“I had a hard time getting the archaeology department to send anyone,” said Diane.
Jonas Briggs studied the subtle leaf pattern woven into his bronze-colored carpet. “A little bit of snobbery, I’m afraid.”
“Snobbery?”
“I probably shouldn’t say anything, but hell, it’s never stopped me before. The physical anthropologist has some issues with your appointment here.”
“I don’t even know him. What issues could he possibly have?”
“My dear, I see you are unfamiliar with the subtle workings of the academic mind. You’re a forensic specialist. You don’t do research, you apply research, which means you are a mere technician of the art of studying bones. And thereby have no real qualifications for a position of this kind.”
“I see.”
“Willard quite put everyone off, then Julie decided she liked the idea of an extra office. Of course, later, she got a job out of state. They weren’t going to replace her until I said I would like to come. They jumped at that, so here I am. They were glad to get rid of an emeritus faculty member. For all their love of old things, they aren’t much fond of old faculty.”
“I rather think the geology department had the same feelings.” Diane’s eyes sparkled in amusement.
“Well, we’ll just have fun without them.”
Diane rose and headed for the door. “You play chess, I see.” She nodded in the direction of the chessboard.
“A little. I’m not very good, but I was hoping I could con somebody into a game with me now and then.”
She walked over to the board and moved the white pawn to king four square before she went out the door.
Chapter 18
By the time Diane got to the lab, the police were ready to leave. From the frowns on everyone’s faces, they hadn’t given the conservation team much satisfaction.
Izzy Wallace turned to Diane. “Not a lot we can do, really. Sort of a nonstarter. Got in with a key, didn’t take anything, not much messed up, really.” He glanced over at one of the assistants and back to Diane. “No use in taking any prints. There’s not a lot we can do with them. It was probably someone who works here, and their prints would be here anyway.”
Diane folded her arms and looked at him a moment, wondering if he had anything to do with the mayor’s misinformation. “That’s all right, Officer Wallace. We didn’t expect a lot, but we did want it on record in case it happens again and they do take something.”
“We’re real sorry, ma’am,” said the other policeman, “but there’s nothing to be gained by pursuing this. The DA would just drop it.”
“I appreciate your coming.”
It was a second or two before Izzy’s eyes left Diane’s. “Is the mayor downstairs?” he finally asked.
“Presumably.”
He nodded. “We’ll be going, then.”
As soon as they were out the door, the staff began complaining.
“They hardly did anything. They even so much as implied that we left the lab in a mess.”
“I’ll alert the night guards to keep a lookout. Don’t worry too much about it.” Diane left them grumbling and took the stairs back down to her office.
On her desk was a note from Andie to call Frank. She picked up the phone and dialed his number.
“Diane, I have the autopsy report. It will be a while before I can have the blood samples you collected analyzed. Would it be all right if I come over around quitting time and discuss it? I’ll bring Italian.”
“Sounds good. If the restaurant were open, I’d treat you to a meal at the museum.”
“You guys have a restaurant?”
“We will have one in a couple of weeks. I’ll see you around six-thirty.”
Diane took out her laptop and memory stick from her digital camera. After she printed out the photos she took of the crime scene, she called up a program she hadn’t used in a while. One that computed directional trajectory and gave a three-dimensional animated image of the scene when the information was plugged into it. If she hurried, she could have a rough set done by the time Frank arrived.
“What’s this you have here?” Frank pointed to a corkboard on the table leaning against the wall. Pinned to it were two rows of computerized 3-D images of the crime scene.
“It’s a storyboard depicting the events at the crime scene. I find it helps me see the sequence of events and what’s missing from the sequence.” She looked at the bags in his hand. “You think we can eat all that food?”
“You never know who might drop in—like a murder suspect on the lam. Besides, it’s just a few appetizers to go with the main meal.”
“I thought we might eat out on the terrace, then come back here.”
“Suits me.” He glanced again at her storyboard before following her out the door.
The terrace was an open patio in the rear of the museum looking out onto the nature trail. She spread their meal on a wrought iron table. It was hotter outside than she’d realized, but the sun was going down and the table was in the shade. The air had a sweet, hot fragrance of some shrub. She made a mental note to find out its name. Here in the rear of the museum it was quiet. Road noise sounded so distant they could have been deep in a glade.
Neither spoke about murder or autopsy reports. Diane didn’t tell Frank about the break-in or her talk with the mayor or her uncertainties about his friend Izzy Wallace. Instead, they looked out at the nature trail, and she told him about the various plants located on the trail and the pond with a family of swans. He laughed as she told him about Jonas Briggs, ape archaeology and elephant fine arts.
“Elephants actually make music?”
“Apparently. Jonas is going to look into it. Speaking of music, what’s this karaoke thing you and Andie have going? You’re a crooner?”
“Was last time. I might be Elvis next time. It’s just a fun thing I do occasionally. Turns out Andie’s a big karaoke fan, too. You’ll have to come sometime. Do you sing?”
“Not for any amount of money.”
“Oh, we don’t get paid.”
Diane laughed and looked out into the woods. It was getting dark—and late—and she hated the idea of going back to her office to examine what awaited her there. But better to get it over with.
“I think that’s about all I can eat.” She looked over the quantity of leftovers. “How many carts do you fill up when you do your grocery shopping? Why do you always buy so much food?”
“Actually, I don’t keep much in my house—except when Kevin comes over. I’m in Atlanta most of the time, working. Which I’ll be getting back to in a few days.”
Diane thought that getting back to his job would probably be a relief for him. It would be hard enough if he only had to arrange the funerals of his friends, but all the crime scene analysis must be hard for him to handle.
Frank helped pack up the leftover food and pick up the trash. “Have any idea what we can do with the leftovers?” he asked.
“We’ll put it in the refrigerator in the staff lounge. You can take it home with you when you leave.”
In Diane’s office Frank handed her an envelope from his jacket pocket. The autopsy report. She opened the envelope reluctantly and removed the contents slowly, as if there might be the possibility that if she just held off long enough, some intervening event would make it unnecessary for her to look at them. But there they were. Autopsy reports for young Jay and his parents.
Jay was shot once. The bullet went though his spine and lodged in his heart. There was no gunpowder residue on his clothing. Melted plastic was present in the wound. Diane stopped for a moment and thought about the pieces of plastic she had found in the grass. It’s what she had suspected. Attached to Jay’s autopsy report was a mention of other plastic pieces. They lifted a partial fingerprint from one, but the expert was of the opinion that they couldn’t make a match, especially with the new federal court ruling that fingerprinting didn’t meet the U.S. Supreme Court’s standards for scientific evidence.
>
George and Louise’s were more complicated. Just as the blood spatters showed, they both had been bludgeoned and shot. The bullet entered his upper chest, went through his spleen, traveled downward through the small and large intestines and out his lower back. The presence of gunpowder and smoke on his clothes indicated that it was a close shot.
There were contusions on the left side and front of the scalp, depression fractures in the left parietal and frontal bones. His left zygomatic bone was crushed, and his nasal bone was fractured.
The left parietal bone of Louise’s skull was fractured, and she was shot through the same part of the head at close range. Jay, George and Louise had no alcohol or drugs in their systems. From the drawings by the medical examiner, Diane noted that the fractures were consistent with a baseball bat.
While she read over the autopsy reports, Frank was looking at the computerized 3-D pictures pinned on the corkboard. He held the photo of Jay lying face down in the grass in his hand.
“I’ve talked to Jay’s teachers, his friends, his soccer coach. . . . I have no idea what he could have been doing out that late.”
“I don’t think he was,” said Diane. “That is, I don’t think he had left their property.”
In her hand she had a stack of index cards which she laid on the table along with the photographs she had taken of the crime scene. She sat down at the table and motioned for Frank to take the seat beside her. He eyed her a moment as he sat.
“You think Detective Warrick’s scenario is wrong?”
“Yes, I do, and so will she when she examines the evidence closely.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Warrick thought Jay was shot last because she believed that George would’ve been awakened and armed himself, and therefore would not have been shot in his bed. I think he was awakened, armed himself with a bat, but simply did not have time to get out of bed.”
Diane laid Jay’s autopsy report on the table. “First of all, Jay had no alcohol or drugs in his system,” she continued. “Though it’s certainly not automatically true, a kid who sneaks out of the house at night often will at least drink a few beers. But the important thing is the plastic. We’ll see when the report comes back on the plastic pieces I found, but I believe it was a silencer.”
“A silencer? Out of plastic?”
“I asked Star’s boyfriend, Dean, if he knew how to make one. He didn’t. He may have been lying, but he did seem puzzled by my question. You can take a plastic liter soft-drink bottle and put it over the muzzle of a gun and have a onetime-use silencer that is moderately effective. Jay had plastic embedded in his skin. I think the killer used a plastic bottle silencer and Jay was killed first.”
Diane took the card with a sketched picture of Jay being shot by someone holding a gun with the silencer and pinned it as the first in the line of pictures.
“Since it doesn’t completely silence the noise, George and possibly Louise may have heard enough to wake up, but it was not loud enough to get them out of bed. They may not have even known why they woke up. But when the intruder came up the stairs to their bedroom, George was roused to action.”
She took her photos of the string reconstruction of the blood spatter trajectory lines and laid them in front of Frank.
“Where the strings cross is the origin of the blood spatters.”
“Amazing,” said Frank.
“Math,” said Diane. “The computer program drew these 3-D depictions. I fed the spatter measurements into the program and it computed the origin of the blood source, just as the trajectory strings do. The pictures are crude because I was rushed, but the math is right. I’ve placed the head of the victims . . .”
She glanced briefly at Frank. She hesitated to use their names because it made it too personal, but she hated to call them the victims.
“It’s all right,” he said, putting a hand on her arm and squeezing it.
“The different positions of their heads are the sources of the blood spatters.”
She was glad now that the drawings were of crude artist-doll figures. It helped keep things distant.
“I don’t have the blood analysis that will help me know which blood belongs to Louise and which to George, and the superimposition of the spattering is difficult to determine at best, so new information may change things slightly. However, this is what I think happened:
“George was partially awakened by the muted noise of the gunshot outside. When someone came up the stairs and into their bedroom, he became fully awake, probably put one foot on the floor, grabbed the bat by the bed and swung at the intruder. At the same time, the intruder fired the first shot, hitting George in the chest and traveling downward. George hit the intruder, possibly knocking the gun out of his hand. The intruder grabbed the bat from the injured George and hit him on the left side of his head. This is that first strike.”
Diane pointed to the crossed collection of strings closest to the side of the bed George was on. She then pointed to the picture of the figure partially raised up in bed.
“See this castoff here that hits the chest of drawers? The intruder swung the bat again, hitting Louise before she could get out of bed.”
Diane pointed to the farthest crossed string and matching picture on the storyboard. The picture showed that the figure representing Louise had moved, trying to get out of bed and away.
“Louise fell, probably unconscious, and he swung the bat again. Here’s the castoff going up the wall and across the ceiling. This time he hit George again, fracturing his forehead and nose. He swung again, crushing his cheek-bone. Notice these two points of origin are close together and nearer to the pillow of the bed.
“The last thing the intruder did was shoot Louise in the head where he had struck her. She was probably moaning or was attempting to rise. After that, he left.”
“Warrick’s thinking that because there were two forms of attack, then there were two people involved—Star and her boyfriend,” said Frank.
“It’s possible there were two people involved, but I think this is a reasonable scenario that fits the evidence.”
Frank sat back and looked at the storyboard. “Why was Jay outside?”
“That’s the key. He didn’t have alcohol in his system. He didn’t show signs he had been anywhere. He might have just left the house on his way to meet someone. If he were meeting friends, perhaps you can find them.”
“I’ve talked to his friends of record. Jay was a busy kid—soccer, Boy Scouts. He didn’t have much time to get into trouble or have secret friends.”
“Kids that age are good at keeping parts of their lives secret. But someone out there knows. Perhaps Star does.”
“Star? You think he was meeting her? That wouldn’t look good for her,” said Frank.
“Ask her. He might not have been meeting her, but if he was doing things his parents didn’t know, he may have confided in her.”
“It’s hard to get her to talk to me.”
“Get her lawyer to talk to her. Keep in mind too that the intruder did not break in. Warrick thinks that fact points to Star. However, Jay could have inadvertently let the killer in. It could be someone Jay knew and trusted.”
Frank looked back at the storyboard and photographs of the trajectory lines. “You’re pretty sure about this analysis?”
Diane stood up and stretched. “The math, yes. Any explanation will have to fit that geometry.”
“That’s interesting about the silencer. Warrick doesn’t know that.”
“Maybe that’s one thing she’s keeping back. I would have thought she’d have collected the plastic.”
“Izzy would know.”
“Would he have told you?”
“Of course.”
“Is he one of your poker buddies?”
“And fishing.”
Diane looked at her watch—7:42. It was getting to be dusk outside. Time to go home. Lack of rest was catching up with her. She looked at Frank.
“Would you
like some coffee at my place?” she asked.
Frank’s face brightened. “Sure. You don’t make it like Vance does, but that’d be great.” He grinned as she made a face at him.
“Let me check my E-mail. By the way, any prints on that letter or the invoice to the Bickford for the dinosaur exhibits?” Diane went to her computer and called up her Internet connection.
“I’m sorry, I meant to tell you. No prints.”
“Not even mine?”
“No, none.”
“Well, that’s interesting. Shouldn’t there have at least been mine?”
She had several messages. One from the archaeologist Jonas Briggs. One line: Pawn to king three. She E-mailed back: Pawn to queen four.
“I would have expected it; however, it doesn’t necessarily mean the letter was wiped clean.”
The next E-mail was from Laura, her psychiatrist friend and friendly board member. It was about Melissa and the bruises Diane saw at the museum party. Laura had talked to Melissa’s parents—discreetly, she said. They told her Melissa was always getting bruises, ever since she was a kid. That didn’t sound particularly good to Diane, but Laura knew her friends and she was a psychiatrist.
Her other E-mails were from department heads and the newly arrived faculty-curators—the botanist thanking her for his lab and office space. She E-mailed him back, but decided to wait until tomorrow on the others.
Diane’s apartment was sparse. She’d directed all her energy into the museum and hadn’t spent any time decorating it. The beige carpet throughout came with the apartment. She’d purchased a large burgundy-and-gray striped stuffed sofa that converted into a bed. She hadn’t even tried to find one that went with the carpet. Instead, she bought an Oriental rug to go in front of the sofa and pretended the carpet under it wasn’t there. In front of the sofa she had a cherry wood coffee table. The only other pieces of living room furniture were a black leather stuffed chair and a stereo. Not an elegant room, but one her mother would have said had potential.
Diane headed for the kitchen to make coffee. Frank followed and began stuffing her refrigerator with Italian food.
One Grave Too Many Page 15