pictures that might reveal if Chloe was married or had children, she said, “Your sheriff told me that the body was badly burned. A gas explosion, right?”
    Dorbandt didn’t see anything telling. “Yes. A propane tank from an industrial concrete saw. Probably accidental. The perp was poaching dinosaur tracks from a riverbed on BLM land.”
    â€œSounds like a real bad character,” Chloe said as she sat down on a